--- title: "Over 6000 km on European treks. Markéta Dobešová on long-distance crossings" description: "Markéta Dobešová has over 6000 km on European trails to her name over the past few years. She sets off on longer crossings several times a year and we wanted to know why." canonical_url: "https://gramino.com/blog/6000-km-on-european-treks-marketa-dobesova" last_updated: "2019-11-09" --- # Over 6000 km on European treks. Markéta Dobešová on long-distance crossings Authors: David Czempka Date: 2019-11-09 Markéta Dobešová has over 6000 km on European trails to her name over the past few years. She sets off on longer crossings several times a year and we wanted to know why. Markéta Dobešová is a professional musician and the first violinist of the J. K. Tyl Theater orchestra in Plzeň. But don't be fooled by her profession and petite build – whenever she has time off, she'd rather throw on a backpack and head out into nature, whether for a few days or for weeks. She's also the author of the hiking guide [Krušnohorský kvérunk](https://www.ctyrhranne-zapisky.cz/blog/krusnohorsky-kverunk-turisticky-pruvodce-pro-prechod-krusnych-hor-81.html), the very first to lay out a route for a hiking traverse of the Ore Mountains. We originally wanted to focus our interview on her journey from Oslo to Trondheim, but when we found out that over the past 6 years she had walked roughly 6000 kilometers on European treks, we decided to change the topic to long-distance trekking itself. She sets off on longer crossings several times a year and we really wanted to know what draws her to the trail so much, how she prepares, and what her homecomings, fears, and crises are like. If you're not sure where to head next, you can take inspiration from the list of treks Markéta has completed over the past few years. You can read full reports from some of the crossings on [her engaging blog](https://www.ctyrhranne-zapisky.cz/autor.html) (in Czech). **2014** – Traumpfad München-Venedig – crossing the Alps from Munich to Venice – **700 km** **2015** – GR 20 – a ridge traverse of Corsica – **220** **km** **2016** – Pyrenean Haute Route – crossing the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean – **880 km,** crossing the Silesian, Orava, and Żywiec Beskids – **160 km** **2017** – Kungsleden – Sweden – **450 km,** Nordwaldkammweg and Thayatalweg – Austria – **350 km,** crossing the Low Tatras – Slovakia – **100 km** **2018** – Traverse of the Romanian Carpathian arc – **1200 km,** crossing the Kremnica Mountains and the Lesser and Greater Fatra (Koruna Turca) – **240 km** **2019** – GR 221 – crossing the Serra de Tramuntana range in Mallorca – **150 km,** St. Olav's Way from Oslo to Trondheim – **600 km,** crossing the Ukrainian and part of the Romanian Carpathians – **approx. 600 km,** crossing the Ardennes – **200 km** ### According to your blog, you've been heading out on a long-distance trek every year since 2014. What do you love so much about long-distance hiking? All those journeys started much earlier, when I was still a child. I read Foglar, Verne, and later Čapek's travelogues, and I lived in my own world full of adventurous journeys and expeditions of discovery. I loved a book called [Rozum do kapsy](https://www.databazeknih.cz/dalsi-vydani/rozum-do-kapsy-45653), which was a kind of fun encyclopedia about the world. Among other things, it had a map of the night sky, chapters about weather and clouds, instructions on how to survive in the wilderness and on the open sea, how to build a makeshift shelter, how to start a campfire, basic ciphers, knots, flags, and much more. That was my favorite book. That's when my interest in the world began, and I dreamed that one day I'd experience something grand. And I also wanted to try out all those camping skills I'd studied in The Boys from Beaver River. Then, when I discovered long-distance trekking as an adult, I found not only the fulfillment of my youthful dreams in it but also freedom. A chance to escape the everyday for a while and clear my head of the problems of ordinary life. The trail gives you enormous space to be alone with your own thoughts, to see into your own head and put it in order. And of course, I also love mountains and nature. ### On the flip side, what don't you like about long-distance hiking? What I don't like about it is actually closely tied to what I love most about it. On the trail, your thinking gradually gets pared down. The everyday worries you're used to dealing with fade into the background and lose their urgency, until in the end only the most basic ones remain: walking, eating, and sleeping. On the one hand, that's incredibly liberating. But on the other hand, eating and sleeping are the most elementary human needs. It's a matter of survival. So every day you face the uncertainty of whether you'll find food and water and a place to lay your head. You live in a slight but constant worry about what will happen to you. Of course, after a longer time on the trail you get used to these stresses and they stop weighing on you so heavily, but they never completely go away. ### How do you prepare for a long-distance trek? Do you start preparing far in advance? I have to admit that ever since I started trekking with my husband, I've left a large part of the preparation to him. He can put together all the information needed for the trip with incredible care and detail. But we don't always travel together, so when I'm getting ready for a solo trek, I really miss his input. I've never been as conscientious about preparation as he is – I leave more things to chance. I like reading travelogues by people who have already walked the route, and sometimes I even go to see them in