He was there on the stroke of 5.30. It was very cold outside, only 13 degr C. Jaroslav was dressed in the twinkling of an eye. Now it was time to cycle.
However, I was perhaps not that determined.

While examining the bike, I saw that I had considerable play in the rear wheel. To say the truth the whole wheel was quite lopsided. But this was not the time to fix that problem. I felt we were going to ride right away, which we did.

To start with we had no hills and Jaroslav was riding very constantly and determined. His position on the bike is very fine and steady. When you think of the fact, that he is 61 years of age, he is an excellent bicycle rider. Furthermore he has to carry very few kilos over the hills. And I dare say he presented us with an enormous number of hills. "Middle hills", Jaroslav called them. I must draw your attention to the fact that we are dealing with 6-8 % hills over 3-4 kilometres. Come to think of it, I was also handicapped from riding with 2 carriers and 2 cameras. And furthermore the trip down there, had left it's mark on me. I have no idea where we rode. Jaroslav took care of that.

To my big surprise he didn't bring any drinking bottles. He claimed, that he never ever drank anything, when riding the bike, no matter how hot it was. I couldn't live with that ,so after 100 km I had to stop to buy something to drink. It gold hold of some strange blueberry drink. It helped me a little bit. I also had 2 soft Ice. One of them was meant for Jaroslav, but he didn't eat either.

Up and down we rode until we finally after 120 km arrived at an extremely beautiful castle called Castolovice near Kostelec. That's where we wanted to go. Jaroslav caught sight of a sign, which informed us that the admission fee was 50 KC.
He found that rather expensive.
I asked him to lock up our bikes and while he did so I went up and got hold of 2 tickets.

There was a guided tour just when we stepped in, so we joined the party. I wonder what those nice people we went with thought about the way we were dressed, not to mention our smell. Everything took place in Czech language, but they presented me with an English guide. However, I was unable to read it, because I had forgotten my glasses. So I didn't get too much out of it.

Afterwards I agreed that we were hungry. We went into the restaurant near the castle. First Jaroslav didn't want to come, but I managed to persuade him. In there we both had 2 sandwiches before we left for Vysoke Myto.

We had 2 appointments when we got home. At 6 p.m. we had a visit from Mrs. Hana Vouskova, who is my contact at the school we are going to visit tomorrow. We got everything settled.

An hour later we had a visit from Jan Tomesicek. He is some years younger than myself, and he is a former long distance bicycle rider. Among other things he has ridden from South Africa to Vysoke Myto, and that was in fact the reason why he had come. He was going to give us a slide show on this big trip. But first of all we had to wait until it grew darker, and while we waited, we talked a lot. Jan's English is excellent. He lives about 10 km from Vysoke Myto, and he came to the house on his "Africa bike" and he was carrying all his equipment on his back. He gave us a wonderful show, and we had a cosy and interesting evening. We saw about 100 slides, and he was very good. 9.30 p.m. we were all tired to death. Jan went home and we went to sleep.

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