600 meters from here is my tent parked for tonight. But I cannot see it. I can see a totally different world down below, as if I was sitting on a cloud.
It's really hard to talk about these 114 kilometers I made today. I really managed to get up earlier today, and even leave the camp. But I spent half an hour at Ventės Ragas - saying my good-bye to the mall and to the lighthouse.
The weather was perfect, there were very few times when I had to ride against the wind. I refilled my rations at the local village shop, where I was serviced in soviet style: no smile, no eye contact and no "good bye". I could choose from two roads to reach Klaipėda: a shorter and a longer (but supposedly better). I didn't want to make extra kilometers today, for that reason I turned to the road that lead to forest. There I experienced real offroad riding: the path was so undulated, that I could feel my arms tissues dangling. Despite all that extreme experience, I got to see "Nidos Nafta" oil well, Svencelė kite and wake spot. From there the offroad turned into a proper one, but route markings in reality started to differ from those in the map. Not wanting to end up on offroad again, I chose a longer route through Priekulė. For the extra kilometers I had to make, I found a local bakery and bought some buns: I ate one on my way to Nida, and another as soon as I got there. In Priekulė bike route markings suggested not to take the car route for getting out of the town, and I followed them. And there again I felt sorry for my decision - I ended up on another offroad which was going in parallel with the normal road. There I easily got tired of following sandy up and down paths, and I returned closer to the civilization (that is to the cars) - Šilutės Road. The roadside was not impressive, but there were two lanes going the same direction, so, I bravely took my position on the road next to far far cousins of my bike - cars. On the fourth day, I was more comfortable in riding next to them, than doing it alone on some unknown village road.
My initial plan was to arrive to camping site next to Klaipėda. But yesterday's achievement inspired me to go for Nida on the same day. So, as soon as I was in Klaipėda, I turned straight to ferry site, and when I arrived there, the ferry was about to leave. I made it on time to avoid waiting another half an hour. So, there was no time to think whether to stay in Klaipėda or to go to Nida, I just had to go.
I got across to the Curonian Spit with seagulls gliding next to ferry, the birds was the most impressive part - though they were paying attention to people only because they expected to get something in return.
The road path there first seemed rather disappointing - it was sort of two(for each direction) very narrow lanes of concrete with a rather deep gap between. The gap was not like abyss, but still going at a great speed I wouldn't have wanted my bike wheel to slip there. Luckily, maybe the first kilometer was like that, soon the situation with the quality of the paths improved. Only the pine cones and some sand were making the ride a little bit more dangerous. Most of the time, the path was going through the pine woods, so, at the speed of 25 km/h the lungs were airing rather well. I was doing breaks, but tried to limit those - it is illegal to camp anywhere in the Curonian Spit. And I realized there would be rather a lot of those wanting to stay at the Nida's camping site (for a rather decent price compared to other accommodation options there). The later I get, the worse place I get to tent(and I was right, the area for those coming just with tent (and bike) was quite small, and it felt rather already crowded - no sign of luxury for privacy I got at Šilinė's "Medaus Slėnis" - my first camping site in this trip.
Hey, but who cares where your tent is placed, and whether there is a neighbor 1 meter or 30 meters away? If you get to see places like this, all the details doesn't matter that much:
 |
| a view from Parnidis Dune |
No comments:
Post a Comment