Dear Bike forum cz!
My friend and I are planning on a 3 day road ride around Northern Czech in early June. We are looking to fly into Prague on Fri 31st May and fly back to the UK on the evening of Mon 3rd June. We have no fixed plans at all but are keen bikers and can happy cover 100–120km each day for the three days. We plan to stay on Prague on the Fri night & then up early on Sat morning & head up North?
Any ideas and options would be much appreciated.
Mnohokrát děkuji
Nigel
Hi Nigel,
you can ride to CHKO Český kras and CHKO Křivoklátsko for one day, right next to Prague, very nice landscape, nice viewpoints, a lot of abandoned or low-traffic roads with the surface above Czech average, deep woods, hills with 100–250m of elevation.
And definitely download mapy.cz app, it's very accurate offline maps of Czech Republic and whole world (using OSM data) including offline planning, navigation, tracking etc.
What are you planning? Round trips from Prague, or is it backpacking from one place to another? Will you then ride to Germany or Poland?
Northern from Prague, I can recomend České Středohoří area (hilly landscape, very interesting to see, but very demanding landscape, or Český ráj area where you have possibilities for hiking also, in rocks… City of Mělník can be nice stop, you can also follow river Labe.. But especially the northwest of CZ is industrial area (cities like Most, Ústí nad Labem etc..) you should better avoid..
We are ideally planning a round trip around the North. Can we rent good road bikes in Prague & then take a bus / minivan up to the Northern mountains? I see it is only 1hr drive – are there companies that can take bikes? We would then look to have local accommodation in two different places Saturday & Sunday evening, so long ride on Sat, long ride on Sun & mdeium ride on Mon and then back down to Prague to fly home Mon night?
What kind of trips do you want to plan, just sightseeing in easy terrain, moderate or difficult trails? Official bike routes (I'd hardly recommend this as the routing is usually quite boring). Any area preselected? Hope google translator will help with these websites, just get some gpx to study:
Car or public transport? Tha latter one just requers a bit of precise planning. I'd suggest one day in the Kokořín area (closest to Prague), another one in Českosaské Švýcarsko and in case of good dry weather Singletrack pod Smrkem.
Víš co je to ROAD? :)
I just missed one quite important word, sorry. Please ignore my post :-)
Hi Japhy,
We are both mountain bikers too but are looking to do a road trip this year & thought we could cover some good miles over three days. We live in UK near Stansted and can fly into Prague for a good price. All of these areas look really good – Krkonose, Jizerske hory or Orlicke hory
Is road biking popular in Czech? Can we rent road bikes in Prague or in the North? Is mountain biking more popular?
Thanks
Nigel
Road biking is popular around Czecho, but not as much as it is (newly) in the UK. Renting a good road bike here might be difficult, most companies offer that service at places we fly to ride in the spring, i.e. the Canaries… There is a company run by an ENG-speaking person in Prague, who rents mountain bikes and takes people on rides around Prague. Even staying within Prague limits has some top mountainbiking terrain, undevelopped natural parks etc, probably better than around Stansted IMHO. He would probably also be happy for you to go up north on your own etc. Bikes can be taken on almost any train and on certain buses, but with buses it will need to be in a box (i.e. the one it is supplied in, with front wheel off), or bike bag. Box is safer to go in the baggage hold of a bus and can be obtained for free in most bike shops.
As far as where goes, for road trips and not extreme places (big mountains where tarmac roads are, but a good trip terrain is local knowledge), I would suggest as someone here to bike along decent roads in a good area, as someone said around Kokořín, or around Mělník (relatively close to Prague and can be just ridden from Prague), enough for at least good one day 150–200 km? trip around there and with excellent and cheap accomodation. Ditto into Brdy close to Prague, can be done almost anywhere on tarmac or fine gravel road, I do it on an endurance roadbike all the time, there's great scenery, but no tourist infrastructure up there (down in some villages, there is and plenty, just 600 m high max. so no problem).
