Devall Travels

This Flickr album contains about 103 of the pix taken on the trip. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauldevall/sets/72157625772506567/ Favourite beer Cerna Hora......

After a coffee by the entrance we set off for home, stopping in   Křtiny . Here we saw a magnificent church. We stopped to have a look and it is another pilgrimage church. The legend has it that the Virgin appeared to villagers in the 13th century and of course it became a site for Catholics to visit across time. The current church is by the architect Santini and was built in the mid 18th century.  Santini has also responsible for another seven or eight similar edifices in Czech and surrounding countries. Tomorrow on the way home we will call into another one at Zdar. In the evening there was a big shower but we still did the rounds of Lilka's relatives. Everyone is so friendly and greet you like friends. Lovely.

Not all of this trip will be about eating and drinking and watching bike racing.  There will be local sights, folklore and culture!!! On the way home from Brno we have a stop in Prague . As it is really about 160 miles that day we have a stop in Prague . I have two cultural stops on the way back. The first at Žďár nad Sázavou to pay a visit to the Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk on Zelena hora Hill. This was built in the shape of a star in 1719. More info on the Church  - http://www.santini.cz/zdar-nad-sazavou-en.html The other place on the Brno-Prague route is the Church of Bones at Kutna Hora.  I first saw it in a travel book many years ago and then it was featured in the "Long Way Round" TV series with celeb actor luvvies Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman. This is a bizarre church where skeletons of the long deceased are used as decorative materials!  It must be worth a half hour to visit. More info on Church of Bones - http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Original planning for this trip started back in the autumn of last year.  It's seven years since we last went to Brno and the Czech Republic and I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate a trip to the MotoGP as well as see friends. We had been to the Dutch TT two years running and wanted another MotoGP visit.  I thought about Cataluña but as it clashed with the TT on the Isle of Man I decided to look at Czech. Tickets went on sale in December and the English version of the official website was easy to follow and I booked two general admission tickets for around €45 each for the weekend.  The weekend ticket covers Friday to Sunday practice and race days. The original plan was to go to by bike of course. All the initial planning, route and stops etc, was based on a bike day in the saddle.  Then Claire's hip decided to get involved and it has become far too painful for her to pillion anywhere, so we decided to bite the bullet and go by car.  Luckily, ...

After a disjointed trip across Europe to get to the Czech SOC “Invader Rally”, finally everything is coming together, or is it? Saturday 29th May Our day is going to be very different. Our ride alongside Brno Lake reveals a few changes to landmarks I have been to and wanted to share with Claire. The castle at Veveri is now open to the public, and the nearby bridge destroyed by the Germans to halt the Russian advance in 1944 has been replaced with a new pedestrian suspension bridge. But the lake hasn’t changed and in the sunshine it looks very inviting. This weekend there is a huge festival on in Brno to celebrate the CR joining the EU and also Brno’s place at the centre of Europe, and the city end of the lake has roads closed and we have to divert all over the place to get into the city centre itself. Amazingly it all comes back to me and I can remember where I am. I have arranged to meet an old teaching colleague at her flat about 2pm and that gives us the morning to do a...

There’s a saying about the best-laid plans of mice and men… I have no idea from the mouse’s perspective, but planning this trip seems to have taken longer than my usual time, and from the human angle! It turned out to be more than poring over maps, both paper and electronic (MS Autoroute and www.viamichelin.co.uk ). Firstly, it was to be a weekend dash to join the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the Czech Suzuki Owners Club, with friends and fellow club members. Then it became a long weekend to accommodate my wife, Claire, on the trip and then a full blown week and the trip grew and grew. A week before the off, she found she had a business meeting with her company’s partners in Paris. The meeting date? The same day we were to begin our holiday! Plans changed again. Another days holiday booked for me and a change to the Shuttle booking. Luckily the fare was flexible and I was able to change without charge. And so… Tuesday 25th May My plan was to be away early and to meander down to ...