Kladska

Kladska sits at about eight hundred metres in the Slavkov Forest and holds one of the best-preserved raised bogs in western Bohemia: a peat dome fed only by rainfall, with dwarf pine, sundews, cranberry, cotton grass and a cold microclimate, drained around a dark pond made in the eighteenth century for timber floating. A boardwalk of about a kilometre and a half loops through the bog with interpretation boards, which is the only permitted route across ground that would neither carry weight nor recover from being walked on. Beside the pond stands a hunting lodge complex built in the 1870s for Prince Otto von Schoenburg-Waldenburg in a Tyrolean timber manner - dark wood, carved balconies, steep roofs - which is now partly a hotel and a small forest museum. The whole thing is unexpectedly Alpine for a Bohemian bog and the combination is what people come for.

What you actually see

• A raised bog - fed only by rain, with sundews, cranberry and dwarf pine.
• A boardwalk loop - about a kilometre and a half across the peat.
• Tyrolean lodges of the 1870s - dark carved timber beside the pond.
• A black timber pond - made in the eighteenth century for floating logs.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Stay on the boardwalk - the peat will not carry weight and does not recover. Mosquitoes are bad in summer. Parking is limited at weekends. The lodges are a working hotel, not a museum throughout.

Nearby

Marianske Lazne is ten kilometres south; the Slavkov Forest surrounds it.