About 120 miles east of Prague, on the border with Poland, lies a wonderland of trails in a magical fairytale land. It’s a place where passion and persistence result in the most positive outcomes, and where nature and the landscape have the ultimate respect of the community that lives amongst them.

At first glance, Černa Voda, Czech Republic is a small town that looks sleepy, like a stereotypical quiet, rural European settlement without much more than agriculture and an ageing population. A place that is surrounded by rolling pastoral fields and seas of dark green trees, and whose name roughly translates to “black water”, would not lead anyone to believe that mountain biking exists there. A Google search will yield not much more than a brief Wikipedia page and a few random photos of people on mountain biking on technical-looking trails. It is a curious and confusing thing for sure.

From an international perspective, the Czech Republic is not exactly on the mountain bike radar. It does not have iconic mountains or big marketing budgets for bike tourism. In fact, it is a solid 225 miles from the Alps, in a transition zone between the North and East European Plains. Geography and money be damned – time spent in this central European country is certain to capture your attention, and probably your heart. Beyond the fields of swaying grain, those cozy forests will pique your curiosity, pulling you in to discover a place that has more riding than you ever imagined and a community of riders that is perhaps the most dedicated and diverse on the planet.

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