Český Brod means Czech Ford, and the name tells you why the town exists: a crossing on the old trade road running east from Prague towards Kolín and the Elbe lowlands. Merchants, armies and pilgrims all came this way, and the town grew fat enough on the traffic to build walls. A stretch of fortification and a stout gate tower survive, and the long square, with its church and arcaded houses, is a calm place to sit for ten minutes at the end of a ride.
The bigger story lies a few kilometres east, on a low rise above the fields. At Lipany in 1434 the radical Hussite field armies, the Taborites and Orphans who had beaten crusade after crusade for fifteen years, were finally crushed by an alliance of moderate Hussites and Catholic lords. A memorial mound marks the battlefield. There is not much to see beyond the monument and the wide horizon, but standing there with the wind in the wheat you get a sense of how open and exposed this country is, and why cavalry and wagon forts mattered so much.
The landscape is gentle: big arable fields, orchards along the lanes, copses of oak and pine, and a scattering of fishponds. Some of the ponds and small reservoirs in the area are used for swimming in summer, especially around Klučov and the woods towards Kounice. Water quality varies with the season and a hot August can turn ponds green, so look at what locals are doing before you jump in.
As a finishing stretch the riding is easy-going. The roads roll over shallow hills with long sightlines, and the minor routes between villages are quiet if patchy in places. The main road back towards Prague can be busy at commuting times. Fuel, a supermarket and a few pubs serving svíčková and cold Bohemian lager are in town, which is about all a tired rider could ask for.