Britons have
little sense of growing up in a country invaded many times, marched over by
countless army boots and living under numerous hegemonies. Those of us born and
schooled in Britain have lived with the notion that whilst the British Isles
have been invaded by Romans, Germanic tribes, some Vikings and some Norsemen,
none of these subjugated our ancestors to a tyrannical yoke or foreign regime
that altered our country’s destiny forever. The Romans ran both out of ideas for
governance and patience with our ghastly climate; they turned their back on
Britain. This made it easier for the westward marching Germanic tribes who arrived
after A.D. 410 leading to the establishment of Anglo-Saxon Britain. The Vikings
tried to absorb us into their kingdom in the eleventh century but good King
Edward the Confessor, an Anglo-Saxon, sent them packing. For over two thousand
years my family’s Britishness has developed and remained intact. Along the way
we gladly took on board some welcome civilizing influences from Rome, Germany, Denmark
and (post-1975), from Brussels and Strasbourg. Yet some time in the past twenty-five
years, a slim majority of English cooled on being receptive to regional European
arts, law, business and philosophy. Sadly, absorbing some of the best features
of culture over La Manche (separated
distinctly from the dreadful ones) seems anathema to many English.
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| Bohemian Paradise |
Bohemia (found on
a modern map with difficulty, the Paradise is then just 200 square kilometres
of it) has a very different history. These were our thoughts as four of us prepared
a five-day tramp through the Bohemian Paradise. In every account of Bohemia, in
every guide and history book the would be explorer is confronted with the numerous
occasions of occupying peoples being pushed out of this part of what is now the
Czech Republic. First it was the Boii tribe of Celts being moved on by Germanic
tribes (whose successors took on the Romans in Britain in the fifth century) in
the first century A.D. Around the turn of the 5th to 6th
century Slavs moved in when the Germans moved out. By 700 Slavonic tribes were
starting to federate even beating off invasion from the Franks and by so doing
gaining influence and assistance from the Pope in Rome. Ah, ha, the Roman
Catholic Church was never slow to get in on the act of geographical influence.
In the 9th century Byzantine Christian missionaries were on the
scene but the Papacy in Rome took a hold on the people in Bohemia. However, by
1300 a Czech state was being formed. Then some acquisitive Germans returned. For
the hapless Bohemians their country lay at a busy mainland European crossroads
for restless conquerors - a landscape feature of which Britain has no
experience.
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| King Otakar |
There were kings
of Bohemia from 1212 starting with Otakar I, followed by Otakar II, Wenceslases
I and II, John of Luxembourg. Following them was Charles IV who gave his name
to not only a famous bridge in Prague but also a university and a square.
Another Wenceslas (IV) followed Charles when economic and political matters
turned sour. The Hussite reform movement was born as a consequence of these bad
times, so named after Jan Hus, whose statue still stands proudly in the old
Prague town square. Master Hus met a fiery end as a result of the growth in
prosperity of a landowning aristocracy and civic institutions. If Bohemian
history was complicated before, it became doubly so now. Fighting broke out in the
towns between the ordinary citizens and the rich, land-owning gentry (a similar
situation to France in November 2018), as well as between the Hussites and the
Catholics. Again, this was all very un-British; fighting in the towns was not
something we did, at least only rarely such as in 1381 and at Peterloo in 1819.
Maybe such fighting will feature once more in the English shires by 2020 if the
national politicians in London continue to fail us north of the Trent.
The Hussites had
a huge influence on the way that Bohemians lived, although they did not have it
all their own way with many citizens preferring the Catholic style. In 1458
something else happened that would never occur in Britain; a Czech noble (George
of Podebrady) with political skills was elected
King of Bohemia. Next up on the throne was a Pole by the name of Vladislav
Jagellon but royalty was in constant conflict with common peoples and urban
centres and the Jagellons also gave up on Bohemia. This temporary vacuum gave
way to the all conquering and dominant Habsburgs. The Habsburgs came from
Austria and they reasserted the Catholic faith in Bohemia. By absorbing the
kingdom of Bohemia into their empire the Habsburgs ruled until the First World
War. Phew. That is a rushed précis of nearly two thousand years. And all this
before the Munich Betrayal, the Nazis and German occupation, the influx of
Communism and Soviet occupation, the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and finally
Bohemia – as part of the 1993 creation of a Czech Republic – becoming welcomed
in to the EU in 2004.
