This weekend, I drove south of Brno to continue tracking and energy line (one of three that so far I am mapping in the Brno area). This line runs down from the north and through the Å pilbirk Castle crossing the other two that at the Castle run more east-west. It passes just down my street here. below the Castle and then continues south as if headed to Vienna before abruptly veering to the west .
Just after it veers to the west, it passes within 5m of the apartment that I bought 2 years ago and that is still not ready due to COVID delays. I was blown away by the fact that the line passes over the spot I stood over two years ago looking at the beginnings of a building rising from the mud. I turned ands told my daughter, oh, I like how it feels here so I guess I will buy this! This is the sort of bizarre serendipity that happens with these lines. I sometimes feel as if the lines connect places in my life in some way?
Anyhow, I drove to Bohunice to pick up the line at my new flat. For a while I couldn’t find it as I still expected it to be headed in a more southerly direction and of course, by now the line was headed more or less due west! I eventually picked it up in a nearby street though not where I had expected. I then followed it from street to street across a residential area.
Now what is also weird about these lines is that they are anything but straight. In fact the weave their way along moving as they go. This means that they can suddenly bend around and back with no real warning at all. This occurred in this housing estate as the line seemed as if it really wanted to pass through this very strange house with a tower and it went out of its way to do so. Perhaps the line thought this house was a church?
I say that because the line then headed across country and I feared perhaps I would lose it. However, as I reached the next village, I picked it up again before losing it to countryside again. At this point, I thought well lets just check out the next village. As I drove towards it, I noticed quite an imposing church on a hill overlooking the village and I just knew with certainty I would find it there. I did.
The late Baroque parish church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is actually visible from a great distance, standing in the middle of the cemetery on a small but still distinctive Hill above the village. According to this website, It was built on the site of an older, original parish church from the 14th century by Anna Cecilie from Sekenberk (1712-1787), the widow of Tomáš Jan Sekor from Sekenberk. The church was built as a single nave with a quadrangular tower in the facade between 1746-1758 (the current tower, however, dates back to the time after the fire – from 1796). The interior of the church was equipped with five altars with paintings by Brno painters, in the chapel of St. The tombs of Tomáš Sekora and his wife were then placed on the crosses. The church was solemnly consecrated in 1779 and since 1958 it has been one of the immovable Cultural Monuments of the Czech Republic.”
Given the nature of the hill, I suspect this is an older site of significance. Now the Church is oriented NW-SE and that is not the direction that the energy line was going in at all but lo-and-behold, the line enters the alter end of the church slightly off center and exits the door also slightly off center so that it is slightly less NW-SE than the church itself – ie closer to WNW-ESE. I was able to track the line in the streets before the church with no issue but as it came out of the front door, I was stumped for a while. It was then I discovered that exiting the church, the line bends suddenly around to head almost due south again!
Again, I jumped in my car and drove to the next village on that trajectory and again found a rather distinctive church on a hillside in the village. The Church of the Holy Trinity in Strelice is another protected monument. According to wikipedia, “the core of the church is Gothic , and the first indirect mention of the existence of the rectory and the church comes from the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. The original tower, built perhaps before 1521, stood by the side of the nave . In 1766, a late Baroque reconstruction of the church was carried out , when a chapel, a chancel , a vestibule and a new prismatic tower were built in the new western façade. The church underwent further alterations during the 19th century, and in 1897 the original consecration to St. Giles is mentioned. In 1932, the church was expanded, when a transept with a new, semicircular chancel was built on the site of the presbytery” It also once had a cemetery around it and again, I suspect the site is older than wikipedia suggests.
I again picked up the line at the door of the church and at the alter end too – it ran down the aisle more or less it seemed. Now this church is oriented E-W as is the line yet it made a turn to enter the church and another turn after exiting to resume a southerly direction. Altogether, very weird behaviour but exactly what I have come to expect from these lines.
