Here we are at a party, barbeque or somewhere during our normal daily social/lives. The background is one of the Vulcans (volcanoes) we rode past in Ecuador, South America, at the beginning of our Andes Trail trip in 2014.After many 1,000's of kms riding & vertical 1,000,s meters of climbing we got to the little picture in the top right of this image. Its Jeanette at 4850m on the continental divide of the Andes mountain range, this is in the Huascaran national park high up in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanco.
                                 

We won't be eating these little critters in Europe Now Jeanette has decided to take a change in her work direction. Leaving her an opportunity to take some well-earned time off after 16 years of service to the country, we are off on another cycling trip. I would love to go back to the Andes, 13,000 kms of mountains from the Caribbean to the (almost) Antarctica. But for the moment have decided to ride from north to south along the old Iron Curtain political divide in Europe. This time we will be unsupported???? Its Europe what can go wrong? Hopefully we will only have adventures that we can manage?

                                             

We will not get as high as these 6,000m Andean peaks but we intend to get into hills in the Tatra & Carpathian Mountains Any how I digress, very soon we are out of here and Oslo here we come. Follow us and our sponsors on our IronCurtainTour for fun and frolics on the bikes as we visit the Vikings, the Prussians, the Gypsies and all the other Easties of Europe.

Parnu and to the South heading for the Latvian border.

Garmins at the ready and a little peak at the paper maps (often too much variety of info) we head out of Parnu.

  “Nek minit” We find ourselves in damp humid single track on our very heavy and slightly unstable touring bikes. Then we have trees over the track as we head further into the coastal jungle, we are questioning the Garmin once again! But as we are in the flattest land in Europe (my guess), the single track is actually quite pleasant and there are no deadly animals, snakes or insects to do us harm.

At the Lamb grilling festival in Uulu. Moskovic cars Trabant's a few Urals and other "classic" vehicles on display. But Moskovic's and Trabant's ?? Old time Estonian dancing in the background.

 Out of the single track and back onto the road. We were taken on to some busy highway again and after a couple of k’s we reassessed our Garmin logged route and decided to go off course to avoid the highway. Curious that we have set the Garmin to avoid highways and allow the use of dirt roads.

 Luck is on our side again, a k down the alternate route option we come upon Uulu where they are having a Lamb grilling festival. It's just a big village summer weekend festival. Old cars, motorbikes, a band, folk dancing, handicraft stalls and beer drinking, yee hah. Pity we come across it so early in the day we both agree it would be a really good place to spend the day. Our very quiet sealed road deteriorated into quiet and rideable dirt road and eventually into rougher corrugated dirt road. Not so good with our loaded panniers but it did not last for long.

 This evenings camp was alongside the beach set among the evergreen forest at a RMK (Estonian state forest) camping area at RMK Lemme Telkimisala. A beautiful location in a bucolic Baltic Sea beach setting with good summer weather. 

An Estonian beach, perhaps this is nnot the best pic? 

Swimming? well we did venture in. So we walk through the small sparsely grassed sand dunes and down the short width of beach into the water. Problem is the water is very shallow for a long way and although the sand under foot is nice there are football sized rocks poking above the sand underwater. Once we have got to thigh deep water the visibility is about zero so it could be easy to stub one's toe on one of the sparsely distributed rocks. We got to a depth where we could dive into the cool water, did a few strokes and started the 150m or so walk back to the beach.

I swam in the Baltic Sea, now there’s an achievement!

That evening we spent a bit of time chatting with a Russian couple around their campfire. Michael & Mary who maybe in their late 30’s are visiting the area because Mary lived in this part of Estonia with her parents when she was young. So they are on a nostalgic visit. Michael’s English is quite good because he did 10 years of english at school in Russia.

 We got going quite early the next morning for the Estonia/Latvia border crossing. Of course both of the countries are schengen signatories so apart from the sort of inconspicuous sign at the border one would not know the change in countries at that point.

A nicer Estonian beach.

