Adršpach Teplice Rocks
This area is a more dramatic version of Český Ràj and is right up on the north of the country close to the Polish border. The drive took us through pretty countryside with vast expanses of pine forest and charming little villages with traditional wooden houses. It also took us through some pretty soulless small towns that lacked any charm at all. An interesting sight though is the fact that most of the villages and towns had tannoys along the main road – don’t know what these were for but no doubt no longer in use.
By this time the weather had got much worse and when we stopped at our campsite we spent the day inside watching the rain. The next day we decided to take advantage of a break in the weather and ventured out to hike through the Teplice rocks which was only 500metres from the campsite. It seems that the term for these collections of spectacular rocks in this country is “rock town” although occupied in part in the past they are not really towns at all. Unfortunately the weather was poor and the cloud so low we could not really see the tops of the cliffs, at one point we took the chance of climbing 300 utterly knackering steps to get to a view point – of clouds. Part of the trail was blocked off because of nesting kestrels peregrines and ravens so rather than walking in a loop we made our return along an alternative route. Now this route would be challenging in good weather, there was a good deal of scrambling down rocks, valleys and tangles of roots but the heavens opened so we were scrambling down wet rocks and stepping through muddy valleys and by the time we got further down the tracks were mini rivers with the water running down from above. By the time we got to the bottom we could not have been wetter – how we laughed.
The axe
stairway to heaven?
The next day started out a little brighter but having soaked our clothes and walking boots we could not venture to the next rock town at Adršpach as we had nothing left to wear. Instead we headed off to Prague.
