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Douglas Brown's Travels
<b>Day 13</b> An 8am start this morning for our 284km ride today. Once again we had a cold and wet day to ride in. Todays destination is Olomouc which according to legend is one of Moravia's oldest towns and was founded by `Julius Ceasar. In fact it did not come into existence until the 7th century, when it was a major centre. ``in 1063 it was made a bishopric and in 1187 the capital of `Moravia. It;s university was founded in 1573. From 1655 the town became a military stronghold. Today it is a prosperous and vibrant city. We rode through heavy traffic out of town which was very slow going. It was estimated that we would reach our destination by 3pm and have some time to look around. The distance between the villages in these parts is not great and on several occasions the end of one village sign was beside the sign desgnating the beginning of the next. Some villages have marked speed signs for 40km or 30km, while if there is not marked speed sign the maximum speed is 50km/hr thorugh villages. This made for very slow going. By the time we reached the next major town of Wadowice I was itching to get on some open road. All the slow work made keeping air flow through the helmet and thus stopping fogging hard. Ou morning coffee stop was a Na Kocierzu Resturant. However, this took some finding as the planned route took us along a road that was closed for repair. After coffee we set off for Zyvie then the Poland/Slovakia boarder. Once across the boarder we headed to Cadca and on to lunch at `Makov. I was beginning to think that I was on a food tour and not a motorcycle tour. Breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner all sampling the local foods. Accross the Slovakia/Czech boarder and on through Velke `karlovice, Vsetin, Bytrice p. ``hostynem and Prerov to reach OlOmuc. We did not arrive at our destination till after 5pm, very tired from what had been a long days riding. The concentration level for much of the trip was high as we had rain, traffic and bad road conditions to deal with. The patch the roads with plain tar, resulting in (as the Americans call it ) tar snakes which are slippery when dry and twice as slippery when wet. We all headed to our rooms to change then met again in the lobby at 7PM for our 1.5km walk to a boutique Pub for dinner. We sampled the black beer brewed on the premises and once again ate far too much.
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