This was one of the top ten rides this year! This area is one of the four national parks in Czech Republic and borders with Germany. It is known as Bohemian Switzerland National Park (Národní park České Švýcarsko) on the Czech side and Saxon Switzerland National Park on the German side. This is a great hiking area with a few towns to stay at around the park. However, biking is a different experience as we covered so much more area in a day. The challenge is mostly to be able to watch the trail and look up at the beautiful rock formations at the same time. We did stop often to take photos.
We were lucky to find a space in the parking lot next to the pension Švýcarský dvůr (http://www.svycarskydvur.eu/en/) and met there the owner of this place and avid mountain biker who gave us excellent recommendations about our planned route. We added the loop from point 3 to 6, which was very pleasant extension of the trip with an opportunity to have a lunch at a restaurant “U Iva” in a village Kopec. He also recommended to stop at Doubice to visit a collection of wooden sculptures and various other collectibles.
You will see beautiful stone formations all around you most of your riding time. However, you may also pay attention to the bollards marking the road. Some of them are actually made of columnar basalt taken from (now protected area) the Panská Skála near Kamenický Šenov, which you may consider visiting. This impressive stone formation is called kamenné varhany (stone organ) and obviously should not be used for road construction.
The only slightly challenging part of this map was the stretch from 13 to 14. Even though the whole trips elevation gain was almost 900 m, we ended with a plenty of battery capacity.
https://en.mapy.cz/s/nazomasala 49 km 885 m elevation gain
