The Vltava river, Prague
After 3 weeks of well below freezing temperatures down to as low as -20c in the city itself the big thaw finally came and the mercury shot up remarkably and with it came the inevitable changes that nature brings to the environment. The pictures here show the Vtava river in Prague on Wednesday 22nd of February. Around 7 km upstream is the confluence with the smaller Berounka river and it was this tributary that brought the ice.
The Berounka was totally frozen for a few weeks unlike the much larger Vltava which with its dams has seldom frozen in the last 40 years. This year it managed to be almost frozen for around 12 hours which is extraordinary. As the temperatures rose the ice in the Berounka broke up and was sent downstream in the Vltava. On arriving at the river it became apparent that my preference for an upstream then back down swim was out of the question. In fact many people would question how swimmable the river was with scenes resembling the far north rather than central europe. Of course the paradox was that the air was about 8c and even the water wasn’t too bad at 2.8c. Needless to say I swam, a pleasant 900m downstream with crawl only possible for around one third of the trip. Although flowing it wasn’t too fast and the ice wasn’t sharp, although it was at time difficult to spot. Yet again the message is err on the side of caution when dealing with ice. My only regret is that I didn’t have my gopro with me to document the swim better. I will be back on saturday but the ice will be long gone, already back into its liquid form and continuing its journey down the water cycle. For more inspiration there is always winter swimming on film available here
Conditions ok for swans to swim upstream
Leave a Reply