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Farming festivities
Have you known that the United Nations Organisation declared 2014 to be an International Year of Family Farming? A few weeks ago, while walking in a near town, we were passing by a notice board where various local actions were announced. One of the posters was inviting everybody to come to Roupov to farming festivities where activities for (not only) children would be prepared. We found out on the Internet that Roupov is actually a village situated just a few kilometres from where we live and a visit to a local farm seemed very appealing to me. I took a quick photo of the poster with my mobile not to…
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Other bits and pieces from our trip to Rabštejn nad Střelou
In my previous post I shared a few photos from our trip to Rabštejn nad Střelou (Rabštejn is a town and Střela is the river above which the town is situated) and today I will add some more. Also, I promised to tell you more about this town which is the smallest town in the Czech Republic with its about 21 inhabitants. The first notice of Rabštejn comes from 1269, in 1337 it was granted a law of a town. About 20 years later Rabštejn was sold to the emperor Charles IV. who was interested in it. He understood its local importance and was even often staying there. The town…
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Stony bits and pieces
Last Saturday we spent several hours on a trip about 30 kilometres away from Plzeň (Pilsen), in and around the town Rabštejn nad Střelou. I will tell you more about this miniature town with interesting history records in my next post, today I would like to focus on another aspect of that area. As you might have guessed from the title of this post, it is about stones which are very frequent there. The structure and colouration caused by covers of lichens and similar plants growing on the surface of the local rocks create interesting pictures in many places. Also, there is an old slate quarry and you tread on…
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Pálava hills
Last summer, during our stay in South Moravia, we visited Pálava. Pálava belongs to the longest settled areas of the Czech Republic where remnants of prehistoric camping sites of mammoth hunters were discovered as well as a world-known ceramic figure of “The Venus of Dolní Věstonice”, a nude female figure with large breasts and wide hips. The figure was found in ash in a Palaeolithic site by Dolní Věstonice in 1925 and is dated to 29,000 – 25,000 BCE. It belongs to the oldest examples of ceramic articles worldwide. In 1976, Pálava was declared a protected landscape area and 10 years later in 1986 also UNESCO biosphere reserve. It is…
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Revisiting Kozel castle
During the last several years I posted quite a few photos taken in the park surrounding the Kozel castle. I’ve known the castle since my childhood but I see it differently every time I come there. The park is charming in each and every season. I’d like to add a few more photos to that collection today. The castle which is in the upper part of the photo above is not the only interesting building in the complex. Below it you can see greenhouses where plants are kept and grown during the colder months of a year. I liked that overall as well as detailed view. In the following photo…
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Photo bits and pieces
Thanks to my photography project I regularly take my camera into my hands and though there is still a lot I need to learn and improve, the regularity is enriching. I have more photos than I would have had without starting the project and though they may not be striking, I learn from each of them. The following photos were taken a few days ago and form somewhat incoherent set but I find them worthy of sharing here. Number 1: Cottage I wonder whether the cottage get flooded in spring when there is too much water in the river but in summer it must be a nice place to stay…
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Having walked on New Year’s Day
In Czech we have a saying conveying that what you do and how you behave on the New Year’s Day, it will last through the whole year. A bit scary if things don’t go well on that particular day, isn’t it? But we always laugh at something rather than become afraid and take it easy. We started this year with a walk nearby. First we planned to go to Plzeň to participate in a march, that kind of a march when people come to a specified place, get registered, choose the length of the trail they want to conquer and when they arrive at the finish, they get a certificate…
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Autumnal moments
This year it seems to me that autumn has been slipping through my fingers mercilessly. There is always so much to do and leaves have been changing their colours and falling to the ground far too quickly. In a desperate effort to catch a few moments I took my camera when we went shopping a few days ago and made a short stop in a near village called Dolní Lukavice where there is a rather run-down castle surrounded by quite a large park. I’ve never been there so this has been the first time. The sky was overcast but here and there a few rays shined and lit the scene.…
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Church in Břeclav – Poštorná
During our summer vacation in Moravia we made many plans and visited many places but the church I’m going to show you today wasn’t on any of our itineraries. We were just passing it during one of our trips and because it attracted our attention, we made a short stop by it when going back, to take a closer look. And a few photos of course. Unfortunately the sharp evening sun and fading light made it quite difficult to take a decent photo against the sky but you can at least imagine what the building looks like. There were so many interesting details and if it wasn’t that late we…
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Windmill in Kuželov
Kuželov is a village with just about four hundred inhabitants but it is worth visiting. On a hill above the village you can see and visit an original windmill of a Dutch type, the only windmill of this type in the whole Moravia nowadays. The windmill was built in 1842 at the expense of the village. 300 horse loads of stones were used for the building and I wonder, how many kilograms that could be? I haven’t found any conversion formula… The width of the mill is 8,6 metres at the base, height about 10 metres, diameter of the wind wheel 15,6 metres. In 1904 the windmill was bought by Mr…
