North Bohemia – Page 16

A walk from Stará Oleška to Srbská Kamenice

This blog post is an invitation from me for you to join me on one of my favourite walks through the CHKO Labské Pískovce, the landscape protected area in which my new home is situated.

Leaving my front door and heading to the crossroads in the centre of Stará Oleška…..

……I join a footpath that takes me around this small lake, Malá Oleška……

……and then alongside the large lake, Olešský rybnik.

Partway alongside the lake, the yellow waymarked route, heads off into the forest, following the valley of the Olešnicka, the stream that flows from the two lakes.

It passes under this overhanging rock……

…….before joining the road at the edge of the village of Janská. On the right of this photograph are some former industrial buildings which are being converted into homes by private individuals. No doubt an inexpensive way to become a homeowner 🙂

The yellow waymark arrow points left © Ricky Yates

At the T junction, the yellow waymark arrow tells me to turn left into the centre of Janská.

The path heading up from Janská © Ricky Yates

Shortly afterwards, the route leaves the road and heads uphill into the forest.

It is a steady climb for nearly two kilometres but the view at the top makes the effort more than worthwhile.

Signpost at Pod Strážištem © Ricky Yates

Reaching Pod Strážištem, at 396m, the highest point on the walk, the yellow waymarked route heads downhill. Unfortunately, you cannot properly read the sign in this photograph as it is partly obscured by leaves 😉

The yellow route descending steeply from Pod Strážištem © Ricky Yates

The decent is steep! This photograph doesn’t fully convey how steep it is. I always make sure I have my trekking pole with me before taking this route.

Srbská Kamenice with Kostel sv Václava above the village © Ricky Yates

Near the bottom of the decent, by taking a slight detour to the right, you reach a wonderful viewpoint with the village of Srbská Kamenice spread out before you. To the left is this view with Kostel sv Václava above the village on the far side of the valley.

Srbská Kamenice with Ružovský vrch beyond © Ricky Yates

Straight ahead is this view of the village with Ružovský vrch beyond. The yellow waymarked route reaches the centre of Srbská Kamenice, directly opposite the yellow building with a car parked in front of it, which you can see in the bottom left of the photograph. This houses the Tourist Information Centre which has lots of helpful literature, but only in Czech and German. Likewise, the staff only speak Czech or German.

Ve starém kráme, Srbská Kamenice © Ricky Yates

I usually reward myself at the end of my walk with a beer or two and a meal at Ve starém kráme, seen here from the path that leads up to Kostel sv Václava. Whilst there is a shorter and more direct green waymarked route back to Stará Oleška, I normally make sure I’ve finished eating and drinking in time to catch the last bus of the day, back to my front door.

Bar-Restaurace U Soni

Three doors down the road from my new home in Stará Oleška, is Bar-Restaurace U Soni. It has been a real find and an absolute godsend since moving here. But if you go online, you will be hard-pushed to find any reference to it at all. It doesn’t have its own website. The building does not appear as a bar-restaurant on any online map.

The one reference I could find, gave the address incorrectly as Stará Oleška 76 when it it should be Stará Oleška 86. Putting the incorrect address into an online map will send you to the completely wrong location. To find the correct location, click on this link.

This blog post is therefore my small attempt to rectify the lack of information about Bar-Restaurace U Soni and give it a bit of publicity that it so richly deserves!

Let’s start with the beer. The one in the photograph on the left is the first on the list below – for my UK readers that is £0.74 for 0.5l, which is very slightly less than a pint. Even the most expensive offering is still less than £1.00 a pint!

As for the food – the photograph below was taken on either our first or second visit, a few days after arriving in the village, and shows both our meals. Total cost CZK 310 – £10.00. As you can see, each dish comes decorated with raw vegetables and fruit, a far healthier offering than in most Czech restaurants 🙂 And the portions are copious!

As my cooking facilities in the house are quite limited, until I get the kitchen refitted which will hopefully happen in July, I have become a regular at U Soni. As a reward for my patronage, I have recently twice been presented with a free dessert. Below is the second of these from two nights ago.

