Bedřich Smetana, the composer of Má vlast and The Bartered Bride, was born in 1824 in the brewery of Litomyšl Castle, where his father was the brewer, and the town has never forgotten it. Every summer, the castle courtyard hosts an opera festival named after him, Smetanova Litomyšl, and his birthplace in the brewery building is a small museum. The castle itself, an elegant Renaissance building with arcaded courtyards, was built in the sixteenth century for the Pernštejn family and is famous for its sgraffito decoration: the facades are covered with thousands of rectangular panels, each with a slightly different pattern. It was listed by UNESCO in 1999.
Litomyšl lies in eastern Bohemia, on the old trade route between Bohemia and Moravia, and its long town square, lined with arcaded houses, is one of the largest in the Czech Republic. The town has a reputation for culture and education, with schools, museums and galleries, and its modern architecture, much of it built since the 1990s, has won awards. Nearby, the Portmoneum, a house painted inside by the artist Josef Váchal, is a strange and wonderful place.
For riders, eastern Bohemia offers gentle, pleasant riding. The roads around Litomyšl pass through rolling farmland, forests and villages, with gentle curves and generally good surfaces, and traffic is light outside the main routes. To the north, the Orlické hory, the Eagle Mountains, on the border with Poland, offer more challenging roads through forests and hills. To the south, the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, the Vysočina, are a quiet region of lakes, forests and small towns.
The motorways and some expressways in the Czech Republic require an electronic vignette, though motorcycles are exempt; check the current rules before you go. The main roads are free. Speed limits are enforced, and police checks are common.
Litomyšl, a town of over ten thousand people about a kilometre away, has fuel, shops and restaurants. Try a plate of svíčková, beef in a creamy vegetable sauce with dumplings and cranberries, a classic Czech dish, or roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut, and wash it down with a glass of Czech beer, preferably from a local brewery. In the evening, sit in the castle gardens or on the square and listen for the music drifting from the courtyard if the festival is on.