Weekend in Sumava – Duke of Edinburgh award

It was a nice week at school. The weather was great, no cold weather; no snow. But South Bohemia looked different...we were going there to cover 48km, to experience the adventure that was waiting for us there and to find out if we were able to walk in snow (but we didn’t know there was any snow yet)

I had everything prepared; warm clothes, 5 pairs of socks, good shoes, some warm jackets, etc. it didn’t seem so heavy at first, but when I packed the gas canisters, pots and pans for eating, first aid kid and other stuff, the bag was really heavy. It was early morning when I put on the bag. Well, I thought I was going to change it because I couldn’t carry it. But finally I put it on my back and at 5:30 we went. We had our first 5km ahead of us. We needed to go to Řičany, where we had to catch the train to Prague.

The first problem came at the bus station in Prague at Knížecí. The bus had a 45 minuute delay. It wasn’t so cold yet, but we were very tired. The journey took about 2-3hours, so we all slept in the bus.

Prachatice. No snow, but raining and raining again. The drops were so cold, but we knew we had only 9km left, so we had only small breaks because we wanted to be at the destination! After about 6 km it started to snow a little bit. And then, when we were in the Karkulka, it wasn’t sleet (rain with snow) but it was only snow itself, we reached the cottage. The cottage was very nice; old, full of antique things like some special candles and artifacts and there was also a typical Czech stove, which can often be found in dwellings in the countryside.

The first night – we cooked some of our oven-ready food and Mr. Haschek permitted us to have a fire; so we could warm our wet things. It was so cold during the night that we were lying together very close to each other to keep warm.

I couldn’t wake up that morning. I had a warm sleeping bag and it was so cold outside that I could see my breath. But we made it. We all woke up; we made a snack and left the cottage. But we didn’t know what would happen that day.

We got lost. We couldn’t find the right way, so we went for 6 km more than we expected. We were all tired but we finally entered the village we were supposed to find. It was 7 o’clock, it was dark already and we were back in the cottage. It was our last night. We were tired but happy because we had made it! Our last day was waiting for us outside the cottage, slowly waking up and preparing to be ready for another day.

Our last day was the best and worst simultaneously. We had blisters, we were tired, hungry, and dirty. We came to the train station in Volary and waited for a train. The train was very old and even though it was only about 30 km, it took us about 2 and a half hours. I was sleeping the whole journey. Finally we reached Řičany whare Mr Michalik was sitting in his car. And he took us to Babice.

It was a really good trip full of adventure and experiences, and it was much, much better than the bronze trip. I really enjoyed it.

Romana Kašparová