Quite a typical day day in the parts of the Baltic States we have travelled so far.

Estonian/Latvian border to Riga, Latvia.

We got going quite early the next morning for the Estonia/Latvia border crossing. Of course both of the countries are schengen signatories so apart from the sort of inconspicuous sign at the border one would not know the change in countries at that point.

At the border of Estonia and Latvia

After about 10 kms we arrived at the border and encountered a nice little hotel/cafe for a coffee stop which ended up as a lunch stop and a bus ride to Riga. This was because our main navigator, Jeanette, decided that the route options into Riga would require too much main road travel. The lady where we ate was extremely helpful enquiring with the drivers at the bus stop across the road about the timetables and how we could get our bikes on board.

Two and a half hours later we are in Riga riding around trying to find our digs.

Great little hostel, late afternoon we are showered, changed and into town center.

Bike and us made it to Riga

 If you read my earlier posts about St Petersburg you may have noted my reservations about my visitation of these great old European cities!! Riga is a gorgeous UNESCO listed city but of course it is a full on tourist trap. Gaudy cafes Rock & Roll themed, Italian Pizza themed, O'Donnells Bar etc, etc, for christ sake why do all these tourists want to go to Riga, Latvia to eat in a joint like they have at home??All of us traipsing around with our guide books, cameras, picture phones and heads swivelling around gawking at old buildings, old churches and each other!! Beats me!!

On to Parnu 29th July, for our 3rd night in Estonia.

 Our day consisted of some very busy roads with trucks doing 100kph on a two lane road and a small verge of tar on the outside of the white line. The “good” thing about it is that the dirt part of the shoulder beyond the tar is almost level with the tar and is quite smooth with an easy transition. After about 10 kms in quite a frazzled state we pulled off the highway to reassess our situation, ‘cos although we  were probably going to get to Parnu alive we may be mentally scarred for life. At this stage our Garmins and paper maps did not quite allow us to ascertain how an alternative route off the highway and around the village we were at would transpire. Or how the small thin line onto Parnu would present itself.

I used my intuition as to how one may get around the village (I was born in one in Ireland after all). This then took us onto dirt roads for about the next 14kms. Way better than the highway. The dirt was mostly quite good but a bit gravelly and loose for the last 5kms. Most of this ride was through what I can only guess was a peat mining area. Huge expanses of flat mined & windrowed dark brown humus type of soil for maybe 10kms?, we will never know?

Jeanette inspecting soil a the peat mining area

Peat mining??

For the next 15 kms into Parnu we had mostly bike path or pavement/footpath. Our campground for the night was a big Euro style affair alongside the river/estuary. As it is Euro holidays the campground was packed, mostly with campervans or caravans, probably 500 vehicles of all shapes and sizes. We were shown to our tent site in a little corner of lawn with maybe 8 other tents. Jeanette wanted to go back into town (4kms) to a special pizza cafe we had been recommended by our Estonian angel Liis. But I was too weary after 90kms on all sorts of terrain, so we had chips and meat patties with a bit of coleslaw and a great little local dark beer for dinner.

Ate brekky with 3 German guys at the tables alongside our tent. Again, great to chat with fellow cyclists. Jeanette wanted to go to the beach which was over to the sea side of the bar from the river that Parnu is located on. We sort of followed our noses across town, had a coffee stop on the way and arrived at the Ladies Beach!! The Parnu  seaside was in full swing. There was a beach football tournament going on, high ropes courses and they were setting up for some sort of concert.

High/low ropes in Parnu. 

At the football tournament/Ladies beach in Parnu

I have to show respect annd not publish the pics I took at the beach.

Here she is again, we had to travel all around the world to find some single track for her.

