Krupka is a hillside mining town stuck to the foot of the Ore Mountains, and it wears its history quietly. The town sits a short climb above the plain near Teplice and Ústí nad Labem in the north of Bohemia, with the ridge of the Krušné hory rising behind. Tin was dug here for a very long time, and the shafts and spoil heaps scattered around the slopes are what UNESCO recognised in 2019 when it listed the Ore Mountains mining region, a landscape shared with Saxony on the German side. Marienberg, on the far side of the border, belongs to the same story.
For a rider, the pleasure lies in the climb. From Krupka the road works up into the hills in a series of steady curves, past old spoil heaps now grown with birch and pine, towards the border ridge and the high plateau where Cínovec sits. The surface varies, as it does in much of the Czech north, with patched asphalt and the occasional rough section, so it rewards a measured pace rather than a hard one. In summer the forests are green and cool; in autumn the birches turn yellow and the views back to the plain are long and clear. Winter can bring snow and ice up on the ridge, and the weather above can be very different from the weather in the valley.
With a population above thirteen thousand, Krupka has fuel and food of its own, so there is no need to worry before the climb. It is a working town rather than a showpiece, which suits the history. Mining here was hard, cold and dangerous, and the surviving remains, from old adits to the lines of the shaft heaps, are an honest reminder of what the Ore Mountains cost the people who lived by them.
Keep an eye on the weather as you gain height, because the border plateau can turn windy and wet quickly. If the sky is clear, the descent back toward Teplice gives a good view across the basin and its industrial chimneys, a landscape that has changed a great deal in a single lifetime.