Peace Ride Stage 1: Zittau to Liberec

The shortest of the three stages and the most varied. You start in Germany, spend the long middle of the day in Poland, and finish in Czechia, and the border crossings are the least dramatic part of it: a change of road surface and a change of signage, nothing more.

How it rides

The first 35 km north along the Neisse are flat and fast, a warm-up with the Polish border sitting just across the water the whole way. After Radomierzyce the route crosses into Poland and the character changes. It climbs gently through Bogatynia and Działoszyn, drops, then climbs again past Platerówka, and none of it is steep enough to hurt but none of it lets you settle either. Leśna, at roughly 60 km, has a market square and is the obvious place to stop.

Then comes the one climb that matters. From Leśna the road rises for 16 km at an average of under 2 per cent, which sounds like nothing and is not, because it goes on. It tops out at 587 m at the Polish-Czech border above Świeradów-Zdrój, the highest point on this stage. Stage 2 goes 180 m higher than that inside its first nine kilometres.

The descent into the Jizera valley is fast and open. Do not relax completely, because there is one more climb after Raspenava: about 150 m over 8 km through Oldřichov, at the end of a long day. After that it is downhill into Liberec.

Worth stopping for

Zittau. Start on the market square in front of the town hall. There is a plaque set into the cobbles by the market with a pair of tailor’s shears and the year 1312 on it, which tells you how long the town has been trading.

Leśna. Quiet Lower Silesian market square, and the natural lunch stop at almost exactly the halfway mark.

Świeradów-Zdrój. A spa town on the Polish side of the Jizera mountains, right below the high point. If you are splitting the route, this is the place.

Liberec. Finish at the radnice, the neo-renaissance town hall with three green spires, built when the town was the textile capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire and known as the Manchester of Bohemia. Up on the ridge above is the Ještěd tower, a hotel and transmitter in one, shaped like the mountain it stands on and voted the most important Czech building of the twentieth century.

Notes

The track includes the neutralised roll-out through Zittau and the stops at the border and in Leśna, so the elapsed time on the file is a lot longer than the moving time. Elevation on the recording reads low against the route profile published for the event; the figure here is from the smoothed barometric trace, which lands at about 1,300 m.

The ride report for this stage, with photos, is here.