It's adventure time!
Today we went to see KokoÅ™Ãn castle and we visited some other interesting spots along the way. All the places we visited are located in the northern part of central Bohemia. The bedrock in this area is mostly sandstone so the nature there is quite interesting. And the hairpins were fun!

Our first stop were the
Devil's Heads near the village ŽelÃzy. It's a sculpture by Václav Levý chiseled in a rock above the village.


The
Devil's Heads. Václav Levý chiseled them in the sandstone between the years 1841-1846. Why? I don't know, probably because they look cool.
Next, we drove to the KokoÅ™Ãn castle. It was built in 1320 by a Bohemian knight Hynek Berka of Dubé. It was conquered and heavily damaged after a siege during the Hussite Wars in 1426 . It was left in ruins and abandoned for quite some time after that. Then a lot of history happened, Bohemia kingdom was conquered by the Austrians and Czech people lost their freedom for about 300 years, this period is called the
Dark Age here. Anyway, it didn't help the castle much that during this time Ferdinand II of house Habsburg added KokoÅ™Ãn to the
cursed castles list which included castles and fortresses that were forbidden to be maintained or repaired because their strategic placement could be threat to the occupying Habsburg monarchy. In 1894 the castle was finally repaired and it gained its current appearance in 1916.

As always, the castle is on a hill.



Unfortunately, it's still off season for castle visits so the gate is closed and we couldn't get inside. From the look of it, there originally used to be a drawbridge but it was replaced by this lame footbridge.
We wandered in the woods around the area to get better view of the castle and my wife took some nice pics of the nature around there.



And there it is. It's pretty hard to get a good photo of the castle, it's either too close to fit in the picture or hidden behind trees.
On our way back we visited a "stone castle" Nedamy. These are artificial caves dug in the sandstone not far from KokoÅ™Ãn castle. It is believed that they were dug in prehistoric times but it is certain that the caves were used as a hideout for protestants during the Thirty Years' War.


Remains of steps carved in the rock.


The steps are deformed from hundreds of years of use.

See...

awesome trip.