person. Then I buy maps and guidebooks, prepare the data for my GPS, and arrange transportation. My notorious specialty is packing my backpack a few hours before leaving. I'm terribly sloppy about it. And as for physical preparation, I try to stay in shape year-round through natural movement. I don't have a car and I don't use public transportation – I walk. I bike to work, covering about sixteen kilometers a day. Sometimes on my way home from work I ride out for a swim in a pond. When I have time, I go on longer walks, take multi-day trips, or head out geocaching. I don't do any targeted training; I'm not even particularly into sports. But I try to use every opportunity to move and to be outside as much as possible. And somehow that's enough. ### Did you have a close relationship with nature and the outdoors from an early age? Did your parents lead you to it, or did you get there on your own? Both of our parents worked in offices and had a rather sedentary lifestyle. Mom sometimes took us on bike trips and to the swimming pool, but we never went outdoors with Dad at all – he steered us more toward books. But more than my parents, it was the environment I grew up in that shaped my relationship with nature and movement. I was born in Nové Město na Moravě, an area famous above all for cross-country skiing. I went to a high school that, among other things, had sports-focused classes. All the kids where I grew up went to sports clubs, competed, or just ran around outside. On top of that, we were the last generation that didn't grow up in front of computers. We didn't have social media; we found our friends at the playground. If you didn't go outside, it was as if you didn't exist. Still, our parents were indispensable in this respect, because they helped us pursue all our interests. We had bikes, cross-country skis, downhill skis, and skates. Our grandpa coached soccer and worked at a fish farm, so as little girls my sister and I played girls' soccer and went fishing with him; later we did orienteering and went to races, training camps, and children's summer camps. And of course, Mom and Dad paid for all of it. It's not that our parents directly steered us toward nature and sports, but they always supported us in physical activities, just as in everything else we ever wanted to do. The initial impulse, though, always had to come from us. ### Do you think these long-distance hikes have brought something into your everyday life or had a significant influence on you? Definitely. The biggest change in my personality came right after my first big journey, the Alpine crossing from Munich to Venice. Until then I was a normal city girl – I lived in Prague, had a car, and liked spending money on clothes. When I came back, I suddenly felt I had far too many things around me. For a month I'd gotten by with only what fit in my backpack, and suddenly at home I felt overwhelmed by a pile of useless junk. Back then I gave away almost all my clothes or put them in charity textile donation bins, and I sold my car. I kept only a little. Interestingly, today I can't remember a single thing I got rid of back then. Since then I've kept a bare minimum of things around me and I try to live frugally and modestly. I also started thinking more about the environment. I got actively involved in volunteer nature conservation programs, I travel mainly by train and bus, and I try to limit my own consumption, avoid wasting plastic, recycle, repair broken things, and buy secondhand more often. I've learned that true love of nature doesn't mean just liking it as a pretty backdrop – above all, it means an inner need to protect it and to burden it as little as possible with your own existence. ### It seems your treks often don't start off all that rosy. On the Alps crossing you started out in torrential rain, and on the GR 20 your hiking partner quit after the first day. Have you ever had a bigger crisis on the trail where you wanted to give up, or even did? No journey is all rosy. Problems always come, whether at the beginning or along the way. Crises are simply part of trekking. On the Pyrenees crossing I camped in the epicenter of a thundercloud, and in the Romanian Carpathians torrential rain and falling rocks nearly washed us away in a narrow gorge. Even so, I've never given up so far, and I've finished all my journeys to date. Paradoxically, though, I'm not unequivocally proud of that. I don't think at all that quitting a trek midway is a personal defeat. On the contrary, I think it can often be the result of reason winning out over the pursuit of foolish ideals. Ending a journey early takes a lot of resolve. When I sometimes think back to some of the critical moments, I wonder whether I really shouldn't have called it quits in time. You can't keep relying on luck. So far I've always come back home safe and sound as a winner, so I could say that not giving up paid off. But whether a decision is good or bad is determined only by its consequences. And nobody knows those in advance. I don't know how to give up yet. But maybe that's what I'll have to learn in the future. ### You're also a passionate geocacher. Is geocaching simply part of your hiking trips by now? Not only is it part of them – geocaching actually partly led me to long-distance trekking. I learned about the Alpine crossing I mentioned precisely thanks to one long cache. Its goal is to walk this route, find the specified clues along the way, and use them to calculate the coordinates of the cache's location. At the time, it was the longest hiking cache in Europe and maybe even in the world. A huge challenge. And I wanted it. Of course, I had many other, much more significant motives for that journey. But