Travels of a Ginger: Hrad Radyne

A few weeks ago, I went to Plzen to visit Rosie, which is about an hour away from Strakonice by train. We decided to go hiking in the hopes of finding some nice autumn foliage. We became adventurous and left the city in search of trails. Although Rosie looked up some information online before we left her flat, we encountered some troubles along the way.

When we first entered "the nature", there were no trail signs. We think this is because we entered from a side trail instead of a main trail. Thus, we decided to use Rosie's phone and Google maps to help us out, but that proved to be a mistake. The GPS signal kept getting lost in the nature, or it would be delayed so we would accidentally pass trails. About an hour into our journey, we finally found a trail map!

Our destination was Hrad Radyne, which was only supposed to be 4km away, but we definitely added an extra 2km due to our (not so) amazing hiking skills. At last, we found our castle ruins!

Climbing Towards Hrad Radyne

Hrad Radyne

Rosie at Hrad Radyne

It was only 10 korunas each to view the castle, which is less than a dollar, so we definitely took the opportunity to see what it was all about. We discovered that Hrad Radyne was built for emperor Charles IV of Czechoslovakia from 1356 to 1361.

Originally, the castle was named the Crown of Charles after the emperor, but in later years it came to be known as the Radyne castle because it was built on a hill called Radyne. Emperor Charles IV chose this location because it was high up and provided great defense against possible enemy invasions.

As you can see, Rosie could not scale the castle walls, but had to go around them.

Most of the castle is intact, however some floors were missing. This is the main area, where one can speculate that perhaps dining and entertaining took place.

We found very strange aspects to the castle as well. Originally, we thought the castle was preparing for Halloween, though it is not celebrated in the Czech Republic. Here they are more adamant about All Saint's Day (November 1st), where they honor their dead ancestors by visiting the cemeteries and placing wreaths on their graves.

However, I later learned that these creatures are from an old urban legend. According to the legend, Radous was the child of a sorceress. She wanted a daughter, but instead her son was born, who bore such ugly, distorting features that he eventually ran away from home. One day, he was wandering in the woods when he came upon a magical book. This book contained elves and he had them build Radyne castle. (It reminds me of Aladdin, the lamp, and Genie!)

Radous wanted to start his own family very badly. Unfortunately, he wound up marring six wives, who bore him six children, but they all turned out ugly like him! He killed all of his wives and children, and suffered through most of his life. Finally, he decided to do good deeds before his death. Now his soul remains in the castle today, where these figurines keep his story alive.

On the second floor, we noticed these interesting figurines. They sort of look like scarecrows, or stick village people, but they are some of the elves from the legend.

Near the windowsills, there were these small creepy ones.

This one actually reminds me of Doby from Harry Potter.

Then, we climbed our way to the top of the castle. The steps were fairly steep.

The views were amazing!

However, you might notice that the weather wasn't so fantastic this day. October is like the June Gloom of California, it's always cloudy and rainy. Yet, if you wait for the perfect weather to go exploring, you would miss out on so much! It only drizzled on us for a few minutes the entire day.