ESL Blogs

Is your country mountainous or is it as flat as a pancake? Funny question, right? However, believe it or not there exist countries with just a few small hills such as Kuwait, Belarus, Latvia or Gambia. As I am the mountain lover, I am lucky my country is one of the mountainous ones because I do love hiking and walking in the nature, especially in the forests of the mountains, which I find very relaxing and refreshing.. luckily I don't have to travel so far away as just 30 km from my place (almost around the corner) are the closest mountains...

Anyway, talking about hiking in the mountains… let me ask some important questions: "How can I know, where to walk? What is the best route? What if I might get lost somewhere in the middle of the forest?" I bet some of you would be happy, others would even celebrate, if I got lost, died alone hungry and exhausted or was killed and eaten by some wild animal….. ehmmm but let me disappoint you little bit because it can hardly happen, guys :D Firstly - there aren't so many dangerous animals in our forests and secondly - nowadays we are living in era of the GPS devices, so by using it one can hardly get lost even though let me add that the signal isn't all the time perfect (especially not in the forersts with the tall trees). Sooo… how come that Luci can hardly get lost in the forest?

Let me disclose this secret right here and right now, ok? I don't want to make you more curious and tensed. Well.. many years ago after the World War II - The Czech Tourist Club - decided to mark the routes for the tourists in the mountains. The volunteers were busy like bees, which is something admirable and created many kilometers of the trails. Guess what? Nowadays there exists a net with more than 40.000 km of the marked paths in the Czech republic not just in the mountains but also connecting interesting touristic places such as the castles, the caves etc. (btw just take in consideration that my country is not that large).

Now you are asking yourself: "How does it look like? Marked routs?" Well… as I am one of the tourists I take often in the forest pictures, so for better imagination, check these MARKS, which are mostly on the trees, sometimes on the stones etc. In fact there are four types of them – represented by four colours – red, green, yellow and blue. Logically the colours are related to the difficulty of the paths.

Another very useful things are the tourist boards with the information. As you can see there is written where you will get and the distance in the kilometers. In Slovakia they meassure the distance in hours but I guess kilometers are better because everybody has different tempo of walking..

To make this all system work – Czech touristic club also came up with the touristic maps of the different areas of our country. Either you can buy them or you can use internet or follow your GPS – I would say nowadays people don't prefer that much paper like they did in the past. My parents have many of such maps at home because we used to spend every holidays in the mountains, had fun and walked many kilometers together so let me show you, how such map looks like:

Anyway, I am sure that this idea got spread into other parts of the world and we are not for sure the only one using this mark rout system. This year I came across it in Croatia on my holiday and felt so flattered because in the past this area was occupied a lot by the Czech tourists and our Touristic club marked even here some paths. So let me just show you that I found my own church (Church of Saint Lucie) with the board here :p

So what about your country? Have you ever come across something similar?

All the pictures are mine apart form the map Picture, which was taken from:

https://www.kralovstvimap.cz/48-jeseniky-rychlebske-hory-turisticka-mapa-150-t/d-89760/