Long weekend in the Beskids: western competitions with the Rockwall team, a stylish cottage with wellness facilities, a wood-fired hot tub, first trophies — and a few stories we will not soon forget.
Not long ago, we headed to a western competition at Smart Ranch in Kozlovice with the team from Rockwall Ranch. It is a very pleasant place, and you can immediately tell that the horses and the entire atmosphere are in the hands of people who know what they are doing and put their hearts into it.
Smart Ranch — a piece of western country in the Beskid foothills
You will find the ranch just beyond Frýdek-Místek, on the route toward Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, in beautiful surroundings beneath the Beskid hills, with views of the mountains and the picturesque village of Kozlovice. It is run by Klára Šalková and her team, and both the horses and the facilities are exceptionally well cared for. The ranch focuses on breeding and training western breeds — quarter horses and paint horses — and approximately fifty horses are stabled here, including breeding stallions and mares with foals. Competitions take place in a 30 × 60-meter indoor arena with a genuine reining surface and large grandstands.
Interesting fact: Smart Ranch has been operating since 1998 (under the name Paint Horse until 2019). From 2003 to 2006, it was based at Prosper Horse Ranch in Čeladná — just a short distance from where we stayed over the weekend. Even during its time in Čeladná, it hosted a number of national and international competitions, including the prestigious NRHA Ride & Slide 2005, and in 2004 it even brought a show by the legendary “horse whisperer” Monty Roberts to Ostrava’s ČEZ Arena. Today’s complex in Kozlovice was cleverly created from a former cowshed.
Specifically, we went to the All-in-One Show, also known as the Kozlovice Cup. My daughter competed in the children’s categories: “tiny tots,” a discipline for the very youngest riders, at both walk and trot. One nice thing is that in some categories, the rider may be led by a trainer but may also ride independently. So Leinka rode by herself, with Anetka, her trainer, merely walking alongside her and keeping an eye on things in case she needed help. In any event, she rode beautifully and did a wonderful job.
Why we chose a cottage instead of driving back and forth
Kozlovice is about a two-hour drive from our home, and the competition took place on both Saturday and Sunday. Two hours there in the morning, two hours back in the afternoon — and then the same again the next day — would have been quite exhausting. So we came up with a different plan: I took both children, and we rented a cottage with wellness facilities for the entire weekend, starting on Friday. In the end, our friend Dušan joined us with his girlfriend Andrejka, along with Libor, whom my daughter and I know from dog training and whose daughter also rides horses.
We stayed in Čeladná at a cottage called Apalucha49. It was a very pleasant place, beautifully designed, stylish, and cozy. We had an outdoor pool, our own sauna in a separate building, and a hot tub. And the hot tub was one of those “wood-fired” ones — you heat it with wood to warm the water. That was probably what I was looking forward to most of all.
Where it actually is: Čeladná lies in the valley of the Čeladenka River, in the very heart of the Moravian-Silesian Beskids, surrounded by mountains such as Smrk (1,276 m), Stolová, and Skalka. The village was first mentioned in archives in 1581, and its history is surprisingly varied — in the 17th and 18th centuries, it had a station for the portáš border guards, protectors of the provincial frontier, and in 1796 the first charcoal-fired blast furnace was built here. Čeladná’s fame, however, came primarily from the Skalka spa, founded in 1902. The true elite came here: the composer Leoš Janáček stayed here regularly, violin virtuoso Jan Kubelík played for the patients, and in 1912 T. G. Masaryk visited with his family. The modern character of Čeladná was then shaped significantly by golf — the largest golf course in the Czech Republic opened here in 2001, turning the village into a sought-after recreational destination.
Friday: hot tub, grilling, and Lily sleeps alone for the first time
Before we arrived, Dušan got there first, so I texted him to start slowly heating the hot tub so that it would be ready by the time we arrived and we could jump straight in. The girls were, of course, really looking forward to it. When we arrived, Dušan already had the hot tub heating, so we grilled some food in the evening and then got into the hot tub with the children. It was an absolutely wonderful evening — the children had a fantastic time and were thrilled.
In the end, the girls went to bed quite late, and I was surprised they managed to stay awake. Most importantly, Lily wanted to sleep alone for the first time and actually managed it! She slept in a bed a short distance from me in the next room. Normally, she has a crib pushed up against the bed in the bedroom, so this was a little first and quite a big step.
Saturday: the first competition and the mysterious yellow tent
The next morning, we arrived at Smart Ranch sometime around nine or ten and faced our first day of competition. Our team’s horses were stabled in the Ranch 13 stalls — outdoor stalls beneath a large yellow tent (stalls 701 to 710).
And now for the mystery. The first time I stepped into that yellow tent, my head started spinning strangely — a slight dizziness, almost like seeing spots in front of my eyes. I thought, “What is this?” I went outside to get the saddle, and suddenly I felt fine again. So I shrugged it off, had a drink, and went back inside — and the same thing happened again. And then a third time. When I finally mentioned it to Libor and the girls, it turned out it was not just me: that yellow tent genuinely made almost everyone who entered it feel ill. To this day, I cannot explain it, but it was a truly strange experience — and it continued the next day as well.
Leinka completed her event during the morning, and we really enjoyed ourselves. The only slight disappointment was the pool at the cottage — it was only around twenty-three or twenty-four degrees outside, so the water was fairly cold, but that was to be expected. The hot tub seemed like an even better idea because of that. We will get to that shortly.
