Getting Rapid in Cesky!

Day 98

Feeling excited about seeing Telc after our quick glimpse the day before we made an early start and travelled back into town.  

All was rather quiet in Telc on the sunny fresh morning while we had a look around.  The gorgeous town square was another UNESCO World Heritage site and well deserved with picture perfect architecture.  

Looking over the Telc Castle and Church from the town pond.

Working water pump in the main street.

Claire with all her friends in Telc main street.

The Fish Pond - Telc.

Young girl thinking about how she is going to get all the coins out of the fountain.

In the gardens just below the castle walls we came across an archery and crossbow practice range.   It was very reasonably priced at just £2 for 8 shots as oppose to £10 in Tallinn a couple of weeks earlier, so Luke jumped at the chance and fired the crossbow hitting the target with reasonably good aim.

Crossbow Target Practice - not sure you would
get this close to ones target in real life.

The safety briefing was just as long as those
we received with the AK-47 and Glock.
Stand here, pull trigger here.

Telc is a small place and it didn’t take long to circle around the old town and see the fishponds before we decided to head off and make our way to Cesky Budjovice the home of Budvar larger.  

We tend to avoid larger cities but with Czech having such a good track record of beautiful towns and cities we decided to give Cesky Budjovice a go – especially with it being the birthplace of a truly great beer.

Cesky Budjovice was home to yet another stunning town square and town hall but seemed to have more of dirty, big city feel.  We spent roughly an hour there wondering around but failed to get the town ‘buzz’ and decided to move onto Cesky Krumlov, which was about an hours drive away and somewhere we knew wouldn’t disappoint as we had visited it briefly on a previous trip in 2005. We have wanted to revisit ever since so needless to say we were quite excited as we drove into town.

Cesky Budovice Town Fountain - would of been
way better if it was pumping out Budvar.

The Cesky Budovice Town Hall and
amazing flower arrangement.

This is what happens when you have too much Budvar!

The closest camping ground was located 3km out of town on the river Vltava so we parked up and rode the motorbike back into town after lunch. 

Back in 2005 we had heard one of the highlights was rafting or tubing down the river through town.  As rain was predicted for the following day we decided we better do the activity that afternoon when conditions were perfect and tour the town the next day.

Easy enough one of the first shops we saw offered rafting so we booked in and set off right away.  We were driving upstream to a drop off point 8km up the road and were told we had 5 rapids to pass over and given a quick run down on how to tackle each.

It was a rather relaxing paddle down the first section of the river until we approached the first rapid.  Having only been to told to keep right and not much else, we approached the first rapid with some trepidation. 

Starting the trek down the Vltava River through Cesky Krumlov.

Luke guiding the boat from the back - or so he kept saying.

The Vltava winding its way through Cesky Krumlov.

Having done a little bit of rafting in Norway we knew that it was always better to approach with a fair amount of speed and ensure the raft was kept straight on. This tactic seemed to work as we got through the relatively small rapid, unscathed. 

This trend continued for the next 3 rapids and we got through each staying fairly dry. 

The last rapid proved to be slightly trickier, however, as there a large amount of construction going on in the middle of the river. This construction had meant that a larger amount of water was being directed down the ramp we had to take compared to the rapids before hand.

This had obviously scared a few people as they decided to pull their rafts out of the water and walk them the 100m around the rapid. Not wanting to pussy out of a challenge, we watched a couple of rafts go down to see which way the water directed them. 

Two young Italians went before us in a rigid old canoe and they didn’t provide the best guidance, as they went sideways down the ramp and were tossed into the wall of water at the bottom and into the rocks. Their canoe slightly rolled and allowed enough time for the wall of water to direct it’s torrent into the front of their boat, causing it to fully rollover and throw them out.

With the Italians out of the way, and a crowd of people watching from the bridges and embankments, we paddled hard into the rapid and down the ramp. Watching the rafts go down earlier, we decided to keep the boat going right and hope to ride on top of the rapid and away from the rocks.

This strategy worked and we managed to get through unscathed, finally passing the two Italians who were floating down the river trying to capture their missing oars!

After our little adrenaline rush, we dropped off the raft and then started to make our way back through town, stopping to take some photos of the town before it got hit with the bad weather we heard was on the way.

One of the majestic churches built on the side of the Vltava.

Some old bloke who was no good at catching a Frisbee and ended up with it between his ears!

The rest of the evening was spent back at our idyllic little campground on the river, enjoying a BBQ and then finally listening the thunder and lightning roll in.

Bumble....bumble....bumble Bee and a Big Arse Flower!

The storm clouds rolling into our campground just outside of Cesky.