AT A GLANCE
Why go?
U Nového is a quiet village pond (rybník) lying just north of Hybrálec, a small highland settlement in the Vysočina region a couple of kilometres northeast of Jihlava. It sits on the Smrčenský potok, the little stream that threads through the village and widens into a chain of ponds — U Nového, Obecní rybník, Trpaslík and Zadní rybník — strung out above the rooftops. The Czech name means roughly 'at Nový's', the local habit of naming a pond after its former owner or lessee.↗↗
This is not a resort or a managed bathing beach but a piece of everyday countryside: grassy banks, reeds, open water and the gentle highland landscape around it, framed by a village with a real past. Silver was once dug all around Hybrálec, and the surrounding fields and woods still carry the scars of medieval mining, which makes a walk past the ponds an easy, low-key outing that you can pair with the village sights.↗
A pond in the Jihlava highlands
Hybrálec sits at around 510 metres on the Křemešnická highlands, a gently rolling plateau of fields, small woods and streams rather than dramatic mountains. The Smrčenský potok runs through the village and, just to the north, opens out into a series of fish ponds. U Nového is the first name in that row, so the water you reach is part of a string of ponds, dikes and stream-side paths that follow the valley out of the village.
