“Holidaying in the repressive atmosphere of a Soviet occupation wasn't all fun and games but photographically it was a goldmine for me.”

Czechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its peaceful dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993. Ard Hesselink took these amazing pictures in 1976 when he was on a bicycling holiday in Czechoslovakia.