Kladská

As I’ve already written, some time ago we were looking for an interesting destination of our weekend trip and while browsing the Internet, our eyes fell on a description of a nature trail “Kladská”. We liked the description and went there.

The nature trail starts as well as ends in Kladská. Kladská is a village where you can find just a few buildings but their history – although not very long – is quite interesting. In 1873, the prince Otto Friedrich Schönburg-Waldenburg bought a woody area in this region and liked it so much that he started to build a village – a hunting castle with outbuildings, gamekeeper’s lodge, revenue office, inn, building for a coachman and two log cabins for clerks. It is said that all the buildings were transported to Kladská from an exhibition in Vienna where the prince had bought them.

The trail was open in 1977. It lines the Kladská pond which is part of the National Natural Reserve “Kladská peatlands”. Most of the trail follows a raised board walk so that the undergrowth can’t be damaged and tourists can’t get trapped.

The trail is just 1,6 kilometres long but we spent wonderful two hours following it and taking various pictures.

There was a flock of ducks swimming across the pond, it was fun to watch them for a while. They have obviously been accustomed to people (and probably to being fed), they were keeping themselves quite close to the edge of the pond just a few feet from us.

I like the following view through the trees, it makes me feel like being back there…

This part of the National Natural Reserve “Kladská peatlands” is called “Tajga”, perhaps because the scenery resembles geographical taiga?

We said goodbye to the trail passing by a spot where plenty of lupins were showing their beauty.

There we realised that just by chance we had chosen the start of the trail on the other side as you can freely choose if you’ll go clockwise or anticlockwise. I wonder whether the impression would be the same but I’d like to visit the place sometimes in autumn so I’ll choose the other direction for sure then.