PRAGUE is a beautiful city, but you have to be damn quick on your feet to see it.

Take the magnificent Charles Bridge, which spans the mighty Vltava, with its roaring weir, its pleasure boats and its fleet of yellow pedalos.

It even has a tethered balloon next to the Franz Kafka Museum under which tethered tourists can soar above the city and enjoy its beauty.

In that respect it could almost be Torquay, except that in Prague you can't hear the distant sound of whingeing.

The bridge is an impressive structure boasting about 30 statues, mainly religious in nature, some of them rubbed to a golden shine in places by the eager hands of those who believe such rubbing will bring them good luck, good health and large piles of money.

You approach it through a warren of narrow cobbled streets, and suddenly it's there in front of you, just across the tram lines and round the corner from the Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments.

But then, just as you pause to take in its magnificence, and maybe to prime your camera for a prize-winning shot, you hear a distant thunder.

You glance over your shoulder and here they come, a great unstoppable tide of tourists, led by a tour guide holding an umbrella in the air and jostling shoulder to shoulder.

They fill the width of the narrow street, dozens of them at a time, like logs surging down the mighty rivers of British Columbia.

The narrower the street, the faster they go, and woe betide anyone who gets in their way.

You leap into the doorway of a gift shop or behind the shelter of a bistro table, so as not to get swept along with the fast-flowing wave.

And then, just when they have gone by and the thunder of Timberlands and Crocs on the cobbles and the buzzing of digital camera zoom lenses has died away; just when you breathe a sign of relief and step out into the narrow street again, another log-flood of tourists surges into view.

This happens pretty much constantly.

But Prague is lovely, and it is worth being light on your feet to see it.

Ducking into the occasional gift shop can even yield its own unexpected rewards.

I was lucky enough to be in the Czech Republic for a conference and an award ceremony, and I was lucky enough to be representing a team of colleagues whose work was deemed worthy of two awards from the World Association of Newspapers, which actually is every bit as prestigious as it sounds.

But there were gaps in the busy schedule, and during one of these I ventured out into the streets of the old town, being wary of course of approaching tides of tourists.

In one narrow street just off Wenceslas Square, a street made permanently shady by the tall buildings hemming it in, stood a tiny shop.

Its shelves were lined with hundreds of Russian dolls, the wooden kind where the littler ones fit inside the bigger ones.

Alongside the traditional designs and religious figures were dolls depicting politicians from Putin to Brown, and entertainers from Jacko to Elvis.

Then my eye was caught by a hand-written sign claiming that the shop stocked dolls of every American football team, every pro baseball team and every pro basketball team. And then I saw a smaller sign proclaiming that the tiny shop stocked dolls of every English and Scottish league football club, right from the top of the Premiership to the foot of League Two.

And by now, being alert and perspicacious Guideliners, you will have guessed where this is going.

I scanned the shelves, all laid out in meticulous alphabetical order... Bury... Mansfield Town... Rushden and Diamonds... and of course in the furthest corner of the display, God's own football team.

Of course, I had to buy it, and the representative of the Express and Echo who was with me at the time bought the Exeter City one.

Over a beer — a fine chilled Staropramen, seeing as you ask, and very nice, too — we undid our dolls.

An uncannily lifelike Tim Sills complete with squad number, name and sponsor logo is the largest doll.

Inside him is Lee Mansell, then Chris Hargreaves, then Elliot Benyon and then Wayne Carlisle. They all have accurate hair colour, and Mr Hargreaves even has his trademark flowing locks, suggesting that whoever painted these figures went to the trouble of doing a little more than just going through the squad names and numbers on Championship Manager.

The Exeter version has five Grecians favourites including Danny Seaborne, who was famously sent off at St James Park a couple of Boxing Days ago after squaring up to our Tim.

Later we recreated the moment on the bar table and I am pleased to say that our Tim once again towered over the puny Grecian.

We got a few strange looks from the locals, but we didn't care.

The chap in the shop was delighted to sell two of his less well-known teams, and engaged us in conversation in perfect English on the perils of his trade.

He was pleased, he said, that Torquay still had the five players he had sold me.

Top level football was a nightmare, he said. In the old days you could paint a team and they would last all season, he said.

Nowadays with all the transfers, he said. Real Madrid, he said. He made a sound like 'Pfffft', rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

Outside there was a huge gathering in the square.

It seemed as if all the tourist guides had brought all their cascades of tourists into the same place at exactly the same time.

They were there, it turned out, to watch the Astronomical Clock strike the hour.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for a spectacular timepiece in a city square. As tourist attractions go a giant ornamental clock is pretty hard to beat, and this 15th century clock is indeed a wonderment.

It has dials showing the astrological phases and astronomical movements, and it is a thing of great beauty.

But the thing the crowds come to see is the movement that happens when the clock strikes the hour.

A model skeleton, representing death, tugs on a cord which rings a bell, and the 12 apostles amble past two open windows above the dial.

And that's it. The crowds gather, murmur in wonderment, and then head off into the narrow streets to buy Russian dolls and drink chilled Staropramen.

We watched the clock strike more than once, thinking that for all the crowds it must do something spectacular every third hour or something.

But by about quarter to the hour the street in front of the clock was heaving, and all that happened was that a skeleton rang the bell and some apostles ambled past.

There are clocks in Coventry and indeed in Exeter that do more.

Go to Prague, and enjoy its wonderful cuisine, its sights and even its gift shops. But look out for the great waves of tourists and don't get too excited about the clock.