Kayaking from Prague to the North Sea – Horydoly.cz
For the record, let’s add that after the book about his Elbe Anabasis, he published a boating trip along the Oder and the Danube in the same format. He also added a ski crossing of Greenland.
In a reportage style, he tells how he got into a sea kayak under the boating channel in Troy, paddled down the Vltava to the Elbe, and landed at the Kugelbake lighthouse in the North Sea after sixteen days. He had covered 881 kilometers on the river.
The report in ich-form is supplemented with a lot of photos. However, we are deducting one star from the overall rating of the publication for them, because they are too small and inconspicuous. They are amateur pictures without an interesting or at least novel idea. Perhaps we only remembered two or three pictures longer than turning the page for further reading.
Nevertheless, we feel that every paddler would like to read this book, whether he is a tourist, a competitor, paddling in rapids or on gently flowing rivers. There is more in it than simply a description of where to sail from, where to camp and where to eat. Purely for the pure joy of paddling, the elements and nature in general, and also a reasonably managed adventure.
Sea lion Gaston and Queen Dagmar
With this expedition, Zdeněk Lyčka refers to the sea lion Gaston, who swam 300 km from the Prague Zoo to Wittenberg during the flood in the summer of 2002 (and then died of exhaustion) and the Czech princess Markéta Přemyslovna, who married the Danish king Valdemar II more than eight hundred years ago . . (sailed to the wedding on the Elbe and then by sea to Lübeck) and became Dagmar Denmark.
In his narrative, the Elbe is a river of romantic corners, historic cities, but also dangerous waves, heavy rains, opaque fogs and clouds. It cannot be forgotten that there is a constant wind blowing against the current from north to south. You can feel it in the German Plain!
In addition, headwinds, tides and heavy cargo and passenger shipping make paddling difficult. Giant container ships, passenger steamers, fast boats move fast and slowly in the waterway, and ferries cross it.
Zdeněk Lyčka (1958) was a diplomat in Copenhagen (1991-1996), director of the Czech Center in Stockholm (1998-2002) and ambassador to Denmark (2008-2013). Today he makes a living as a writer and translator of Nordic literature.
Prague, Argo 2015. Paperback. Approximate price CZK 166
Boating guide and mileage: ELBE / ELBE