A lunch that really dragged on: U Námořníka and Valašský Brewery
After the competition, we wanted to go for lunch at a restaurant where we had already eaten in January and had really enjoyed the food.
First, we went to the U Námořníka restaurant — but note that it is not directly in Kozlovice; it is in neighboring Hukvaldy, just a short distance away. It has been operating since 1997 and is famous for its meat specialties, which the chefs prepare right in front of guests over an open fire in the middle of the restaurant. And as a bonus for your trip: Hukvaldy is the birthplace of Leoš Janáček, it is dominated by the third-largest castle ruin in the Czech Republic, and the local game preserve is said to have inspired the composer’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen.
This time, however, we arrived to find it completely full, so they had to turn us away. Fortunately, Anetka had previously told me that there was also a brewery with a restaurant in Kozlovice.
So on our second attempt, we visited the Valašský Brewery in Kozlovice. It occupies the original farm buildings of the old reeve’s estate, whose main building bears the date 1822 on its gable, and beer has been brewed here since 2008. Its copper brewing kettles with hand-forged “hats,” vaulted brick ceilings, and First Republic atmosphere are impossible to miss. Regular offerings include the unfiltered pale lager Valašský vojvoda and the dark Kozlovický fojt; on tap during our visit were Vojvoda, the Kozlovjan special, and the amber Mařka. One interesting detail is that the brewery’s upper floor contains a ceremonial hall where the mayor of Kozlovice officiates weddings, and the complex also includes a museum of an old elementary school.
The setting was truly beautiful. The waitress was very pleasant and promised to seat us within fifteen minutes — and she kept her word. What disappointed us a little, however, was that everything took an incredibly long time. We waited forty minutes for our drinks, even though we had ordered only beer, water, and lemonade — nothing that needed mixing. Meanwhile, the bartender spent the entire time slicing limes instead of preparing our drinks. The food followed the same pattern: we waited almost two hours, while the restaurant gradually emptied around us. The children were hungry, we were getting fed up, and the girls already wanted to go and watch the competition, but because of the wait, we missed it entirely. We could not leave, though — the children would have gone hungry, and that was not an option. So after a long wait, we finally ate and drove back to the cottage.
When the hot tub water went bad (or a little DIY improvisation)
Lili fell asleep in the car, so I let her finish her nap on the sofa. Meanwhile, Dušan and Andrejka went on a trip to a lookout tower, while Libor, the children, and I wanted to get the hot tub going — light the fire, warm it up, and have fun in it that evening.
But when we opened the hot tub, an utterly unbelievable stench hit us. The water had gone bad — it had not been chemically treated in any way, so it simply had not lasted overnight. I called the owner, but he was in Crete at the time, and apparently no one else could get the cellar keys so that we could fill it with fresh water. I said it was fine and that we would leave it. But I could not let it go — the children had been really looking forward to an evening in the hot tub, and we could not let them get into something that smelled that bad.
And so a little investigation began. First, I drove to the nearby Mountfield store to find something that might save it. They had chlorine shock, which I know, but it takes about twenty-four hours for the water to “air out” — you cannot bathe in it after three hours unless you want to break out in a rash. Besides, I do not like conventional chlorine anyway (even in our pool at home, we use salt rather than chlorine). So tablets or anything else would not have helped us.
In the end, we came up with this solution: about ten meters from the hot tub was the sauna, and it had a sink inside. I decided that we would drain the hot tub and refill it from there. I bought a fifteen-meter hose with a diameter of three centimeters, and we attached it to the faucet by the sink. But — inevitably — there was not enough drop, so there was no pressure and the water did not flow properly; it just sprayed everywhere. Then we thought of trying it from the kitchen, which was effectively on the second floor and provided a better drop. We drained the hot tub, connected the hose, and the water finally began to flow.
There was one last problem: water was leaking all around the faucet, and before long we would have flooded the kitchen. The only thing I could think of was to go to the car for the first-aid kit. We wrapped bandages around the connection by the faucet, attached some plastic gloves that were on hand, and then secured the whole thing thoroughly with tape. And, believe it or not — it worked! The water stopped leaking and flowed neatly through the hose into the hot tub.
In just under two hours, the hot tub was full, and as soon as it was about halfway filled, we lit the fire. So the hot tub was ready for the evening. We grilled some food, the children enjoyed themselves, and everything turned out wonderfully in the end. We went to bed a little earlier because we were tired from the previous day — but with the satisfaction that we had managed it.
This is roughly what it looked like:
Sunday: trophies, Frosty, Bizi, and the journey home
Sunday’s competition day was relaxed and, most importantly, successful. Leinka competed in the trot event, handled it beautifully, and brought home her second trophy of the weekend — so we were absolutely delighted.
That was still not enough for the children, however, so after the competition, we went to our home stable to see Frosty and Bizi. Lili rode Bizonka, while the girls rode Frosty, so we spent about another two hours riding our horses.
We arrived home on Sunday evening — tired and completely exhausted, but it had been an absolutely fantastic weekend. Even our friend Dušan, who is not particularly fond of horses, enjoyed it — apparently, these kinds of competition weekends are right up his alley. And that is probably the best endorsement of all.
This season and the ones to come are simply ours, so we are really looking forward to heading out again. The western competition at Smart Ranch in Kozlovice suited us perfectly — beautiful surroundings, pleasant people, and plenty of experiences for the whole family.