Do come and visit Stará Oleška. And do come and visit and support Bar-Restaurace U Soni.

Ružovský vrch

Late in the afternoon on Wednesday 31^st May, after I had been successfully connected to the internet, I went for a walk in the hills behind Huntírov, in part to find the exact location of the communication mast from which my wireless signal is obtained. But as I looked northwards, beyond Stará Oleška, I became fascinated by this towering conical mountain.

A perusal of my walking map of the area, revealed it as Ružovský vrch, (Rosenberg auf Deutsch), 619m high. My map also indicated that there was a waymarked path to the summit which then descended down the other side. An attitude that dates from my teenage years came to the fore. If there is a mountain there, it needs to be climbed 😉 So two days later, that is exactly what I did.

Ružovský vrch as seen from above Huntírov, aided by my camera’s zoom function © Ricky Yates

Ružovský vrch as seen from above Srbská Kamenice © Ricky Yates

A closer view from above Srbská Kamenice © Ricky Yates

Looking back, with the path alongside the edge of the field © Ricky Yates

On the afternoon of Friday 2^nd June, I drove about five kilometres to the village of Srbská Kamenice. Here I parked the car, and set off up the yellow waymarked route. This initially passed through grassland with patches of woodland.

The path passing through deciduous forest © Ricky Yates

But soon afterwards, it entered the almost virgin deciduous forest that covers the mountain slopes.

The route was well waymarked, but for once, the yellow arrow was not leading to Santiago de Compostela 🙂

Trilingual national park sign © Ricky Yates

Ružovský vrch forms the southernmost extremity of the Czech/Bohemian Switzerland National Park which stretches from here to the Czech – German border. It is relatively rare to see a notice in English – normally signs are only in Czech and German in this part of the world.

Cross on the summit of Ružovský vrch © Ricky Yates

I eventually reached the summit which is marked by this large wooden cross.

Limited view from the summit of Ružovský vrch © Ricky Yates

But because of the tree cover, the views are somewhat limited. There was once a viewing tower here but it was damaged by fire in the 1930s and never replaced. However, when beginning the somewhat steep decent on the far side of the mountain, I did get this view, looking towards the Czech – German border.

View looking north towards the Czech – German border © Ricky Yates

I am connected to the internet and the new house has wifi

Receiving dish being installed, perfectly illustrating the Czech approach to health & safety 🙂 © Ricky Yates

One concern I had from the outset of deciding to purchase my new home in Stará Oleška, was whether I would be able to obtain easy internet access. Ever since having an email address and joining the world-wide web, I have always done so via a broadband connection as part of having a landline phone – through British Telecom in North Oxfordshire and via O2 in Prague.

Therefore, back in mid-April, I enquired of Real Estate Agent Martin Tonder, whether the elderly owners of the house, had a land line phone line through which internet access could be obtained. In reply he wrote, ‘Sorry there is no land line, but there should be very reliable wireless service from JAW.cz’.

The website of JAW.cz is unfortunately only in Czech. But helped by Google translate, I got a good understanding of the service that they offer. I therefore sent off an email to their generic email address info@jaw.cz, with a brief Czech introduction, but with the rest in English, asking about whether they could provide an internet service to my new home and at what cost. Being a hi-tech company, I didn’t think it unreasonable to assume that there would be someone competent in English, who could reply.

I sent similar emails twice, but was greeted by total silence. Therefore it was a few days after I had moved into the new house and was in Martin Tonder’s office in Decín, resolving a couple of other issues, that I mentioned to him, this lack of response from his recommended company. He was most surprised at this and promptly rang JAW.cz. His call resulted in the promise that a technician would call to assess the situation on Monday 22^nd May at 14.30.

Communication mast on a hill four kilometres away © Ricky Yates

The technician duly arrived at the appointed time. Whilst he didn’t have a word of English, he pointed out the communication mast on a hill four kilometres away from which a signal could be obtained, and told me that Bar-restaurace U Soni, three doors down the road, obtained their internet access from the same source and that he personally, had installed their wifi system. Bar-restaurace U Soni, has been my main means of accessing the internet since moving to Stará Oleška, so it was a good recommendation. The technician further assured me that he would get an English-speaking staff member to phone me, to take the matter forward.

