All my planning has been rough-ish – I’ll roughly go there and I’ll roughly go here – I’ll roughly arrive on this day and then again I may not. Planning a trip is good fun – finding out about exciting and interesting places to visit but too much planning and I find I’m just overwhelmed with information.

I’d roughly planned a route from home to Harwich. I’d planned a route through The Netherlands – the 1st (and probably 2nd) day I just ignored because the weather wasn’t with me. It’s also difficult to predict on a bike how long it will take you to get somewhere. The not knowing and not being tied to dates is part of the fun – 2 dates though I must stick to is meeting my wee sister in Romania (and I can’t wait for that) and making sure I leave France before the allotted 90 days is up (and that’s just a pain the bum).

I’m not sure I did much planning in Germany – friends and friends of friends did most of that for me.

Getting to Prague was a case of carrying on following the same river that I’d  been following for a good few days in Germany so that was pretty straightforward – I just needed to make sure that I had the right money.

Next I’d planned to go to Kracow in Poland but feel that time is running out so I’ve aborted that plan – I’ll just need to go another time!!

So last  night I started looking at a route to get from Prague to Romania. The first stage it made sense to continue east following The Elbe / Labe until it starts to go north at a place called Pardubice. Looking up information and especially on the Eurovelo group I’ve been following on Facebook it was all doom and gloom   – routes were “awful” – “so rough that you had to push bike for large portions / so rough that you would need  a mountain bike with no luggage / so rough that you’d be better to get a train / and if you left the cycle route the roads were so busy that you’d be better to get on a train!!!”. This combined with  not knowing the language at all – after 3 days I’ve still failed to pronounce thank you correctly – I was starting to wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew – rather than worrying about it I gave up doing any more research and went to bed but not before messaging John, who had cycled there, to see what he thought – John messaged me to say he didn’t have any problems and also some tips on where to stay and places to visit if they are on my route – thank you John.

So this morning I checked out of the hotel and set off and it was …………………………………………………….. a terrible day – only kidding – had a great day. Cycle lanes led me out of Prague. I did push the bike up about 8 steps – was that part of the route or navigation error on my part, which is possible. There was a busy and strange section – lane for people to walk on, then lane for cars to be parked, next was cycle lane and then 2 lanes of cars – it wasn’t actually too bad until cars were merging in from a slip road from the right – in theory I had right of way but I wasn’t taking any chances. But after that it was all good. A mix of quite back roads through towns and cycle paths that followed the river – the river section varied hugely – some sections rough and potholed, some bits just a runnel in the grass but nothing that was not doable and then there was sections of beautifully smooth tarmac. Great route and the sun was out – fab day and hopefully it continues like that.

This sign was at a very low bridge under a railway line. Quick translation is duck. Google translate is –

"attention reduced edge under the ridge" or if you forget to put a space in between pod and jezdu you get a completely different meaning -
"pay attention to reduced food in the entrance hall"!!!

So all in all a good day and the sun is to come out again tomorrow.

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