After the 2nd day.
Sometimes in the beginning of this year Vladya suggested a wildwater ride with his favourite travel agency Honza - the West-Bohemian rivers Tepla and Strela. Only six vejletniks & friends were interested in such trip and several weeks before the term Vladya's wife changed her mind about it, so we went without the main organisator, even when we found him another Jitka.
We started by bus on Saturday morning (with warnings like "it will be crowded: I have met five buses with boats heading for Karlsbad") and in the bus we have chosen who will ride which boat: MK + Anna (sister) took a closed "Lettmann", RH + HP an open "DAC" and Jitka with Honza (from Honza agency :-) also some open boat.
Above Karlsbad we got into boats (the river was really a bit crowded). It was not so bad, considering that me and Anna did not sit in a canoe for some five years. There were some slalom gates, we tried some acrobacy there and turned bottom up. Nothing got drowned, we removed water and continued.
After some small rapids we got into Karlsbad centre, making a show for tourists. There were some caffe tables at the bridges, people sitting at them, drinking beer and looking at the river. Nobody even dared to crash under such observance.
Soon there was the end of Tepla and a joining of Ohre (Eger) river. We made a short stop and found that our cake survived the crash in quite eatable state. Then we continued to Hubertus rapid, took the canoes to the truck and somewhat cured my leg, bruised during the crash.
The bus carried us to camp at Zlutice, there we built our tents, ate something in the near pub and went for a walk around. We found an entrance to some small pre-WWII fortress, but had no light source to explore it. Climbed to the top of the Nevdek hill, saw a remains of log time ago ruined castle and some guy reading a book on the hill top. Back in camp we bought some ice cream, sat in front of the tents and watched stars.
In the morning we drove to Rabstejn, where was already about 1km queue of buses and boat-trucks. The river was even more full than Tepla the day before, sometimes there was some log laying over the stream, so it was necessary to pull boats over / around / under it. After some time we left the big bunch of boats with racing numbers behind us and enjoyed a ride on a winding river in a sunny afternoon. The end was by the road bridge at Mladotice.
There will be sometimes some pictures made by Radek.
After the 2nd day.