Today was not a good driving day. We had a mere 130 miles to cover and SatNav said we should arrive by 1.30pm. The fact that we covered 155 miles and didn’t arrive until 4.30 pm doesn’t tell the whole story, but you get the idea.
We had a very peaceful night in the monastery car park, if that’s what it was. No Franciscan monks appeared to boot us off. A police car drove past, had a quick look at us, and then disappeared, so I suppose we must at least have been semi legal.
After breakfast my birding lens came out and I took a few shots of of the stork and her chicks. We could only count two chicks this morning. They are too big for anything to have happened to one of them during the night so we think we must have miscounted last night.
Mr. or Mrs. Stork and two chicks
Team Basil set off in high spirits towards our tenth country of this trip – Latvia. The roads were again straight as an arrow, but the surface varied between excellent on the one hand, and more patching than road on the other! There was again plenty of forest interspersed with large scale agriculture. It wasn’t long before we reached the Latvian border, but yet again an EU border was crossed with us barely noticing it.
As we started our progress through Latvia Sarah and I started to see whether we could notice any differences with Lithuania. To be honest the differences were negligible. Many of the rural houses still looked poorly maintained. Mostly wood with corrugated iron or asbestos roofs with many having badly deteriorating paintwork.
As we approached Riga, Latvia’s capital, we realised, too late, that SatNav’s voice had been accidentally switched off. Normally the absence of his supercilious tones would be a relief, but I think he wanted to tell us to go round a bypass. As a result we missed the turning and spent an unnecessary hour crawling through the delights of downtown Riga, a place we had visited for several days only two years ago. Still we were able to reminisce from the traffic jams, pointing to buildings and saying “do you remember that?”. I’d have rather used the bypass.
Our destination today was a campsite on a lake in Latvia’s Gaujas National Park. As we entered the park SatNav, who had by now found his voice, told us to take a sharp left. I was immediately sceptical as the road became no more than a gravel and hardened mud forest track. Still we pressed on the track, which in parts was corrugated nearly rattling the fillings out of my teeth. It was more like being on safari than driving on European roads. Eventually we were back on tarmac and breathed a sigh of relief, just as soon to be redirected onto rough tracks.
Is this a European road. Looks more like the Serengeti
Our torment was brought to an end by a near satnav classic. We went down to a muddy hill to what SatNav indicated was a bridge, only to be confronted by a deep wide river, with no bridge in site. What was there, in lieu of a bridge, was a Huckleberry Finn style raft which was pulled across the river by rope. It wasn’t in operation, which is just as well since any attempt to put Basil on board would have surely led to a rejected claim from our insurers.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn would be proud of this river crossing!
Back to the drawing board. Out came Google maps and I carefully plotted a route to the campsite on what appeared to be main roads. It didn’t mean the end of bumpy forest tracks but they were at least minimised. We reached the last town prior to our destination only to find that the road through was closed for some reason related to a huge crowd of people – maybe a sporting event. Luckily we found a way around the blockage and arrived at Camping Apalkalns (57.317808, 25.149640). It is a large a well appointed site on a beautiful lake and is €20 a night plus €1 for each dog. We set ourselves with a great view of the lake and sat down for a well deserved cup of tea.
The lovely lake at our campsite
No sooner had we got the chairs out than a German speaking Latvian couple turn up and pitched their caravan right next to us with their door facing ours. This would not be a problem were it not for the large dog which they had running loose. It immediately came to investigate our two. Mabel is a nervous dog and doesn’t not like her fellow canines unless they are in her pack. I grabbed her as she struggled to get at our neighbours’ dog. Melek normally loves playing with other dogs, but Mabel’s barking rubbed off on him and he took a lunge at the other dog, despite the size differential. The interloper was not put off and continued to try to be friends. Eventually the owner sauntered over and grabbed her dog, but did not put her on a lead. Luckily another German speaker asked her to put the dog on a lead, but it has not stopped the neighbours dog from snapping at two passing campers and nearly knocking one old gentleman over.
Just to cap the day an elderly Swiss couple, faced with a large empty field on which to pitch their motorhome, have just plonked themselves in front of us spoiling our lovely view.
Basil at Camping Apelkalns before the Swiss couple arrived and plonked themselves next to the bench!
I think it was Professor Brian Cox’s band who once sang “things can only get better”. So here’s hoping our plan to have a walk in the national park tomorrow goes better than today’s goals!