Thursday, 16 July 2009

Thursday 16th July - Never complain about UK roads




Happy birthday David !. Left Vilnius (Lithuania) this morning and followed some good country roads to the border with Latvia. We took piccies of the EU / Latvia sign and expected a border crossing. instead we found a patchwork quilt of tarmac.After a mile we turned off therubish tarmac onto a dirt road, I thought it would be a few hundred yards long & then join a proper road.....but it went on for about 12km !. That's 12km in third gear at 20mph. I was moaning about Poland not having many motorways a few days ago but these guys only have tarmam on the equivalent of the A1/6 etc etc, see the piccies. We carried on for most of the day switching between tarmac & dirt roads. The weird thing was these dirt roads had road signs & bus stops. Occasionally a car would come from the opposite direction at about 50mph, then nothing for the next half hour.
Lots of storks nesting on top of electricity poles. I was thinking that if Latvia get some EU cash to upgrade their road network it will probably bankrupt Europe.
Even stranger was crossing the border into Estonia & arriving at our hotel which is brilliant, we even have a sauna in our room ! (yet a few kms up the road they dont have tarmac ?). Off through Estonia to Tallinn in the morning - have checked GPS & maps to look for alternative routes just in case tarmac is in short supply.

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