Bikes, Beer, Barley, A Bride, And Broken Pottery

June 29, 2013

Bikes, Beer, Barley, A Bride, And Broken Pottery

In many ways, it was a classic day of mountain biking.

The weather was perfect, the trails were challenging but not insurmountable, the beer was cold and crisp, and we encountered a few surprises along the trails.

Stewart and I rendezvoused at the now-famous Únětický pivovar in the village of Únětice. It's something like halfway for both of us from our respective homes in Roztoky and Prague 6. And because I have to climb the long, sometimes steep, and always-never-ending-seeming Horoměřicka Hill, I feel as if I've deserved a beer by the time I get to the brewery.

Models of restraints, we only had one before hopping back into the saddle.

Únětický pivovar

I like her style.

But not before we witnessed a just-married couple arriving at the pivovar for their reception, glasses of beer in hand, as they enacted the Czech wedding tradition of breaking a plate on the ground and then working together to sweep up the shards. It's supposed to signify a harmonious marriage.

From Únětice, we headed to Černý Vůl, where Daisy and I used to live, and then to Statenice, and then up through a meandering, and sometimes very steep and muddy trail to Přední Kopanina, where we had a couple of more beers and a hearty lunch at U Housliček, a restaurant and beer garden in the village.

The beer garden at U Housliček in Přední Kopanina

Stewart wanted to show me a large graffitied GRANT that he'd noticed spray-painted on an overpass near the airport, so we headed in that direction. I was curious about it, because Grant's an unusual name, especially in these parts, and I had photographed another example of Giant Grant Graffiti on a ride a few years ago (see it here).

I wonder if both could have been done by the same guy? Strange.

Funny, and weird

We headed into the lovely park known as Divoká Šárka (I can't remember the last time that Stewart and I cycled in Šárka together) from there, an exhilarating downhill run that ended with a homemade dirt ramp that would send the very brave or the very stupid hurtling across a little creek. We decided against that route.

Someone had built a dirt ramp to jump across the creek.

We ended up at the beer garden in the middle of Šárka for a lemony Svijanský Weizen, a 12° wheat beer on tap. My goodness, that is a good beer.

It was a fun ride, it was a sweaty ride, it was a beery ride, it was a perfect ride.

RIDE STATS
Length of ride: 28 kilometers
Average speed: 14.1 kph
Maximum speed: 44.9 kph
Pivo Index: 4
Distance ridden so far in 2013: 69 kilometers

Koupaliště Divoká Šárka was packed on this day. If you don't know about Koupaliště Divoká Šárka, it's a lovely oasis in the middle of the park that has two spring-fed swimming pools. One is Arctic, sub-freezing, painfully cold, the other is simply very, very, very cold. Lots of places to chill out on the grass and drink your beer and eat a sausage. Fantastic place.