Raná and the Steppe Cones

A 25.9 km steppe-hills traverse — Europe's oldest quarry on Písečný vrch, paragliders on Raná, and the Oblík–Srdov–Brník cone line to Libčeves.

The Lounské středohoří is the range with its clothes off: bare steppe cones standing in open farmland, every summit a viewpoint, every climb short and steep. This traverse strings the best of them between two small rail stations, with no reliable refreshment between — carry the day’s water, especially in late summer when the steppe bakes.

From Bečov u Mostu the first stop teaches the day’s lesson: Písečný vrch promises nothing on the map — 300-odd metres, a bump — and turns out to be the oldest stone quarry in Europe, its sandy diggings worked by toolmakers for hundreds of thousands of years, with views out of all proportion to its size. Then comes Raná, where the reward is aerial: the reserve’s ridge is the historic cradle of Czech gliding, and you watch paragliders launch and soar from close enough to hear the fabric.

The second half is the cone line: Oblík first — the steepest sustained climb of the route, straight up the grass to the 509 m summit — then its lower companions Srdov and Brník, each with its own version of the same wide view. The descent lands in Libčeves, where the train runs via Lovosice back to Prague.