Day 9: From Zikov to Tyn

We both woke up with a hangover and the taste of about 14 portions of onion rings with garlic sauce in our mouths.

I popped down to the castle on my bike, leaving Tina to doze in the bar.

As you can see, the weather has turned wet and cooler again. But at last we got to try out the new rainwear we bought in Dresden...
Fortunately, either the hills are getting easier or we are getting better at climbing them, because we made good progress without too much strife and had a nice coffee with whipped cream in Pisek, a town that got rich centuries ago due to the gold dust in the river.

After that, the rain stopped and we had a lovely trip through a national park, taking us up to our highest point of the journey so far (625m), but also giving us a great downhill run towards our destination, Tyn, a very pretty little place that used to be big in salt, and now has a nice atomic power station nearby.

I've been neglecting my I Spy section, mainly because of the disappointing lack of wild animals to report. But we did meet our first deer in the park today, as it jumped across the road. Apart from that, we seen a few hares charging around in the fields and two very large birds that were probably eagles.

We checked in to a good (and cheap) hotel on the main square, sharing the corridor with a big group of Danish canoe tourists.

After an exotic Czech/Chinese meal a la wan-tans with chips and beer, the TV treated us to Star Wars Episode I (not in English). Czech Yoda is brilliant...

We have decided to change our plans and cancel our rest day. Instead, we will take two short trips to Ceske Budejovice and Cesky Krumlov, so we can take a good look at the towns, since there is a lot to see. So we'll only be cycling about 35km a day, but the maps promise some healthy climbs. We'll see. And it's just started to rain heavily again, so it's time to get out the 'rain pants' again.

Today's run to Tyn: 48 km

Running total: 585 km (I think)