that little box was what sparked my interest. The truth is that I plan some trips precisely around caches I want to find, but mostly searching for the boxes is more of a side activity for me, something that livens up the journey. Besides adding an interesting dimension to traveling, geocaching also gives me opportunities to take an active part in nature conservation. The game allows players to organize so-called CITO events, which are gatherings of players aimed at helping nature. Most often we pick up litter, but we also focus on landscape care and the upkeep of historical monuments. We work with the administrations of Protected Landscape Areas and national parks, plant trees, clean up waterways, and maintain hiking trails. Czech geocaching is among the most active in the world when it comes to organizing CITO events. That's our big contribution to society, which the public doesn't know much about yet. ### That sounds great. Where and how can people get involved in these volunteer projects? There are several ways to become a volunteer. In the Czech Republic, litter cleanups in nature are the main focus of the organization [Ukliďme Česko](https://www.uklidmecesko.cz/), trees are planted by PagoPago, and Hnutí Brontosaurus and Hnutí Duha also organize a wider range of volunteer events. Volunteer events are also occasionally announced by some associations (scouts, hunters, anglers, etc.), municipalities, and the administrations of Protected Landscape Areas or national parks. CITO events are organized by geocachers and are primarily intended for them, but the general public can usually come too. To search for upcoming CITO events more easily, and also to register your attendance, it's better to be a registered player, but it's not a requirement. I've written a detailed guide for anyone interested on my blog, in the article [How to become a volunteer](https://www.ctyrhranne-zapisky.cz/blog/jak-se-stat-dobrovolnikem-138.html) (in Czech). ### You hiked the Kungsleden and the trail from Oslo to Trondheim alone. Do you think hiking solo has any advantages over hiking with a partner? Which do you prefer? Of course, there's a big difference between going alone and going with someone. One advantage of a solo trek, for example, is that you don't have to be embarrassed in front of anyone that your socks stink! It's also easier to answer the call of nature, and you can happily have beans for dinner without being embarrassed about turning your tent into a hot-air balloon at night. But okay, so I don't only talk about the down-to-earth stuff: of course, you hear your own thoughts better and you're your own boss. You don't have to make compromises, and you don't argue with anyone. And you miss people more. Having a partner along, of course, eliminates the risks on the trail, which comes in very handy especially on mountain treks. So I prefer one companion, but when no suitable candidate turns up, I don't wait for anyone and simply go alone. Most of all, I love traveling with my husband. But he doesn't always have time, and he also prefers somewhat different destinations. ### Is there anything you're afraid of on the trail? Oh sure, I'm afraid of lots of things. Thunderstorms, for example. I mentioned how I spent the night inside a thundercloud. That was absolutely insane. I got stuck in a rocky cirque, lightning was striking the surrounding peaks all around me, and I heard it split off a chunk of rock. Streams of water were pouring over my tent, and everything around me was roaring like a turbine in a power plant. I really thought I wouldn't make it out. Since that night, a kind of mild storm panic has stayed with me for years. Every time I hear thunder, my heart starts pounding with fear. And then there are other things. In Romania I was afraid of aggressive dogs, on exposed terrain I'm afraid of falling, sometimes I'm afraid to sleep alone in the tent, and so on. But that's exactly what traveling is about – learning to control your fears. Because sitting at home by the stove isn't a solution either. There's a saying that a ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are built for. You need to be a little afraid to stay cautious. But you mustn't let fear control you. ### You've already hiked a lot of long-distance trails in Europe. Have you also thought about treks on other continents? I have a long-term dream of crossing most of Europe's mountains. I'm well on my way, but it's a project for a lifetime, maybe even two. I'm not bored in Europe yet. But it's quite possible that I'll end up doing a trek on another continent after all. My husband is drawn to faraway places – Taiwan is under consideration, maybe something in Africa. I'm very drawn to Russia, because I love Russian literature and music. And I'd also like to go back to Japan, where I was on a business trip in 2008. We'll see. ### Where have you encountered the greatest wilderness on your treks? It depends on what you picture under the word wilderness. If the definition is remoteness and the absence of people, then I experienced that most in Arctic Sweden on the Kungsleden trail. There it's really possible to go a whole day without meeting anyone, to be completely alone for miles around. And the nature there is pristine, with minimal human intervention. That said, the whole Kungsleden is well marked, the trail is maintained, and there are plenty of emergency shelters connected to SOS emergency lines, which aren't exactly attributes of wilderness. But if we're talking about wilderness without infrastructure, with lousy maps, getting lost, and pushing through overgrown vegetation, then I experienced that in the Romanian Carpathians. Of course, as long as you stick