Unfortunately, I was once more greeted with silence as no phone call materialised. Therefore on the morning of Monday 29^th May, I braced myself and went in person to the office of JAW.cz in Decín. The young lady on the reception desk had very limited English. But between her very limited English and my very limited Czech, we made progress.

Putting my name into her computer immediately revealed details of the technician’s visit a week previously. Somebody could come and complete the installation the next day she promptly told me. Unfortunately I had a medical appointment back in Prague that day, but we agreed on Wednesday 31^st May at 14.00. But why no one had followed up the technician’s previous visit, I never did discover.

On Wednesday 31^st May, more than hour before he was due, the promised installer arrived. He happily went up the ladder into the upstairs front room and then climbed out the window onto the roof of the verandah. He fortunately discovered that the receiving dish for the wireless signal, could be attached to the base of the existing TV aerial. He also managed to bring the wire from the receiving dish into the house, through the existing hole for the TV aerial wire, without needing to drill a fresh one.

A power point located adjacent to the top of the ladder into the upstairs was the perfect place for the router and, in a relatively short period of time, my new internet connection was up and working. Cost CZK 1800/GBP 60.00, together with a monthly payment of CZK 319 / GBP 10.60.

Plenty to keep me occupied

Whilst the inside of the new house was left basically clean and emptied of the previous elderly owners’ possessions, the same cannot be said for the garden, or the various outbuildings. I’ve inherited some quite valuable and useful stuff, but also a lot of rubbish and mess that will take quite a lot of time and effort to sort out.

On the positive side, there was a good supply of cut and split logs for the wood burning stove, (the main source of heating in winter), left stacked in the wooden shed in the back garden. Then there was a further stack of cut logs, sitting at the top of the back garden, clearly the unused part of a supply delivered at the beginning of last winter. Last week, Sybille and I spent several hours over two days, moving all of the latter by wheelbarrow, stacking them in the shed, and finally disposing of the ugly bits of plastic sheeting which were meant to be keeping them dry 😉

I’ve also been left quite a number of gardening and building tools. But they were not all in one place but scattered inside or sometimes outside, the various outbuildings. Some seem to just have been left where they were last used, exposed to the joys of a Czech winter! I’ve been slowly gathering them all together and at least putting them somewhere sheltered and dry.

But on the negative side, there is an awful lot of junk that I will need to dispose of somehow. The previous owners were clearly hoarders, unwilling to get rid of anything. The photo below is of one end of the wood shed, which hopefully illustrates my point.

Seeing all of this reminded me of an experience back in 1975. Aided by my then eleven year old nephew, I was clearing out the lean-to building on the side of my widowed mother’s house, which had been the ‘workshop’ of my late father. He too, was a great hoarder. One box we came across had been labelled by my father as ‘Bits & bobs – vaguely useful’ 🙂 There is a lot of stuff left here which also fits into the ‘vaguely useful’ category!

More things ‘vaguely useful’, propped against the shed © Ricky Yates

Circular saw with ‘rain cover’ © Ricky Yates

One thing I am going to have difficulty moving is this. It is an electrically driven circular saw for cutting logs, and is sitting in the middle of the back garden. There is a heavy duty power point in the pantry at the back of the house, which is where I presume the lead sitting under the machine should be plugged in. When it was last used and whether it still works, I do not know, but I’m not keen to find out! Clearly before last winter, the previous owners bought in ready cut logs, rather than using this implement.

All the work that has been done to the house – altering and extending it, seems to have been done well. This retaining wall, built to hold back the earth at the back of the house to prevent problems with damp, was only completed last Autumn. But unfortunately, whoever did the work, (I suspect, a younger relative), didn’t dispose of the earth removed so the retaining wall could be built. It remains as this unsightly pile – another major item on the ‘to be disposed of’ list.

As Sybille said several times during the first week, there will be plenty to keep me occupied 🙂