This ride was one of the easy ones and quite uneventful – with the exception of very close encounter of Polly’s bike with the car making very sharp turn uphill. Luckily brakes on both sides worked well. She claims it was her lucky feather. The town of Jevany and the forests above the ponds are a popular destination for weekend walks and rides, so we cannot say that we did not meet anybody there. The berry pickers and mushroom hunters were still out late in the day.
During this loop you will be passing through Mukařov where you can see the senior center with the name of Cardinal Beran and you may be wondering who he was. Well, he was one of the people who was persecuted first by nazis during the second world war. Cardinal Beran spent three years in the Dachau concentration camp. As soon as the communists gained power after the war, he was put under house arrest in Prague and later in multiple locations around Czechoslovakia. One of these locations was the village of Mukařov. He was archbishop of Prague and since 1965 the Cardinal. He was forced to emigrate (not allowed to return to Czechoslovakia) to Rome, where he died in 1969 and was buried together with 91 popes in St. Peter’s basilica. His remains were moved to Prague only in 2008 and are now in St. Vitus’ cathedral.
Continuing onto the nicest part of the ride is between points 14 and 15. This path is called “Krásné vyhlídky” (beautiful views). A good spot for taking a break is bistro “U Hastrmana” (point 11). Before you turn uphill from there, do not forget to look down to the impressive quarry on the left. At the point 15 you will join “Mikešova cesta” (Mikes’ path) named after the character from Josef’s Lada book “Mikeš” – about a cat which could talk and eventually became the director of a circus.
The part of the mapped path that is labeled red meaning ‘bikes not allowed’ we think is a glitch of the online maps we are using (mapy.cz) since there were no signs saying it is forbidden. The maps from http://www.cykloserver.cz/cykloatlas show these parts as totally bikeable (see the picture below.) If you are already tired of biking, you can take the road from the point 16 downhill to the finish. You can also stay on the road from the point 21 to the end. If you want to ride along the Jevanský rybník, you can turn at the point 22 and walk your bike down to the little bridge and continue riding. Do not try to find the path from 21 to 22 – it simply does not exist.
https://mapy.cz/s/befepahevo 36.6 km 393 m elevation gain, reasonable even for the regular bikes
