Forty Kilometres over Říp

A 40.6 km flat winter walk along the lower Ohře and over Říp to Roudnice — a distance day with one hill in the middle of it.

This is a walk for when the goal is kilometres: 40 of them, flat but for one famous bump, best started in the dark of an early winter morning from the Bohušovice nad Ohří station. The first leg follows the lower Ohře through Hrdly to Doksany, where the convent — one of the oldest monasteries in Bohemia — and the village shop are the only interruptions the plain will offer for a while.

Then comes the procession of small villages the Podřipsko is made of: Břežany, Vrbka, Straškov-Vodochody, each a church and a bus stop in the fields, with Říp growing slowly ahead the whole time. The climb itself, when it finally arrives, is short and honest — the one real ascent of the day — and the rotunda on top in dull January weather has the place to itself. I walked it exactly for that: sometimes the point is just to walk something longer, and this route obliges without drama.

The descent aims at Roudnice nad Labem, and the finish has a ritual quality: burger and beer at Peppers Monkey — my favourite restaurant in town — and the train back to Prague from the station ten minutes on.