We don’t usually start a bike ride from our house given we live in the center of Prague and really hate the traffic but we wanted to go for lunch in Únětice brewery. It turned out to be a 45 km ride through a surprising number of different parks of Prague and surroundings. This ride had plenty of diversity from city, suburbs, parks, and forest.
The Únětice brewery (https://www.unetickypivovar.cz/en/) was built in 1710 and its beer was at one time smuggled into some pubs where it was sold as genuine Pilsner beer. After 60 years of neglect and sitting idle, the brewery was renovated in 2011 and quickly gained the reputation it always deserved. We recommend to plan around a mealtime and visit the brewery restaurant (point 16) to eat and taste the beer.
You can start at any point on the map. We started at Letná park where we live, but if you are arriving with bikes in a car, some reasonable parking areas can be found at Strahov (starting point) or there is some paid parking nearby (point 2) where it should cost 20 crowns per day.
The first structure you will see is the Strahov stadium (starting point) which is one of the biggest stadiums in the world – it can fit 9 football pitches inside and host 250 thousands spectators. It was built in 1926 for “Sokol” (synchronized gymnastics) and at this moment it is slowly deteriorating since nobody knows what to do with it.
From there you will ride through several city parks starting with Petřín, which is a forested area with view of the castle. It may be busy during weekends, so be careful about the pedestrians. If you want to avoid crowds, you can ride through the top following the bike path number A32 to Pohořelec (point 4). At Hradcanske Namesti (point 5) you may enjoy the classical Prague view – especially right now without hordes of tourists due to Covid-19. Next you will first ride through the parks Chotkovy sady and Letenské sady. ‘Sady’ means park. Letenské sady (also known as Letná) contains the location of infamous Stalin statue, now used as a skating park (point 6) as well as the best beer garden in Prague is at Letenský zámeček (point 7). Then you cross into another beautiful park called Stromovka and follow the Vltava river downstream. At a certain point, depending on the wind direction, you will smell the waste water processing plant. You can even enter and visit the “guts” of the old waste water processing plant which isn’t smelly (point 9), . The plant is considered a technical curiosity and has guided underground visits 5 times a day (https://www.staracistirna.cz/en/).
On the cliffs to the left from the river is the ruin of Baba – and more surprisingly – a big HOLLYWOOD sign that we hadn’t noticed before. Turning left from the river you will ride through natural park of Šárka-Lysolaje and arrive in the neighborhood of Suchdol. From there you enter natural reserve Tiché údolí (means quiet valley) and follow it uphill to the brewery in Únětice (points 14 to 15). From there you have a choice of following upper trail (yellow tourist mark) or lower trail along the stream (points 18 to 19). We believe that yellow marked trail is easier, but we chose the lower trail which was more scenic, but from the point where it connects to the red marked trail it was a quite challenging uphill struggle to the crossing at Saint Juliane – a surprise statue in the middle of the forest.
Next you will ride through the natural parks Tichá and Divoká Šárka (point 22) with possible refreshment stops at restaurant (point 23). This is the location of a an old tale of a famous woman warrior named Šárka. The story is she killed herself after betraying her lover (see the picture in the pub). After crossing the major road Evropská you will enter another park called Hvězda Obora (means star game park). The strange star shaped building is another place for a coffee stop and sometimes there is an exhibit. After exiting Hvězda Obora you will cross another main street and go through another huge park called Ladronka. This park has bigger paved biking and rollerskating lanes and is quite busy. They also have a frisbee golf course which we’ve played a few times.
https://en.mapy.cz/s/jatemucage 45 km with almost 500 m elevation gain.
No one to guard at the castle 
The Archbishops House 
Empty at the Prague Castle 
Plenty of bikes to rent 
Water treatment plant 
Unetice Brewery 
St. Julienne 
Best type of trail 
Along Nebusice neighborhood 
Hvezda
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