Hike to the quarries of the Bohemian Karst and Karlštejn

Our route starts at the Karlštejn train station. If you are traveling by car, then in the parking lot at the beginning of the town of Karlštejn. After half a kilometer walk you will walk to the bridge over Berounka, where you will get the first nice view of both the river and the mighty, wooded hill Plešivec (363 m above sea level) and the beginning of the town Karlštejn with the church of St. Palmacia

After another few hundred meters you are at the beginning of the town of Karlštejn and you can enjoy a breathtaking view of perhaps the most important castle in the Czech Republic – Karlštejn.

Now you have to climb a small town lined with tourists (if you want peace, you must be here early in the morning before the castle opens (according to the season between 9–10) and organized tourist tours from Prague. You will find mainly souvenir shops, restaurants and pubs. There are also smaller exhibitions such as the Museum of Light Fortifications, the House of Clocks, the Museum of Nativity Scenes and the Museum of Wax Figures.

Now you have to decide whether your main goal is quarries and bypass the castle on its western side (on a road with minimal traffic) or continue along the hiking trail to the castle, where you will come across the main red trail marked by the Czech Karst, connecting Prague with Beroun. If you go for a shorter option, you go through a deep valley separating Javorka (384 m above sea level) and Kněží hora (354 m above sea level). Sometimes the silhouette of a castle towering high above the valley peeks at you.

At the pension under Dračí skála, tourist paths will be reconnected with the route leading along the road. From here it is a short walk to the U Dubu crossroads, where there are really huge oaks. Now follows a slightly less lively section, when the path climbs through the forest for a long time without a view before you get to the first quarry on this hike – Little America (after 4 km from the station in Karlštejn). However, the edges of the quarry are very overgrown with trees, you will not have so many decent trips.

Just a little further behind the Malá Amerika quarry, you will climb from the forest to the meadows from where you will see the towers of Karlštejn protruding from the forest below you

On the southern horizon stretches a long forested ridge Brd, which are even higher than the hills of the Bohemian Karst.

As soon as you cross the meadow you will get to the lookout to the least interesting quarry Canada. At its eastern end is still a functional lime kiln and other operations, supplied with material from the still functioning and largest quarry Čeřinka near Bubovice

From the Kanada quarry, you walk along the edge of the field to a dirt road, which connects only the factory with the huge Čeřinka quarry. Huge loading vehicles drive on it. From here, the path up to the Mexico quarry awaits you. The hiking trail leads for a long time under the quarry's own edge, so if you want to see it before the official viewpoint, you have to climb to the edge (there are several well-trodden paths). From the edge you can see how deep this quarry is.

Even in this quarry, there is a small lake at the bottom

It is only a short distance from the Mexico quarry to the most famous local quarry, Great America. The hiking trail bypasses him from the left. However, first take the road on the right to get to its southwestern end, from where the most beautiful view is.

On a sunny day around noon, the blue color of the lake stands out the most. The way down to it is a dangerous business and is officially forbidden. Right at the eastern end of the quarry (after a seven-kilometer walk from the Karlštejn train station) there is a bus stop number 311, which will take you to Prague to the Zličín metro station. If you want to go the circular route you can continue further to Mořina and from there follow the blue back to Karlštejn. In this case it is about 13km