Riga - Svetciems 90 km
OK, enough with the "city explorations". It was afternoon again before we headed north, into the wild. We took the major A1 road from Riga towards Estonia. It's following the Baltic coastline for over 100 km, and was expected to be a nice scenic road, but although you're just a few meters from the coast you hardly ever get to see the sea because of the trees. Who has the time for sea dipping anyway. This is the work of cyclist, just push, enjoy the scenery and stop every 20 km. That has become our strategy - we cycle by our own individual pace and meet every 20 km, or roughly every 45-60 minutes, for a short break. Everything is becoming automatic. Wake up, laugh for half an hour, eat breakfast, start cycling, pit stop for water, cycle all day with regular breaks, after 6 pm look for water and a place to spend the night. After 90 km, when the road touched the sea again and when the time was just after 6 pm we started looking for place to stay and buy some groceries. The place we stopped at looked nice for camping, but there was no shop for the next 10 or even 20 km, since it was Sunday. And, by the time we get there everything will be closed anyway. Thinking about our bad luck, we noticed a small camp ground and thought it would be nice if they had something to offer, but they (the old lady owning the camp site) a) didn't speak English, and b) it was off season already. We were just about to leave when out of the blue two Lithuanian girls arrived by car and were kind enough to give us a lift to the "near by" shop (20 km each way) to buy the stuff we needed. Of course the evening turned out to a nice dinner with a nice company. Thanks!
