Monday 24th September 2007

Now, I have said that Trebon was our favourite small place and that it is a lovely town but I have not mentioned its two other attractive features. One is that it is surrounded by 'fish ponds' and therefore has plentiful supplies of lovely fish and the other, more important attractions is that it has its own brewery that produces (in my opinion) one of the best Czech beers. Even Jane likes the beer, so it must be good.
The title of 'fish ponds' that the Czechs use is somewhat of an understatement. There are over 500 'ponds' in the Trebon area and the largest in the Czech Republic, just outside the town covers 500 hectares – most of them are better described as large lakes rather than ponds. They are full of fish of many varieties including carp, trout and catfish but the most common is carp. All of the local restaurants serve it in many different recipes and it is delicious.
We spent the morning walking around the small town and then found the restaurant that we first visited 14 years ago. Like the one that we visited in Cesky Krumlov, it used to be quite basic but has now expanded considerably with additional premises on the opposite side of the road. The food was still very good (carp roasted in garlic for me and in tomato and thyme for Jane) and, of course, that excellent beer from the brewery at the end of the road.
Got back to the campsite and moved the van to fill up with water. We also decided to move our pitch mainly due to the fact that the original pitch was on a slope and Jane complained of being crushed into the side of the van by me in the middle of the night. Approaching the new pitch, there was an exclamation from Jane “Its a rat!”. It was a very large rat, in fact too large - “ I think that it is a hedgehog, Jane” and, sure enough it was. The hedgehog did not want to relinquish the pitch, so I went out with camera in hand to persuade it. I was able to get within half a meter and got some excellent photographs before it finally decided to let us move onto the pitch.

The photographs show the view from our kitchen window over one of the fish ponds of Trebon and the 'rat'.