Surprise, surprise

As you can see from the photo, I’m busy planning the remaining four stages of my circuit ride. In doing so, I have discovered - to my surprise - that I am almost halfway around the route already. Last year I rode the northern border of the Czech Republic in three stages, from Bohumín in the east to Aš in the west, covering 1,067 km in the process. All that remains for me now is to cycle back to Bohumín along the southern frontier. And my back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate this is only about 200 km further than I travelled last year.

Which brings me to the surprise announcement I mentioned at the end of my previous post - Circuit Rider’s review of the year: I have decided to try to complete all four remaining stages of my trip this year. My original plan had been to leave Stage 7 until 2012, but I admit it never made much sense to leave things hanging over another long winter. So, if all goes well I’ll have completed my cycling circumnavigation of the Czech Republic by the end of 2011.

I’ll be rolling out my route plans for the remaining stages in the course of this month. However, I can already reveal that along the way I’ll be dropping in on all four countries neighbouring the Czech Republic (Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Poland) as well as visiting the westernmost, southernmost and easternmost points of the Czech Republic. Bring it on!