The road tells its stories.
Vokolo narrates the castles, ruins and legends you ride or run past. Put your phone away and keep going.
Karlstejn, about 400 metres ahead, at cycling pace.
Charles the Fourth laid the first stone in 1348, and he built this place for one job: to hold the crown jewels of an empire. They sat in a chapel near the top, its walls set with more than two thousand polished stones. The king is said to have climbed that last stretch to the door barefoot.
Play the sample
The calm guide, in English.
About twenty seconds, which is the short setting. Ask for more and you get three minutes.
What happens on the route
1 km ahead
Vokolo looks up the road
It reads your speed and picks a pace. On a bike that is about a kilometre of look-ahead; running, it pulls in to a few hundred metres.
400 m
It picks something worth knowing
Matched against what you said you care about: castles and ruins, battles, churches, nature, the darker legends.
0 m
It talks. You ride.
The story finishes about as you pass the place. Your phone stays in your pocket the whole time.
One real route from the pilot region, 10.1 km along the Berounka.
Pick who is telling it
The same place, told four ways. You start with the calm guide. The rest come with a subscription, and so do the better voices.
- Included
The calm guide
Plain and unhurried. Says the thing and gets out of the way.
- Subscription
The storyteller
Leans into it. Sieges, fires, betrayals, and the long pause before the good part.
- Subscription
The neighbour
Tells it like she watched from behind her fence. Village, dry, very Czech.
- Subscription
For kids
Shorter, simpler, and it leaves out the plague pits.
Ride the same loop twice, hear something else
Vokolo remembers what it already told you. Come back past the same ruin next Sunday and it moves on to the next layer: another owner, another fire, the legend the guidebook leaves out.
- Not a driving tour
- Radius and pacing follow how fast you are actually moving. Running and cycling get the close, slow treatment.
- Nothing to look at
- Audio only. No map to follow, no screen to wake.
- Czech and English
- Both at launch, with German next. The narrator keeps its character in each.
We are letting riders in a few at a time
Vokolo is early, and the first routes are around Prague and the Berounka valley. Leave your email and we will bring you in as we widen the map.