4 day hike in the beautiful northern side of Bohemia, Czech Republic

[Dabberty]

With 2 friends from Holland, we had our traditional snow hike planned by the end of January.
However, the winter was not really happening, and the little snow we had in the mountains, was all mushy and melting due to never ending rain.
So we decided not to go to the mountains, and go in the hills instead, where no snow was, and less rain.
I set the route to pass several castle ruins, and the last evening passing a pub for some fresh beers.
We even found a dog, that was panicking for around 15 minutes by running past us, look at us, running away again, searching for it's owner.
Although we kept walking, he kept coming back to us, i guess hoping his owner would be with us, but no.
After 15 minutes of this we caught him, and put him on a piece of paracord and took him with us. Luckily he had a collar with his name  and a phone number on it.
It was quite surprising that name we gave him (sausage) was not correct :-) We called the owner, and she was on a day walk there in that area, and we agreed to meet at a water source to handover the sausage dog.

Well, thats all actually, if you wanna join the trip, click below.

[wsdstan]

Well being in the corona "stay at home" days here I enjoyed watching this video.  The terrain is rugged and the ruins are quite interesting.  Some of the construction appears to be very old and some is cut from the stone itself it appears.  Do you know the age of some of these and whether any are from Roman times or earlier?  The ruins early in the video have a number of arches which look similar to those used by the Romans and I believe the area was occupied by Rome in the 2nd or 3rd century.

Cute sausage dog by the way.   

[Dabberty]

The very first ruin, is named Ronov, and first mentioned in the scripts from 1427. It was abandoned in 1538, and referred to as deserted in 1608.
When the swedes invaded middle Europe, almost all castle got attacked, and this one was burned down in 1643.

The cut out chambers, they are from around 1250, and abandoned around 1400 according to the archaeologists.
There was a near by castle as well which is now completely gone. They suspect this was part of it, perhaps food storage in those quite stable temps.

The last ruin is named "poor castle". First mentioning of it is in scripts from 1391, and abandoned in 1622 when the owner was sentenced for taking part in an uprising against the crown.

The beauty of Czech Republic is that there is sooo much history all around.
It's amazing to sleep inside these walls, and look at the stars at night. the shadows on the walls of the fire bring back ancient feelings.

[wsdstan]

Thanks for responding on that.  They are certainly interesting to see and some 500 to 650 years later the arches and openings are quite remarkable.

[wolfy]

Those ruins reminded me of some we've seen in the series, Outlander.  You guys have some fabulous & very interesting places to trek in over there....is most of it on public land or do you have to get permission from someone to camp there?

Thank you for taking the time to post the video....I enjoyed it, especially since we are having to remain in quarantine over here!

[Dabberty]

Almost all are on public or state land. These ruins which are in really bad shape are all for free.
The ones that are slightly maintained you have to pay a very small admission fee to go in, that is for the work they have done, and future maintenance.
And some castles that have escaped destruction during the centuries, they usually have a bigger admission fee, for which you get a tour in the castle. In most of them are also some small touristic shops etc.
A prime example of this is castle karlstejn. It is still in the same shape since the middle ages.
https://www.hrad-karlstejn.cz/en