to proven trails and popular tourist areas like the Făgăraș or Retezat Mountains, you won't stumble across any wilderness there. But we were crossing the entire arc, so we also got into areas where nobody goes. We had to blaze our own paths, often through thickets, windfalls, or riverbeds where no trails had ever led. We planned several hundred kilometers of the route using satellite images of the Earth, because maps either didn't exist or weren't detailed enough. For me, this was more what wilderness means, even though we occasionally met local shepherds along the way. ### You've got thousands of kilometers in your legs. Do you notice a difference in how your body handles carrying a backpack day after day on the trail? At first, of course, it was a big shock, but these days I take the weight of the backpack as something that's simply part of it. I don't worry about blisters or chafed skin at all anymore. But I try to take care of my joints – I take supplements from time to time and always carry some opodeldoc liniment for knee pain. In the future I might partly switch to cycling to change the type of strain. ### Do you think more about your pack weight and the weight of your hiking gear these days? Of course, the first thing I check on gear labels is the weight, and right after that the price. I used to do it the other way around. But experience has taught me that when the weight gets too low, the gear stops doing its protective job, which has backfired on me a few times. So personally I'm not that big a fan of ultralight gear. For every type of gear, I've set my own personal minimum weight that I won't go below. Even so, I've managed to bring my pack weight down. At the beginning I used to carry around 25 kilograms; today I carry around 15 to 18. It's only fair to add, though, that my husband carries some of the heavy things, like the tent or part of the food supply. That makes things a lot easier for me on the trail. ### What's most often on your menu – at home and as trail food? Do you have any favorite recipes? As for food in everyday life, I grew up on typical Czech cuisine and it's still my favorite. I'm one of the lucky ones who can eat anything – I don't have allergies or special diets. I try to eat a varied diet; I like sauces, meat, cheese, cured meats, vegetables, and fruit. I don't put together any meal plans – I eat everything and I'm not picky. On a trek it's harder. I stopped carrying a gas canister for cooking long ago; it was the very first thing I cut from my gear. I don't really like that instant trekking mush anyway. I carry shelf-stable food: hunter's salami, frankfurters, canned food, a loaf of bread, meat spreads, and lots of chocolate and cookies. I also usually have effervescent vitamin tablets with me. But when possible, I like to stop in at a pub. For one thing, you get a good meal there, and you can also chat with the locals. And a chat with a Romanian shepherd over smoked pork neck and fresh milk straight from the milking beats huddling in a tent and wolfing down couscous cooked on a gas stove. ### What is coming home after a long-distance trek like for you – back among people and to the matters of everyday life? The longer the journey, the harder the homecomings, of course. You get used to a rhythm set by daylight, to a minimum of words, to the phone not ringing. But I used to see a lot of things differently than I do today. Among other things, I used to escape to the mountains precisely to get away from people and civilization, but now I no longer shy away from society. I like people. And I also like my job, which makes coming back much easier. I try not to complicate my life with needless negativity. When you set yourself up inwardly to approach the world around you positively, you don't feel the need to run away from it. I always look forward to coming home. ### Do you have any advice for people who are just starting to think about a long-distance hike or are hesitating about whether to go? It's definitely a good idea to try trekking on a smaller scale first. Even in the Czech Republic there are plenty of shorter treks under 100 km that any healthy person can handle. It's worth testing your own tolerance for discomfort, trying sleeping in a cave or under the open sky, walking for a long time in the rain, and finding out how much you can carry on your back. It's important to get used to moving. You don't need to be in Olympic shape, but walking thirty kilometers over gently rolling terrain shouldn't push you to your limits. Get used to walking as the most natural form of movement. Walk to work, to the store, to the train, up the stairs. Whenever you can. And then just don't be afraid and simply go. ### Fantastic, Markéta, thank you for the great interview and for showing us long-distance trekking through your eyes. ## Gear for long-distance treks - [Fizan Compact 4 TECH](/p/fizan-compact-4-tech.md) - [Sea To Summit 70D Nylon Tarp Poncho](/p/sea-to-summit-70d-nylon-tarp-poncho.md) - [Hyperlite Mountain Gear Southwest 55 (2025)](/p/hyperlite-mountain-gear-southwest-55.md) - [Montane Women's Minimus Lite Jacket](/p/montane-womens-minimus-lite-jacket.md) - [Liteway Biggie Tarp](/p/liteway-biggie-tarp.md) - [Tidy Gear Gaiters](/p/tidy-gear-gaiters.md) - [Darn Tough Women's Bear Town Micro Crew Lightweight](/p/darn-tough-bear-town-micro-crew-lightweight-womens.md) - [DexShell Beanie Gradient](/p/dexshell-beanie-gradient.md) - [Katadyn BeFree AC 1 L](/p/katadyn-befree-ac-1-l.md) - [Petzl Tikka Core 2025](/p/petzl-tikka-core.md) This post is also available as [HTML](/blog/6000-km-on-european-treks-marketa-dobesova). ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](/sitemap.md) for all pages.