There is actually a Grabstejn, but this isn't it; this is Fridstejn, north of Turnov. But I started to think of it as Castle Grabstejn after the old codger of a caretaker short-changed me. I didn't re-count my money until it was too late to do anything about it, but I did tell him off on my out. In Russian. I figured I might as well offend him.
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The castle ruin is king of interesting- it's built partly on the rock and partly in the rock, has some interesting old grafitti, and lots of places to climb over and around. So it's worth a stop, so long as you count your change. I expect that the views are nice, but I really couldn't tell...
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The picture looks so atmospheric because- it was atmospheric. In fact, sort of in-your-face atmospheric: it rained for more than half the day. Actually, it was a little more than a mist, but a little less than full rain most of the time, and chilly. And this was the day of my second bike ride, so I spent most of it cold&wet. I climbed from Turnov up to Fridstejn (actually way past Fridstejn, until I realized that I'd missed the turnoff to the hrad), then over to Mala Skala, by the Suche Skaly, then through Besedice and Zbirohy back to Turnov. The bad weather made it tough to get much out of picturesque villages like Mala Skala, but it was still a worthwhile ride.
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For this ride I rented one of the $5 bikes from the Karel IV. It turned out to be a plain but nice little Diamondback mountain bike, in pretty good shape. Getting air into the tires was an adventure- I had to ask the the English-speaking woman at the desk, who then called an older guy (Czech & German only), who then had me bring the bike into the basement. The lights in the basement didn't work, so he went off to find a flashlight, found a place to plug in an actual air compressor. After some fiddling, he got the compresor to work, and we got the tire pumped up. Somehow I was expecting they'd just hand me a floor pump... Supposedly there are also bikes available at the train station, but I couldn't quite figure out where in the station that might be, and judging by the looks of the train station, I doubt that they would have produced a decent bike. I'm glad I syated at the Karel IV, and glad I asked them about bikes.