I would try to get bikes rented in Prague (unless someone suggests a place in the north that does that) and then either ride relatively around Prague, but in country/undevelopped areas, can be done from Prague by bike, or take the bike on a train somewhere up North, I would avoid places like Ústí nad Labem or Most as cities, not a good environment and dangerous for leaving the bike unattended even for minutes, max as a changing station, or just to get off the train and ride off.
Krkonose = National Park = No bikes out off official cycling routes and those are old „military“ roads with coarse tarmac or just paved gravel doubletracks. There are some very heavy climbs like from „Pec pod Sněžkou“ to chalet „Výrovka“, but you have to return the same way down – no possibilities to continue.
Jizerske and Orlicke hory are quite similar, there isn't NP, but roads are mostly the same, but it is ideal for Gravel bikes. You can ride easily 150km per day in Jizerske hory, there is big climbs from lowlands around and just gently wavy highland on the top, that military roads, coarse tarmac, sandy and panel doubletracks…
And for example in Ski a Bike Centrum Radotín (few minutes southern from Prague center) they have some better rent and test road bikes.
If you are to be accomodated in Prague without own vehicle, I'd suggest not to travel far to Jizerské hory or Krkonoše then, you'd spend too many unproductive hours just to get there. Brdy and Kokořín sound much better to me from this perspective, you can get there very quickly from Prague by train, most probably without hopping off and on. I don't know how it comes with renting a road bike, afaik it's easier to rent a MTB than a road bike, there are definitely more experienced road bikers to give an advice on where to rent some.
Would you ride around the area of Hradek nad Nisou (located in Jizerske / Luzicke hory > mountains) which is a bordertown near tripoint Czechia, Poland and Germany you can jump over to Germany. There is a spectacular spa town named Oybin there with a nice ruined monastery… and roads are smooth as silk there. Bonus: narrow gauge steam-powered railroad.
Great area and not as dangerous as Děčín and spol, but super difficult to get to from Prague with a bike on public transport… We go there for my wife§s summer house, agree super for either MTB or road, including when you cross into GER, which is easy, Oybik an interesting place, roads and people much friendlier to road bikers in GER etc. but how to get there with bikes and without a car??? Buses from Cerny Most (usually too ful and won't take bikes), only go to certain places… maybe go to Liberec and cycle from there??? But again, trains difficult, buses used by commuting people and no bikes normally AFAIK.
Wow, your brilliant writing style is still the same regardless the language.
Take a train. Easy peasy.
Thanks everyone for the amazing advice. I need to speak with my friend but as we only have 2 1/2 days of riding I think it would be wise to either ride directly from Prague or take a short train ride to Brdy and ride from there. I have heard this area is nice – Krivoklatsko which looks like it is just above Brdy?
Is there a specific road bike forum on this cz forum or another one?
I will check out the Ski a Bike Centrum Radotín too.
Many thanks
Nigel
For inspiration: http://www.krivoklatskeokruhy.cz/…astle-loops/
or we rent a car and drive up to Jizerske / Luzicke hory > mountains with rented bikes.
Our other option is too road ride 1 day and mountain bike one day – it sounds like mountain bike rental is easier and good trails accessible from Prague? We have mountain biked in Italy, Spain and Slovenia and thought road biking would be a nice change but if Czech is more fun and spectacular by mountain bike then we can consider this too..
Yes, it is – do you know trailforks.com? Almost every trail around Prague is there.
From entry-level to high-end bicycles, the average price for a bike should be around $100 – $3500 and above. A good bicycle's cost varies widely according to the type of bicycle and its features. The entry-level road bike pricing should be budgeted from $1200 to at least $1800.
I would recommend the Krušné Hory (northern border with Germany), which have over 200 km long ridge path that can be ridden on a road bike. As a start, I would choose Františkovy Lázně, where you can get to with bikes by train. And as a destination, Ústí nad Labem, from where the train goes again to Prague, or the bike path leads to Prague along the Elbe and the Vltava river.
There are three main types of tires currently available on the market: Clincher, Tubular and Tubeless Tires. Between tubeless vs tubular designs, the better option when riding Mtb is a tubeless setup. As for clincher vs tubeless, riding on a road bike with tubeless tires works to the advantage of cyclists who want the benefits of low-pressure tires and high rolling performance on uneven ground.
