Kladská

Distance: 9 km

One of the most beautiful places in the Cheb region is the Kladská Pond and Hunting Lodge, located in the center of the most valuable territory of the Slavovský Forest Protected Landscape Area.

From the former hunting lodge of prince Schönburg-Waldenburg, in the midst of peaceful spruce forests, a newly repaired educational trail leads along wooden walkways beside the romantic waterside. The trail features the Kladská Peat Bog national natural reservation, Tajga, with abundant flora and fauna.

Visitors can now look over to the neighboring Kyselé Jezero with one of the most acidic drainage areas in Europe as well as a park with the crypt of the founder of the former hunting lodge and stylish buildings and forest gardens.

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Transportation connection: bus

A stroll through Kladsko

Pure and practically undisturbed nature – this is the countryside around Mariánské Lázně, Lázně Kynžvart, Kladská, Prameny, and the wide surroundings. The area within the Slavkovský Forest Protected Landscape Area has plenty to offer its visitors. Deep forests full of beautiful nooks and evergreen trees with boughs reaching to the ground surrounding you from all sides.

Prince Schönburg-Waldenburg must have certainly felt the positive energy here when he came to Lázně Kynžvart in the late 19th century to enjoy some hunting in the local forests. The landscape, with its dominant meadow spread out along the pond, surrounded from more sides by forests and marshes, spoke to him so clearly that he had a cabin built here in 1875. Five more such cabins were built by the end of the century, now forming the base of this community. Thus was founded the tradition and repute of Kladská. This community, during its heyday when the prince lived, was the second largest deer forest in Bohemia. Today, it is one of the lesser known state hunting grounds.

The area known as Kladsko, however, was inscribed into history much earlier. Its altitude of 820 meters AMSL and set of dozens of ponds predetermined it to become part of the area's industrial development. Mining was developing in the Slavkovsko area at the time, and because the local resources didn't provide a sufficient source of water for washing out the ore, the Dlouhá Stoka, or long drift, was built in 1531-36. This drift took water from the Kladsko pond system and brought it to Krásno and Horní Slavkov. Its extent and method of construction made it a remarkable bit of engineering for its time. The drift itself is 24 km long, and it had a drainage network no less than 30 km long. It connected 52 ore mills, flowed under 35 bridges, its flow was assisted by 14 sluices, and it was 2 meters wide. The Long Drift has still been preserved today, although it no longer serves the function it was built for.

Kladská, despite its altitude, is still able to boast plenty of natural point of interest, and this is why the Kladská educational trail was built, even though it's only 1200 meters long. It leads around Kladský Pond; it begins as a sandy path, and then becomes a wooden walkway that leads you safely through the peat bogs to places where you can rest on naturally-built benches with information tables about the local flora and fauna.

There's no shortage of things to admire.

If you love nature, you'll certainly notice the golden spruce at first – it makes up the dominant feature of the beginning of the trail. It's not particularly tall, but compared to its height it boasts a massive and wide branch structure which reaches all the way to the ground. The wooden walkway leads you to the old growth forest area throughout the rest of the trail. The European silver fir, once the most abundant tree here, is now found only sporadically. You can see here, though, the Sycamore and Norway maple, Mountain pine, the silver-grey fir, the earlier mentioned golden spruce, beeches, and others. You might have met a bear here 308 years ago, but the last one was shot in 1698. The lynx was hunted out in 1708, and the last wolf was shot in 1756.

Since the environment has changed, there is no possibility of returning to the original composition of flora and fauna. Nowadays the area is home to the black grouse, the western capercaillie, foxes, the common crossbill, and the Eurasian pygmy owl. You might also catch a glimpse of the Paleano Sulphur butterfly, and if you're lucky you might see a great fox-spider. He lives directly in the peat marsh and makes his home himself in the form of a reinforced tube. There are also carnivorous plants here, such as the common sundew and butterwort.

The landscape around Kladská is divided into three areas: Tajga with an area of 133 hectares, Paterák with 93 hectares, and Lysina with 43 hectares. The walk along the educational trail itself doesn't take much time, but if you expand your trip to include the surroundings, you're sure to spend a pleasant half a day. Take a walk to the crypt of the prince who loved this area so much that he chose to remain here forever, resting in Lysina, or take a visit to one of the local pubs where they serve wild game dishes.

DLOUHÁ STOKA – LONG CHANNEL

Long Channel is an important technical monument that cuts across a large part of the Slavkovský Forest. It was completed in 1536. The local mining activities consumed an increasing amount of water for driving their machines and devices, and the supply of timber in the Horní Slavkov and Krásna area continued to thin out, so it became necessary to transport it to the mining operations in the faraway forests of Kynžvart. The route was measured out by the mine surveyor Rossmeisl, and was named Flossgraben.

The entire length of the channel came to 24.2 kilometers. It drew water along the surface all the way to Teilhäsel, where it branched off into two streams. One branch continued to Seifertsgrün, evidently just like the older channel from 1499, and the second branch continued on to Krásno. The water was partly led to several mining ponds, then finally to the mining and refinement operations.

The channel was about two meters wide on average and was doubtlessly lined with stones due to the timber it transported. It was about one meter deep on average.

The water flow was relatively quick, and the difference in altitude between its starting point (810 m) and release into Slavkovský Creek in Horní Slavkov (587 m) was 223 meters over a total distance of 24.2 kilometers. Over a 100 meter section, the channel slanted from 0.35 to 0.83 meters. The flow carried about 0.4 cubits of water per second.

Related articles:

• Kladská Peat Bog National Natural Reservation
• Kladská educational trail
• Virtual tour of Kladská
• Kladská Peat Bog – Tajga and surroundings
• On a bicycle through the Kladská Peat Bog area – Tajga and surroundings
• www.ceskehory.cz/slavkovskyles/content-mIDis118-kladska.html