With gas prices steadily rising, every reasonable man capable of computing all the necessary costs - let alone if he considers the traffic jams in towns - he goes and buys a decent bike. Owing to this fact, the majority of today’s villages’ surroundings are getting increasingly crisscrossed by cycle trails. The whole of the Protected Landscape Area of Kokořín (ChKO Kokořín) is riddled with this cobweb-like cycle trail system, onto which you will be guided by unified yellow road signs put up by the Klub českých turistů – KČT (Czech Tourist Club). They begin at Vrázova vyhlídka in Mělník, just above the confluence of the Labe and Vltava Rivers – this is where the cycle trail 203 leaves the terrain cycle trail of the Polabí region. Right at its beginning you will have a chance to check your brakes while going down the steep hill till you get to Pivovar (Brewery), there you will cross the Pšovka stream, jump across the railway tracks and you are out of town. You will break some sweat while taking the old road running between garden plots and vineyards because you have to go uphill to Chloumek. You need to turn off right by the restaurant called Česká koruna and a bit past the cemetery you will get onto the main road to Mšeno, which you have to take all the way to the crossroads down by the railway station in Lhotka.
The paths divide before the railway tracks. The one we have been following so far ends here, some 6,5 kilometers from Mělník. Ahead of us is the cycle trail from Prague to the Kokořín forests. If we turn left, we will take the path number 142, running past the Velký Lhotecký rybník (Velká Lhotka pond) and Harasovská tůň (Harasov pool) to the Kokořínský důl (Kokořín valley). Outside Kačírek we will go past the turning leading up to the Kokořín castle, and on the way to Vojtěchov we can have a look at Pokličky – the path ends after 13 kilometers at the crossroads in Ráj. Later we will follow it further up north where we will come across path number 211, going up into the Lužické Hory (Lusatian Mountains).
In the opposite direction runs path number 141, advertising some 38 kilometers to Prague ahead of us. We will ride through Lhotka, and outside Hleďsebe we need to take a right turn into the Mšenská ulice from which we turn off before the railway tracks and on we ride onto the fieldpath running through the valley V lukách, where we pass the springs and a water house till we get onto the road in the direction of Hostín. The warmup while riding uphill into the village is worth the ensuing downhill trip to Liblice, though. And that is where the cycle trail signs end for the time being, since the villages in the direction to Prague have not shown any interest whatsoever to have some more cycle trails built up in the area. From here on to Prague we are basically left with finding our own way to get there. To finish up the circuit you need to ride from Liblice, through Přívory and Tišice, till you get to the Labe River and from there on, if you follow the blue cycle trail, you have to cover 11 kilometers before reaching Mělník.