Ceska Kanada

Ceska Kanada, Czech Canada, is the corner of southern Bohemia between Jindrichuv Hradec and the Austrian border: a granite plateau with scattered boulders and rock outcrops, pine and spruce forest, hundreds of fish ponds and very few people. The name is unofficial and comes from the resemblance to the Canadian Shield country, and it stuck. The emptiness has a cause: this was a German-speaking border district, the population left after 1945, and the area then sat inside the fortified frontier zone for forty years, so villages were demolished and nothing was built. What is left is forest, water and ruins. A narrow-gauge railway of 760 mm gauge, opened in 1897, still runs from Jindrichuv Hradec to Nova Bystrice with steam services in season. Slavonice on the edge has one of the best-preserved Renaissance town squares in the country, with sgraffito facades.

The landscape

• Granite boulder country - outcrops and blocks through pine and spruce.
• Hundreds of ponds - the fishpond system spread across the plateau.
• Emptied villages - the border zone that stayed closed for forty years.
• A narrow-gauge railway - 760 mm, running since 1897, with summer steam.

When to go

May to September. Two days.

Good to know

Services are very thin - plan food and fuel. The narrow-gauge timetable is limited and steam runs only on certain days. Ticks are bad. Some tracks cross private forestry land.

Nearby

Slavonice and Jindrichuv Hradec are on either side of it.

Key facts