Czech South Moravian Wine Route

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Brno

   Brno is the second city of the Czech Republic, but it behaves like the first city of Moravia, with its own dialect, its own pride and its own very good wine. About 370,000 people live here, a lot of them students, and the centre has the mixture of old and new you would expect: a medieval core below a hilltop castle, baroque churches, and a serious collection of twentieth-century modern architecture.

   Read the complete Brno write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Brno is where the day begins. Next is Lednice.

2. 2. Lednice

   Lednice is a palace, a park and a surprising piece of luxury in the south of Moravia. The palace belonged to the princes of Liechtenstein, who ruled these lands for centuries and turned them into a vast landscaped estate, and the building that stands at the end of the village today is a neo-Gothic confection of towers and pinnacles, rebuilt in the nineteenth century in the English style. Around it lies a huge park with ponds, avenues and follies, and together with the neighbouring Valtice, the whole area is a UNESCO World Heritage site, listed in 1996 as the Lednice-Valtice cultural landscape.

   Read the complete Lednice write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Lednice comes up about 59 km into the recorded legs. Next is Valtice.

3. 3. Valtice

   Valtice is the wine capital of the Czech Republic, and it looks the part. A large baroque palace dominates the town, built by the Liechtenstein family, who held the estate for centuries and made it a showpiece of their wealth. The palace has a grand courtyard, a riding hall and enormous wine cellars beneath it, and part of the cellars now houses the National Wine Centre, where visitors can taste a hundred of the best Czech wines, chosen in an annual competition. For anyone who enjoys wine, this is the place to learn about the country's vineyards.

   Read the complete Valtice write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Valtice. Next is Mikulov.

4. 4. Mikulov

   Mikulov stands beneath a white limestone ridge, the Pálava hills, and from a distance its castle on the rock and the pale church tower on the Holy Hill look like a stage set. It is the southernmost town in Moravia, a few kilometres from the Austrian border, and it has been a crossroads for centuries, a place where Czech, German and Jewish cultures lived together. In German it was Nikolsburg, and for a long period it was one of the most important Jewish communities in central Europe.

   Read the complete Mikulov write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Mikulov, late in the day. Next is Znojmo.

5. 5. Znojmo

   Znojmo is a town on a bluff above the Dyje river, on the southern edge of Moravia, with Austria just over the hills, and its character is that of a place that has been on a frontier for a thousand years. The old town is a pleasing muddle of cobbled lanes, Gothic towers and baroque façades, with a tall town-hall tower, a castle on the cliff and a rotunda from around 1100, whose Romanesque wall-paintings are among the oldest in the country. With about thirty-five thousand people, it has full services, so fuel, food and repair are all easy.

   Read the complete Znojmo write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Znojmo. That is the ride.