As we were having our dinner last night, I happened to look out of the window and to my surprise spied a British number plate. Compatriots have been few and far between in the last four months and so as soon as I had crammed in my last mouthful of prawn, pea and potato curry I hot footed it over, saying to Sarah I would be back in a minute.
The motorhome was owned by Neil and Sheelagh from Lancashire. They had been doing part of the same route we are planning, but clockwise round the Baltic rather than anti-clockwise. They had already been up through Denmark and Sweden, back down Finland and were now exploring the Baltic states. Neil and Sheelagh are more experienced than us, having been motorhoming for three years and with extensive travel experience before that. We exchanged travel tales and tips: me strongly recommending Torun and them giving us details of good stopping points in Denmark. Before I knew it half an hour had passed and Sarah appeared to let me know I had successfully avoided washing up duties!
Today we said goodbye to Neil and Sheelagh and set off on our final leg through the Baltic states. Before we could go anywhere we had to queue for twenty minutes to empty and fill Basil. Now summer is upon us sites are much busier and so with many vans moving on each morning it is not infrequent that a small queue forms to fill with fresh water and empty the tanks.
We were soon on our way and immediately hit the dreaded corrugated gravel forest tracks. Luckily this time SatNav had no raft river crossings in store and we were soon back on tarmac. Today’s pattern filled the same model as our other drives since leaving Poland. Forest, storks in flowering meadows, forests, long straight roads, forests. You get the picture.
On Tuesday we cross to Finland and we are then in the realm of punitively high alcohol prices until we exit Scandinavia in ten or so weeks. A Finnish woman, who I met on my trip to Auschwitz, has given me a long list of places to visit in Finland, which will form the backbone of that leg of our trip. In addition though, she told me of a supermarket on the Latvian, Estonian border where Finns go to get their cheap alcohol before returning home. As we approached the Latvian Border, there it was, SuPer Alcho! I need no invitation to go into any shop with Alcho in the title, so in we drove.
SuPer Alko (not Super Alki)
The car park was full of Finnish cars and motorhomes, with a smattering of other nationalities. I was given the task of filling Basil’s alcohol lockers and while Sarah maximised space in Basil’s underfloor storage, I went in. SuPer Alcho is basically a warehouse stacked to the ceiling with alcohols and Finns, in almost equal measure. The wine section, our preferred tipple, was not as big as I had hoped. I would appear that Finns prefer beer and a drop of the hard stuff, which took up most of the shelf space. I managed to find, what I hope are, some reasonable bottles and by the time Sarah had finished packing it away there’s not room to swing a mouse in any of Basil’s capacious lockers.
The border itself was a typical Schengen non-event. We stopped in Parnu, Estonia for Sarah to do a supermarket shop and then we finished our journey to Vanamoisa Caravan Park (59.330952, 24.542150) near Tallinn. It is a large, modern site with plenty of hard standing and at €19.80 with ASCI discount good value for money. We have seen Tallinn before, but for anyone visiting Estonia’s capital Vanamoisa Caravan Park is only about 500 metres from a railways station, so would be a great location for a visit.
A final, great, piece of news from today is that our bear watching excursion has been confirmed for 9th and 10th July. We can’t wait. Co-incidentally a friend forwarded us an article from Saturday’s Travel Section of the Guardian featuring Martinselkosen Erakeskus, which is exactly the same wildlife centre through which we have booked our trip. Glad to get our booking sorted before the Guardianistas’ descend!