Last night's camp was eerily silent. The sort of blanketing silent that heightens awareness and has you listening intently for anything. I actually find such total silence a bit disconcerting after dark and confess I spent a little while pre-sleep slightly on edge. None of it seemed to bother Emma-the-Comatose; who, of course, always sleeps terribly.
The trail cam picked up one small mammal on two occasions and its form and movements were unfamiliar. We're going to have to look at this one on a better quality monitor on our return.
The morning produced some good birdlife and at one point a mixed foraging tit flock passed through that included, coal, blue, crested, and willow tits; plus firecrest. A harbinger of autumn, for sure.
The forest tracks around the area lent themselves well to a run and so - once again session-shamed by Emma - I pulled on my runners and had a wheeze about for half an hour whilst thinking constantly of a massive chocolate-based reward.
To the drive. Well, it was supposed to be a short one today and it sort of was in one way, but not in another. The whole thing was only about 120 kilometres and was predicted by OsmAnd to take about two and a half hours. The app is set to reflect our normal truck-achievable mixed-roads average speeds and normally works out pretty accurately.
Not today. The terrain was very tricky indeed and compounded by a couple of road closures (this is Czechia, after all).
One of the road closures saw us diverted (by me and OsmAnd, not officially) via a series of 'roads' (some unsealed) that were amongst the narrowest, twistyest and steepest that the truck has ever seen. In places there were also heinously tight hairpins and precipitous dropoffs. Progress was pedestrian; maybe even sub-pedestrian at times.
At one point we hit a real pinch. We came upon a narrow bridge over a railway that was situated right on a tight right-hand bend. Because of the bend, I couldn't square the truck up before creeping onto the bridge so found myself entering it's narrow confines whilst being forced to turn quite sharply right. This, naturally, meant cut-in issues amidships.
The first attempt didn't work out. There was no way the truck would go without either bashing the bridge with the front left bumper or rear right wheel (or both). I backed off, realigned using the very last centimetres of available space and went again. Emma hung out of the passenger window watching the front bumper, whilst I threaded the thing forwards making micro-adjustments to steering as I went. It just went. We had maybe 15-20mm at each extremity to play with (pic). It wasn't our truck-squeeze PB, but it wasn't far off.
The two and a half hour drive turned out to be about five and a half. On the upside, the scenery all day has been absolutely gorgeous. The heavily wooded uplands of Czechia sprinkled with sparkling rivers, twee villages and archetypal pre-intensive agricultural scenes has been a (sometimes nervous and sweaty) joy.
Tonight's stopover spot was another intuition-from-map-features job and it's so far proved a good one. It's supported a lumpy but enjoyable ride out for Emma on the bike, and a come-down watching dragonflies, eating Pringles* and drinking alcohol for me.
Tomorrow, all three of us could do with seeing some flat, straight, smooth roads.
Post composed at 22:15 on Wednesday 20th August from our intended overnighting spot N 50.83861°, E 14.88936° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:50.83861%2C14.88936
*Not real ones, Aldi copies. Arrivistes, we are not.