Běleč’s 1938 summit marker above Švihov
A concrete survey block stamped 1938 stands beside Běleč’s summit picnic table. The short forest walk also crosses protected old woodland on a hill remembered locally as a wartime refuge.
Beside Běleč’s summit picnic table is a concrete survey block stamped 1938. The walk to it was only 2.3 km on a broad forest road, but the hill carries more than one layer of history: protected old woodland, a signed summit and a local account of Švihov residents fleeing towards it during the Thirty Years’ War.
A road almost to the top
I drove up to the forest edge until a traffic restriction stopped further progress, parked at about 49.474235, 13.229502 and continued on foot. From there a broad forest road left only a short out-and-back.
The road climbed steadily through quiet woodland with planted conifers in places and plenty of leafless deciduous trees. In mid-March the forest felt unusually open: dry ground, mild weather and almost no navigational work at all.
The ease of the walk hides a more interesting setting. A nature reserve on Běleč was first declared in 1955 to protect a remnant of old mixed forest. The wider slopes also form part of the Švihovské hvozdy Natura 2000 site.
Běleč also carries a quieter human history. One local source records that when Švihov burned during the Thirty Years’ War on 24 February 1645, residents fled towards Běleč. That is easy to miss on a calm modern forest walk, but it changes the scale of the hill a little: not just a wooded rise above Mezihoří and Malechov, but a place that once mattered as refuge.
The signed summit and the 1938 block
Near the top, the road reaches a summit area with more character than the approach suggests. A red-and-white painted post, summit register box, picnic table, birdhouse, small stone pile and the older concrete survey block marked 1938 all stand within the same clearing. The summit sign gives the elevation as 711.6 m, while the article data rounds Běleč to 712 m.
The 1938 block is a small object, but it gives the summit its anchor. Together with the sign and table, it turns what might otherwise have been an anonymous woodland top into a recognisable place. Partial views filtered through the bare trees, enough to show that Běleč stands distinctly above the surrounding country even without a wide-open panorama.
I returned by the same route. There was no reason to invent a loop when the direct line already worked perfectly. By then darker clouds were beginning to gather to the west, enough to make me wonder what the rest of the Plzeň day would do.
The whole Běleč outing took about 33 minutes. In the summit clearing, the small concrete block marked 1938 gave the wooded hill its clearest anchor.
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