Pärnu definately met our expectations. This beautiful city is really worth a visit. Our evening is spent on the beach, just walking in the temperated sea and experiencing a nice beach concert. Tom is leaving tomorrow and we are headed towards Riga.
Goodbye Tom, we’ll come after you to Riga!
Tom took the bus to Riga and we’re ready to continue on our adventure. Today we’ll from time to time be on the main road towards Riga. There’s quite a lot of traffic on this road, but there is a good road shoulder which we can use.
The kilometers are flying away. We feel great and our smile is on the face all day. We follow some gravel roads and cycle just beside the sea…Some great views.
Eurovelo 13…First sign so far!
I’ve seen Eurovelo route 13 signs for the first time on my trip. The first sign is just over the boarder to Latvia. It’s amazing how you can see the difference just by crossing the boarder. Estonia have really made a good impression to me. Everything is clean, people are friendly and it seems like things are in order.
When arriving to Latvia, the road standard falls and in the smaller areas it seems very dirty and people just look away and continue walking when we try to ask them something. Let’s hope this first impression is going to be changed.
We continue our ride towards Tuja, which is where our campsite is located. We follow the cycle path and quckly arrives at some amazing views. I will have problems describing how beautiful this scenery is. The sun is almost going down, the sea is 100% calm and there’s this beautiful mist, which makes the view even greater.
Cycling offroad, why follow the path when you can climb fences?
The road is quite bad, but we are goal targeted and continue with a smile on our face while cycling on the gravel. Suddenly we come out on a path for hikers, this is no road, to be honest…Even people hiking would have problem finding the path from time to time. We laugh about the whole thing and try to continue.
We arrive at a fence that says the bikepath is now on the sandy beach… NOT A CHANCE, come on….give me a break. We’re discussing how to advance, and I leave the bike, climb over the fence and walk into the forrest. There’s no pathway, not anything. The decision is that we will continue through the forrest, which basically means that we need to lift the bicycles and trailer over the fence.
It’s not easy. We need to walk beside the bicycle while the mosquitos and flies are eating our whole body in the thick forrest. Passing this small river and manage to get up again. It’s amazing, how will this end? Will we be able to continue?
Private area…We’ll continue and play stupid
While we get further on, we arrive at a sign saying that whis is a private area. Not allowed to walk, cycle or drive car… probably not even allowed to breath. We look at each other and I say that we’ll continue over this fence as well… If the question or angry people appears, we’ll just play stupid and unknowing.
Finally there’s some road, gravel road. I’m just laughing of the whole experience. Suddenly I’m almost falling. The gravel is like sand, it just disappears under my tires. It’s like this for many kilometers…. Give me fences, forrest, rivers and what ever you want, but when you give me a road…PLEASE KEEP THE SAND AWAY!!!
We arrived at the campsite and quickly set up the tent, had a quick shower and a drink at the small bar. The sunset we have here is awesome, the sky is red and you can see the sun going down into the baltic sea.
There’s about 80Km left to Riga. We will cycle that part tomorrow, after a nice morning bath!
Aina’s little corner…or maybe a huge corner today?
Now it is only Aina’s corner. But you’re still welcome!
We said goodbye to Tom after a really nice breakfast at the hotel. That was
sad, I just got used to hearing all the jokes during the day.
But the sun was shining and it was a pleasure to be on the road again! As
we followed the mainroad the kilometers flew by. Perfect! Then suddenly the
signs showed us on to a sideroad and we came down to the ocean. I seriously
had to remind myself to breathe because it was so beautiful. It looked like
the sky never met the ocean. Like we could see in to the eternity. And the
sunset was not making it any worse!We followed the sea on the way to the camp. That means that we had this
magnificent view for hours. But when the signs told us that we had to go
down to the beach for 300m we did not agree. So in the middle of nowhere,
with quite heavy bikes we lifted everything over the fence and continued
«off road». It was so funny to watch Stian with all his luggage on a trail
that cannot be called a trail. It was full of rocks and trees and gras. At
one point we had to cycle around a fallen tree. And just to make it more
easy for us we had to cross someones backyard with a sign that said that no
one was aloud in there. But Stian had a plan: «If someone sees us, we act
stupid!»
No one saw us but at least we got a good laugh!
Finally we arrived the camp and met the lovely bartender who provided us
with wine and chocolate for supper. Stian put up the tent and we both fell
asleep the minute we laid down on the ground.
Sincerely,
Aina
Picture album from today’s ride:
GPS Data from today’s ride:
Norwegian