At 17:45 today, Arnis and I reached our destination – the north-western tip of Latvia where the Baltic Sea meets the Gulf of Riga. When we walked off the beach about 20 minutes later, I realised that I had tears in my eyes – must have been the coolish wind.
It was a great day’s walking. My expectations were not high as it looked like a difficult slog along main roads. However, when I spoke to Arnis this morning and put the options to him, for each of the 3 parts of the walk he chose the more adventurous route. As a consequence, we walked about 40km, though Arnis’ walking stride was so long and fast we finished in very smart time.
We had to wait till 09:00 before breakfast was served which meant we started after09:30. The breakfast was an experience. It was included in the tariff and was brought to our table. The omelette was standard enough and I thought that that was it. Then the waitress brought us each a strange concoction – cottage cheese, strawberry jam, white chocolate bits and wafer pieces as decoration. We ate it up and it didn’t seem to slow us down.
The first section was to the town of Vīdale. Straight up the bitumen road from Dundaga was about 14km. The alternative, on more minor roads, was about 16km, and that was Arnis’s choice. It was a pleasant walk with no traffic for most of the way. Early on though, a lunatic passed us on the gravel road doing well over 100kph. After he passed us, he went into a skid, over-corrected and skidded again. Luckily, he then regained control.
The second section was a more doubtful proposition as a way through, on my shortcut, was not fully shown on the maps. The missing section was only a few hundred metres and if I had been on my own, I probably would have gone around the main roads. Arnis wanted to give it a try and I was happy to go along with that. As we started out on this leg, we came across a mineral spring, with a pipe delivering a steady, and considerable, flow of water. There were a couple there who had about 50 five litre water containers that they were filling. Arnis explained what we were doing and they showed interest – the woman patting me on he back when she heard I was from Australia. The man asked if there was a memorial to Arvīds Blūmentāls (the Crocodile Dundee man) in Australia.
We travelled about 300m off the main road, when we should have come to a track leading off to the right. I stopped to take a photo of a cow shed which had a ramp leading up to the upper level. The farmer came out of the house on the other side of the road. Arnis asked him where the track was. The farmer said that it went through the paddock beside his shed, but it petered out after a short distance.
He looked at our map and there was much animated talking and gesticulating. He said that there was another track (not shown on the map) which was a little way up the road and which went through to the property called Sudmalkalni (which was marked on our map). The farmer said that we should be careful as, although his god-father had previously owned the property, a Ukranian now lived there who was not always friendly.
I was all for going back the 300m, but Arnis wanted to push on. The track was only just up the road a bit and it started out as a beautiful sandy track through the forest. After a kilometre or so, and with about a kilometre more to Sudmalkalni, the track started to disappear. We followed what appeared to be pushed over grass, perhaps from car tyres. Then Arnis saw a house and sheds in the distance. The track was little more than an impression on the ground. However, we kept the buildings in view as we continued.
After a few hundred metres, we reached the front gate of the property. I said to Arnis that I thought the property had been abandoned years ago. Arnis had, however, seen someone in the paddock – the Ukranian? He must regularly drive to the nearby town, Melnsils, through the paddock opposite, as it was easy to follow the track through what was otherwise a field of high grass. We walked the 4km or so into the town on the series of tracks shown on the map.
As we passed along a laneway between a few houses, Arnis asked some people where we could get a meal. It was after 15:00, and the sustaining effects of the cottage cheese dish had worn off. We were told that there was no kafējnīca, but there was a shop. We picnicked outside the shop – Arnis on herring roll-mops and me with cheese and tomato on dark rye bread, with a pumpkin pie to follow.
Our last decision was whether to go along the beach. The map showed a large number of small creeks running out into the bay. Arnis had been told in the shop that we might need to wade across their mouths in about 300mm of water. We decided to start up the bitumen road for a bit, and see how that was. We had about 13km to go. In fact, the road had a fairly clear verge beside the road and we were able to walk quickly and comfortably. Normally, I have been walking just under 11 minute kilometres. On this section of road, over about 7km, we averaged 10 minutes for each kilometre, and one we completed in 9½ minutes.
We had passed what appeared from the map to be the two biggest creeks running into the sea, so we decided to go down to the beach which was about 300m from the road over vegetated sand dunes. The beach was fairly narrow (10m wide) and seems to be completely covered at high tide. We walked the remaining distance along the beach.
We probably passed about 12 creeks, but the most difficult to cross only involved a jump across about a metre. Adjacent to the town of Kolka, there were a few swimmers on the beach.
A kilometre or so from the point, there had been extensive erosion and the beach was blocked by constant fallen trees. Eventually, we came to the point where Daina and Olivers were waiting. Daina handed both Arnis and me a bottle of Kvass – a barely alcoholic beer brewed from dark rye bread. I had tried it in Pervalka with Jānis on the first night of the trip.There were about 30 or so people there, some swimming in the choppy sea created by the meeting of the waters. We took all the obligatory photos, had salmon soup at the cafe at the car park – cooked in a large pot on an open fire outside. We then slowly wended our way home following the coast road most of the way back to Riga, after 11 days on the road.
No comments:
Post a Comment