Last Friday, I drove over the border into Germany, in order to visit the Bastei, a major landmark in the Sächsische Schweiz/Saxon Switzerland. The Bastei is a rock formation consisting of a series of eroded sandstone pillars, towering above the Elbe river.
Rather than drive to the nearest car park and almost certainly pay a substantial parking fee, instead I drove to the village of Rathewalde. However, even parking there cost me €2.00!
Walking down the main street of Rathewalde, I joined the yellow waymarked route which headed gently upwards into the forest and the National Park.
After walking for about forty minutes, I reached a viewpoint from which the following two photographs were taken.
This is the view looking east, with the hills in the far distance, forming the boundary with the Czech Republic. Below, on the right side of the river is Oberrathen, where there is a station on the Decín-Dresden railway line. On the left side of the river is Niederrathen – the two being connected by a passenger ferry.
Several of the sandstone pillars are connected by the Bastei bridge, completed in 1851 and replacing an earlier wooden structure. My apologies for a bit of sun-glare in the photograph. At the far end of the bridge are the remains of Neurathen Castle.
Rather than retrace my steps, I decided to return to Rathewalde by the blue waymarked route. This descended steeply and far further than I was expecting 😉 into a deep valley. The path mainly consisted of a series of steps which I was very glad to have chosen to descend, rather than ascend!
At the valley bottom, the path turned left and headed uphill to this waterfall – Amselfall, adjacent to which was a very welcome cafe with outdoor tables and seating. Here I enjoyed lunch, accompanied by a large beer, which provided the sustenance I needed for the climb up the valley, back into Rathewalde.
A sign outside the village Lutheran Church was most welcoming. So I very much enjoyed exploring the Church, still beautifully decorated for Easter, taking time to quietly pray, before returning to the ‘Carly’ and driving back home, over the border.
This is a question, sometimes with slight variations, that I’ve been asked time and again this past year. So as this is my four hundredth blog post 🙂 🙂 🙂 , I thought I would put into written form, the answers I’ve been giving to all those who have enquired. I’ve broken the question down into two parts, with four reasons under each heading. If you have further questions, please leave them in a comment and I promise to respond.
Why did I decide to retire?
1. Because I could
On 26th February 2017, I celebrated my sixty-fifth birthday. Although, because of increasing longevity and consequent increased costs, both the Church of England and the British government are raising the age of retirement for younger people, these changes have had very little effect on me. I remained entitled to retire at age sixty-five and claim both my Church and state pensions.
When I left the UK and moved to Prague in September 2008, I knew that in the previous financial year, I had completed paying sufficient National Insurance contributions, to be entitled to receive the minimum state pension at age sixty-five. Continuing working past my sixty-fifth birthday in the Czech Republic, was not going to increase my UK state pension 🙂 I did work on for two more months, retiring on 30th April 2017, but all that did was to slightly increase my Church of England pension.
2. It is what I always envisaged
When I was offered and accepted the position as Anglican Chaplain in Prague, I always envisaged being in post for the following eight and a half years and then retiring. My predecessor as Chaplain, John Philpott, had done exactly the same, except that when appointed, he was one year older than me and therefore served for seven and a half years before retiring at age sixty-five. As I pointed out to the Prague congregation at my final Annual Church Meeting on 9th April, compared to many other European Anglican Chaplaincies, Prague had enjoyed a long period of stability with only two chaplains in nearly seventeen years.
3. Repeating myself
Over my final two or three years at St Clement’s, Prague, I increasingly felt I was saying the same things over and over again in my preaching. Because of the relatively high turnover of congregational membership, with people only being in Prague for relatively short periods of time, this might not seem to be a problem. But I felt sorry for the long-standing members of the congregation who might well have heard me say something at least once too often 😉
4. My health
In August 2015, I had a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in my lung, which nearly killed me. As a consequence, I have to permanently take the blood-thinning drug Warfarin, (aka ‘rat poison’), and wear a compression stocking on the lower half of my left leg.
The cause of my pulmonary embolism was a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) that formed in my left calf, then escaped from there and travelled to my lung. Despite wearing a compression stocking, I continue to have problems with my left calf and foot. Sometimes they become swollen with areas of bleeding through the skin, which in turn is difficult to stop, because of taking Warfarin 🙁 Currently the calf and skin are as good as can be expected but I had a serious flare up this summer, not helped by being stuck in cattle class for two hours on a Wizz Air flight to the UK.
Why did I retire to North Bohemia and not back in the UK?
1. Affordability
In simple terms, I can afford to retire here in North Bohemia and live fairly comfortably, but in no way could I do so in the UK.