As we began our
tramp through a small part of the region known as the Bohemian Paradise I pondered
why we had come all this way for a five day walk in a pleasant rural setting
when there are many pretty walks in Britain. What is so special about this
Paradise? Why is it so different and how has man and the landscape collided in
a distinctively different way to that of say, the Lake District in England?
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| Rock town |
This landscape
developed from a submerged plain around 66 million years ago. When the waters
receded and mountains were formed to the north, sand and silt built up,
eventually leading to the creation of huge sandstone blocks. So called ‘rock
towns’ were formed, characterized by sandstone rock towers as high as 55 metres
and canyons with sheer sides. Our dramatic walk took us through these towns – they
are not populated today – and then up to explore castles perched precariously
on crags. After day one we knew that England has no countryside like this. Kentmere,
Langdale and Borrowdale never boasted any castles. Sandy tracks through stands
of birch, fir and spruce alternated with open fields and dense forests. I felt
almost a sense of being in an Alpine setting yet without the snow-capped
mountains of Switzerland, just gently rolling hills.
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| Trosky Castle |
Our first castle we
visited was at Frydstejn. Now a ruin it was built in the 14th
century. It dominates the skyline on a prominent ridge. Next up was Vranov,
constructed in the 15th century. We ticked off Valdstejn, Hruba
Skala, Kost, Trosky and Parez – lonely fortifications atop sandstone heights,
visited now only by climbers, tourists and buzzards. The social history of
these castles is quite unlike those in England and Wales where most remained in
a single, family ownership through centuries of plague, famine and civil war.
Reading the history of Valdstejn it is typical of how Bohemian castles changed
ownership frequently. The Wallenstein branch of the wealthy Markvatics family
started out from Valdstejn. The castle had been built in the late 13th
century. It was built on massive sandstone towers from which the word Waldenstein, meaning ‘forest stone’, is
derived. In the ensuing two hundred years ownership changed many times. In
around 1550 the castle burnt down. The wealthy regional landowners were
defeated in an uprising in 1620 when Albrecht of Wallenstein bought the
Valdstejn estate. Subsequent owners and occupiers were Vaclav Holan Rovensky,
Jan Antonin Lexa of Aehrenthal. Finally in 1824 the property was made
accessible to the people, it was confiscated from the Aehrenthals. The
community in the town of Turnov now owns it.
We discovered the
Bohemia landscape to be still populated thinly with small farms and
villages. Not much has changed since the
end of the First World War. Apple orchards abound providing smallholders with
an income and passing trampers with a free lunch. (In my mind, along the way
during our Bohemian tramp, I envisioned Josef Schweik, a soldier of the First
World War from Prague, bumbling his way through the landscape, picking apples
and doing all he could to avoid being called to actually fight. The Good Soldier Schweik is a
brilliantly comic piece of fiction by Jaroslav Hasek first published in 1930.
Its real humour is the satire on army life, the military career of a fat dog
fancier, Schweik, from the city and the buffoons running the military machine
in 1914. Schweik was a malingerer and contrived to get himself lost in the
Bohemian landscape, travelling in the opposite direction to which he should
have been.) The cost of living today is low, compared to England, but economic
growth is assured. The locally brewed beers are some of the best I have tasted
anywhere in the world. The country’s population of ten million is concentrated
in cities such as Prague, Brno and Pilsen where, amongst other activities, they
profitably manufacture Skoda cars and computer security systems. The Bohemian
Paradise is popular with climbers, trampers and film makers – drawn to the
dramatic rock formations and rolling landscape largely untouched by the spoils
of industrialization such as pylons, wind turbines and factories.
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| Brexit leaver |
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| Brexit remainer |
