Land-Rover Series Club

The neighbourhood of the Tocnik castle on the penultimate Autumn weekend of 2011 was the setting of the first installment of Autumn Leaves, a meeting of historic leaf-sprung Land-Rovers. The idea of the meeting was to organize an event to close the season in a similar way in which the Birmabright Weekend event organized each May opens it.

Invitations were posted only on Czech forums with a plan for possible international advertising efforts in the coming years, nevertheless there were 15 vehicles participating, including one vehicle from as far as Ostrava (some 400 kilometres away). The event started off with a near collapse of traffic in the village of Drozdov, but before 11:00 AM the last late-comers arrived safely and the column set off through the dense fog to the Tocnik castle.

An exhibition of the participating vehicles, which took place in the castle’s lower courtyard, a tour of the castle as well as an impressive display of birds of prey within the castle walls were all topped by an impregnable cover of fog, which started to show through only shortly before the departure. From the castle we continued around the picturesque landscape around the impressive hilltop fortress and through the southern edge of Krivoklat forests towards the Malkov hill with superb (and above all safe and non-damaging) off-roading facilities.

The meeting closed in the evening’s darkness, with participants enjoying (albeit with a delay caused by a miniature grill) a hearty meal of grilled pork and chicken.