This sporting life

It may have come to your attention that if there is an article written on sport by one of the Radio Prague team, it is not, in general, written by me. Despite the occasional bout of steely determination to overcome the obvious, the harsh fact remains that I’m just not the sporty type. But if you’re like me, and find yourself belonging to the half-hearted school of exercise, then there’s lots of things you can do in and around Prague in summer that will satisfy your need to laze as much as your need to stretch your legs, if only ever so slightly.

A recent discovery is table tennis at V Cípu – an amazing, chandelier-bedecked, former stately-home of a place, which is mostly full of Southeast Asians playing billiards. You have to venture along many a corridor, behind many a partition, and up many a staircase to get to the table tennis tucked away at the back. This is a journey that the several waiters and waitresses make every ten or so minutes, when another thirsty ping-pong player demands a beer or a kofola or what have you. Sports drinks rammed full of glucose are not really required.

Or an old favourite is renting a pedalo near Žofín in Prague. The last time I did this resulted in a furious row with my fellow-peddler about said-peddler’s chain smoking and lack of input, but I would still call such an afternoon spent on the river an enjoyable experience. And any time whatsoever spent in a massive swan-shaped plastic vessel can’t be deemed all that bad.

And another recommended form of watery, utterly half-baked, exercise can be found by a weir just outside of Prague, in the village of Mokropsy (which means, by the way, ‘wet dogs’). It seems to me, on occasion, that my Prague neighbourhood just empties out over the weekend, and now I think I’ve located where all of these people go. In and around Mokropsy there is a scant covering of sand on both banks of the Berounka River, which teams with sunbathers over the weekend, who occasionally go for a dip, or sit on the weir, to be pinched by tiny little crayfish, which my bathing party somewhat grandly insisted upon calling lobsters.

So there you have it, instead of a hard slog down the gym, why not opt for lobsters in Mokropsy or chandeliers and beer in Prague 1. And if you notice a Scottish girl, red in the face with exertion at any of these places, well now you know it’s probably me.