A Spa Walk to Cheb
Chebsko · Point to point · hiked October 2021
An easy 13.2 km spa-to-town warm-up from Františkovy Lázně to Cheb — day one of a Cheb-country weekend.
A morning Pendolino from Prague puts you at the Františkovy Lázně station with the whole day ahead, and the walking starts from the platform. There is no hurry in it — the two towns, which could hardly be more different, deserve more time than the kilometres between them.
Františkovy Lázně deserves a circuit of its parks and pavilions before you leave; the town is small enough that an hour covers it. The walk south then crosses flat wood-and-meadow country past Klest and Komorní Dvůr — with the stub of Komorní hůrka, one of the youngest volcanoes in Central Europe (Goethe himself dug here), just off the route — and arrives along the Skalka reservoir into Cheb.
Cheb is the destination, not the walk: give the afternoon to the Špalíček, the castle with its Black Tower, and the house where Wallenstein met his end. The track’s formal end at Pelhřimov on the town’s edge is just where the day’s recording stopped.
Practical info
| Start | Františkovy Lázně railway station — by train, bus |
|---|---|
| End | Pelhřimov (Cheb) — by train, bus |
| Terrain | forest path |
| Links | Open route on Mapy.com |
| GPX | Download track |
On the way
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Františkovy Lázně
The smallest of the west Bohemian spa triangle — yellow-and-white empire architecture, the František spring, and UNESCO Great Spa Towns status since 2021.
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Cheb
A border town with a thousand years of German-Czech history — the crooked half-timbered Špalíček on the square, the imperial castle with its Black Tower, and the house where Wallenstein was murdered.