Cycle Tour Iron Curtain Tour, part 4, Aš-Frymburk

A two-week solo cycling holiday with a tent and cooking equipment, which marks the fourth part of my life's project to cycle the entire defunct Iron Curtain through Europe (named so for the first time by Winston Churchill in 1946), i.e. the dividing line between West and East during the Cold War.

This episode no. 4 picks up where I ended the third part in 2023 in the Czech Republic's northwesternmost town of Aš. I first follow the Czech-German border southeastbound in the landscapes of Fichtelgebirge mountains, Oberpfaelzer Forest, Bavarian Forest and, in Czech, Šumava, in English Bohemian Forest. It is a hilly, even mountainous, forest landscape with peaks up to 1,400 m above sea level, which continues along the Czech-Austrian border, now more to the east than to the south. Before the end I'll pass the European watershed a second time to the Vltava (river system of the Elbe), where I mostly was in the river system of the Danube.

The cycling holiday is concluded by a follow-up stage to Linz in Austria in order to take the train back home.

Large forests with hilly and even mountainous terrain with neat towns and villages on both sides of the border. In the past there was a lot of polluting industry which had a major negative impact on the forests. It is largely gone, but the forest is still weakened, especially the conifers, as in many other places. The towns are only small and the area is indeed sparsely populated compared to Central Europe.
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OUTBOUND:

Train transport from Odense to Aš with four changes on the way, leaving Odense at 4.36 a.m. and arriving at Aš at 7.50 p.m.

HOMEBOUND:

Train transport from Linz to Odense by way of four changes, leaving Linz at 8.34 a.m. and arriving at Odense af 11.23 p.m.