Divci Kamen - Castle Ruin and 5th Wedding Anniversary

[Editor's note: can't find my notes for this day either.]

We spent our 5th wedding anniversary at a castle ruin we expected to have mostly to ourselves. As previously noted, Mary came here with her parents in 1993 and it was not developed for tourism at all. In fact, we could hardly find the place.

We walked to the castle (now serviced by a well-marked trail) from Holubov.

From Divci Kamen

There was a ticket seller, but she explained to us that the castle was free today, though she did not have the English to explain to us why. There were a few field trip-looking groups of little kids and later on we started to see groups wearing life jackets.

From Divci Kamen

The castle was smaller than Mary remembered. With trails and well-kept grass, we were able to move about it much faster now than in 1993. Even so, it was still pretty lovely. After a while, it started to rain and we had it to ourselves for a while. Mary found this kind of amusing because the one day we had rain on the 1993 trip was right here at this castle too.

From Divci Kamen

It was pretty cool to see how they worked around the natural stone.

From Divci Kamen

And there was a nice little cairn garden in the courtyard. If you look closely, you will see an arch someone made too. It's atop the garbage can, or whatever that is.

From Divci Kamen

Mary enjoyed the dramatic natural landscape. She remembers searching for the castle in the woods and Dad pointing to this ridge (from a slightly different angle), and saying that he would have built his castle up there. This was right before we spotted the castle for the first time.

From Divci Kamen

In a clearing below the castle some sort of event was going on. There was a tent with children painting pictures, a little gyro vendor, and a giant bonfire where the adults appeared to be making charcoal. We greatly enjoyed warming ourselves at the fire, since it was so cold and wet.

From Divci Kamen

From Divci Kamen

Nearby we found a river full of kayakers, some of them disembarking to climb up to the castle. I guess that explains the life jackets we saw earlier. Cool, eh?

From Divci Kamen

After, we walked back to Holubov in time for a great early dinner where we had stayed the night before hopping on a train for Vienna.