Jméno autora: Země světa

You can come to Volary by train either from České Budějovice or from Číčenice or Strakonice. But only a short segment Černý Kříž-Nové Údolí remained from the fourth railway from Waldkirchen and Haidmühle in Bavaria. We will now follow the 71 km long way from Strakonice passing through the highest situated railway station in the Czech Republic – Kubova Huť at an altitude of 995 m…

A quite unusual nature trail has been opened by the Šumava National Park and Protected Landscape Area Administration for particularly sensitive visitors of Šumava. It seems to be a contribution to the nationwide discussion on “What to do with Šumava forests destroyed by bark beetle?”

The history of Šumava canals for floating timber is at the same time the history of a small poor boy born in 1735 in the Schwarzenberg´s Šumava domain quite without any prospects, because he was an illegitimate child. In spite of that, as if good fairies were present that day in a small house in Chvalšiny to give the child really royal gifts: talent, tenacity and courage…

When wandering across Šumava, we will be much impressed especially by the most beautiful of local rivers – Vydra with its rapids. This mountain torrent rises in the Modrava hollow at an altitude of 977 m where its three spring brooks meet – Modravský, Roklanský and Filipohuťský. They bring there brownish water from large peat bogs situated on the Šumava summits near the state border with Germany…

Although by its altitude Šumava is far from being a high mountain chain, it nevertheless succeeds to offer favourable conditions to some Alpine plants. Migration of Alpine cryophilic flora stared during the ice ages…

Although dozens of different ways, paths and trails lead across the Šumava Mountains, the Šumava nature trail is the most beautiful one of them. It was open to public in 1967 and is 14 km long. But even at that time it was not entirely new as it partly used old hunting footpaths beaten by hunters during centuries…

A vast blue water surface amidst the forested Šumava slopes – that is Lipno, the water of which has brought, some fifty years ago, a quite new life into the quiet Vltavická brázda Furrow. Under its water have disappeared many peat bogs, wet meadows, the very Vltava bed and even some villages and ways. In 1960, the reservoir above the dam was progressively filling with Vltava water and the new lake became the largest water surface in the former Czechoslovakia…

Šumava plains are one large source region. No wonder that also the longest and oldest Šumava river – Vltava – rises exactly here. Already in the Lower Tertiary, it used to flow soutwards through its Vltavická brázda Furrow…

Although it is partly in ruins and overgrown with wood, it still dominates the whole environs from its rock pedestal. The Kašperk Castle has been the dominant of the northern Šumava region for nearly 650 years and all that times it has been bearing the proud name of its founder, king and emperor Charles IV…

The greatest riches of Šumava are its forests the species composition of which has stabilized roughly three thousands years ago. Such original forest would have grown in Šumava up to now if men had not come here…