CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Telč it runs 286 km to Telč; allow about 5 h 19 of riding. The stops in between: St Procopius’ Basilica, Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at, Litomyšl Castle and back through Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 57 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Ride into the main square of Telč for the first time and you may laugh out loud, because it looks too perfect to be real. A long, tapering square is lined on both sides by Renaissance and Baroque houses, each with a different gable, painted in soft pastels, cream, pink, green and yellow, with arcades running along the ground floor. After a fire in the sixteenth century, the town was rebuilt under its lord, Zachariáš of Hradec, who had travelled in Italy and brought back a taste for Renaissance style. His château, at the end of the square, has richly decorated halls and a garden. The historic centre was listed by UNESCO in 1992.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Telč write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Telč is where the day begins. Next is St Procopius’ Basilica.
Třebíč sits on the Jihlava river in the Vysočina highlands, and the basilica of St Procopius sits above the water on the eastern bank, so close to the old town that the rider's biggest problem is finding somewhere to leave the bike. The building began as part of a Benedictine monastery founded at the start of the twelfth century. What you see now is a mix of Romanesque strength, with a very old crypt, and Gothic ambition, with a tall, airy nave that people tend to find more elegant than they expected from the heavy west front. The monastery was later turned into a castle and then into other uses, which is partly why so much has survived in odd corners.
Read the complete St Procopius’ Basilica write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
St Procopius’ Basilica comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at.
On a low wooded rise called Zelená hora, Green Mountain, just outside Žďár nad Sázavou, stands one of the strangest and most beautiful churches in Central Europe. The architect was Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel, a Prague builder of Italian descent who loved to mix Gothic forms with Baroque drama, and here he built a pilgrimage church to St John of Nepomuk in the 1720s, shortly before the saint was even canonised. Everything in it plays on the number five: a star-shaped ground plan, five gates, five altars, five-pointed geometry repeated in the cloister around it. The reason is the legend that five stars appeared over the Vltava when John's body was thrown into the river in Prague, and the saint's tongue, said to have been found uncorrupted, is the other motif you will spot once you know to look for it. UNESCO listed it in 1994.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 87 km into the recorded legs you reach Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at. Next is Litomyšl Castle.
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.
Read the complete Litomyšl Castle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Litomyšl Castle, about halfway. Next is back through Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at sits at 205 km, about halfway. Next is back through St Procopius’ Basilica.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete St Procopius’ Basilica write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through St Procopius’ Basilica comes up about 250 km into the recorded legs. Next is Historic Centre of Telč.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Telč write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Telč closes the day.
Historic Centre of Telč → St Procopius’ Basilica is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
St Procopius’ Basilica → Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at → Litomyšl Castle is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Litomyšl Castle → back through Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk at → back through St Procopius’ Basilica is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through St Procopius’ Basilica → Historic Centre of Telč is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.