For the nearly twenty-eight years I was in full-time ordained ministry, I was always housed as part of my job. But I do not own a house in the UK and with the absurd price of property, there is no way I could now afford to buy one. The Church of England does have various schemes to help retired clergy with housing. But they would all eat into my pension giving me much less income to live on.
In contrast, using just over half the lump sum from my Church pension, I have been able to purchase outright, my new home in Stará Oleška, and still have funds left over to make improvements to it – five new uPVC double-glazed window units were fitted last week 🙂 Major work to completely refit the kitchen, is due to commence on 8th January 2018.
2. Frauenkirche, Dresden
Although I have retired from full-time ministry, as I have previously explained, I have been granted Permission to Officiate (PTO) by my bishop, in order that I may continue as the Coordinator of Anglican worship in Dresden. This currently means officiating at the monthly English-language Anglican service of Evening Prayer, hosted by the Frauenkirche, but will hopefully lead to a second monthly service, starting in the new year.
Stará Oleška is only a twelve kilometre drive from the main railway station in Decín from where it is just forty-five minutes by train to Dresden. Therefore by living here, I can now return home following the evening service, rather than staying overnight and returning on Monday as I was doing whilst living Prague. To answer the question as to why I didn’t then choose to set up home in Germany, the answer is simple – cost! Housing, and so many other things, are considerably cheaper on this side of the border, as explained in this recent post.
3. ‘Location, location, location’
‘The three most important things to consider when buying a property are location, location, and location’. A quick check on the internet reveals that no one can be sure who first said this but it is a mantra that is often repeated. As well as proximity to Dresden, I love the surrounding environment of the CHKO Labské Pískovce, the landscape protected area in which Stará Oleška is situated. As I have already explained and illustrated in this post and this post, it offers wonderful opportunities for walks out in ‘the nature’ as English-speaking Czech people often say.
4. Xenophobia in the UK
Besides cost, the other main reason for not retiring back in the UK is the rise of xenophobia, at times bordering on racism, which is now being freely voiced in parts of British society as a result of David Cameron’s ill-thought out EU referendum. Each time I visit the UK, the more I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I visit in order to spend time with my two adult children, their spouses and my two grandchildren. But even if I could afford to do so, I’m not at all sure that at the present time, I would want to make the UK my home once again.
Not that the Czech Republic doesn’t also have a vocal right-wing, recently winning electoral support by voicing anti-refugee, anti-Islam, anti-Roma propaganda. It is a politics of fear, bearing mind that very few refugees have come here, there are extremely few Muslims, and the country has had no experience at all of so-called Islamic terrorism.
However, as an ‘immigrant’ myself, I have been made very welcome in the community where I have now chosen to live in my retirement, smiling and waving helping to overcome the language barrier.
A few weeks ago, I took the bus northwards from Stará Oleška, through Srbská Kamenice, to the southern edge of Jetrichovice. From there, I made my way back to Srbská Kamenice, first following the blue and then the green waymarked routes.
The blue waymarked route leaves the road on the left, shortly after the bus stop, where the road goes to the right, zigzagging down to the centre of Jetrichovice. Initially it follows a gravel track which gives vehicular access to several houses, before becoming a footpath, heading into the forest.
After about one and a half kilometres, there is this wayside shrine or Calvary. It has recently been restored – the little plaque on the tree giving more details, but only in Czech 🙂
All along the route, the towering peak of Ružovský vrch is nearly always visible, seen here soon after the route crosses the road through the village and begins ascending the hills on the other side.
Slightly further along the path is this First World War memorial, declaring ‘Die Heimat ihren Söhnen‘ – a reminder that until 1918, this area was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and predominantly German-speaking. All of those commemorated have Germanic surnames.
After passing the village cemetery, the blue waymarked route heads into the forest once again, alongside towering sandstone rock outcrops of which this is one of the best examples.
At Pod Borovinou, I finally left the blue waymarked route and turned right onto the green waymarked route, seen here passing through grassland on the edge of the forest.
Along this path are two concrete bunkers, built by the Czechoslovak government in the late 1930s, as defences against possible Nazi invasion. I’m planning another blog post with more photographs and background about these structures. However, I have previously written about similar fortifications in the Orlické hory which you can read here.
My walk was completed by walking along the road to the centre of Srbská Kamenice where on this occasion, I patronised the bar-restaurant of Pension Vesna. This was my meal ahead of it being consumed 🙂 Best wishes for the enjoyment of my meal were expressed on the neighbouring window, in the two languages spoken by nearly all visitors.
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…..
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.
…….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 🙂
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Late in the afternoon on Wednesday 31st 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.
On the afternoon of Friday 2nd 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.
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.
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.