We know it was the Ladies Beach we had stumbled on because as we were making our way on the boardwalk through the lovely soft white sand dunes (yes folks just like in Australia) we came upon a big sign board. The Ladies Beach is an old traditional one where ladies of past times would go to bathe sans costumes, and the sign asked people to show respect. The beach was very busy mostly with families doing all the things families do at the beach. And of course a few ladies enjoying the freedom of bathing in their birthday suits. We did not bathe as we had our bikes all packed over on the other side of the dunes at the football tournament and we do not like to leave them in that situation for very long. Plus we did not have the time to walk the kilometer (joke) that it takes to get to a swimming depth.

Our camp ground the day after Parnu.

Another Country, Estonia or Eestland, Eestie!

The booze boat from Stockholm to Tallinn docked with much pushing and scrambling to get off. I call it the booze boat because is a duty free ferry for many Swedes to enjoy cheap drinking overnight to Estonia & back. The corridors are narrow, think about 800mm, your corridors at home are about 1m minimum. So approximately 2,000 people are trying to get off the ferry down the corridors and the usual idiots are out of their rooms, still packing their bags on the floor in the corridor,duh! they seem to be working in pairs to add to the confusion, christ knows what would happen if the ship caught fire and or was sinking!! In the resulting melee I lost my riding gloves. Or they were stolen by the owner of the brand spanking Ferrari who parked his red rocket next to my bike. He probably needed a pair of gloves for his sojourn down the Autobahn to see if the Bontrager gloves can handle 200+ kph.

We leave Stockholm on the booze boat, with a little bit of drizzle in no way dampening our memories of Sweden & Norway. We love you guys and girls.

A couple of hours in Tallinn old city is far from enough. A friend Les Doyle, said that Tallinn is his favourite city in Europe. I would have to say that, although we did not stay very long he may be correct, it is stunning! Well in the running with all those oohh, ahhh cities and towns in Italy, France etc.

Off down the road to the south, yee hahh we are really on the way now. Great bike paths out of the city along the coast to the south west. We stop for lunch at a bench on the bike path. Bullrushes between us and the sea. The back of a big new building between the bike path and the road. We are about finished so I wander around the building to hunt down some caffeine. Lo and behold a huge bike shop facing the street occupies half of the space of the building. A brand new pair of Roeckl riding gloves for Eu 12.95.

 Generally nice riding through the day, a little bit of busy road, but good weather. Towards the end of the day as we are dutifully following the purple line on the Garmin we arrived at our proposed campsite after half an hour on dirt, we get told it's full with a private group. Dosent look full to us but with no Estonian and the owner on the other end of the phone speaking very little anglaise we are screwed. Long story short, we are in a beach resort spa hotel for the night.

The beach in the morning after our first night in Estonia.

Our miss fortune or camp miss adventure turned out brilliantly. After lunch the next day we met up with a great young Estonian girl on her baby blue bike commuter bike, and inquired about some directions. In my overtly inquisitive way we find out that she is heading for a campground about 40kms away that would surely have space for us too. So we cheekily end up asking her if we could follow her to the campground. She speaks great English and turns out to be excellent company, and has gained a free home stay in Australia if she ever decides to visit.

Liis and Jeanette (kindered spirits I think) at our quiet & quaint campground

Can you imagine you are 24ish, out for a long weekend bike trip to visit a national park on your 2nd ever bike trip on your own and these two grey haired 60+ year olds latch on to you for 24 hours.

This is again what I love about riding my bike, the people of the countries we visit.

Too much about the 1st day's ride but it highlighted our lack of ability to understand how campgrounds are advertised or marketed on the digital and paper media that we have available.

Although Liis was heading for a national park that was very appealing to Jeanette we decided to continue south as there are only so many places of interest we can visit.

A quick couple of pics of old Tallinn town.

We crossed the Iron Curtain to St Petersburg

Not cycling, but this had to be done as Jeanette had wanted to go to St Petersburg for a long time, bucket list. Its a shame that we did not get to see a performance of Swan Lake while we were there to top it off for her.
I had many misconceptions of Russia. This trip blew most of them away. I will not go into details about Russia because we were only there for 3 days in great weather and in holiday time. I am not big on visiting cities anymore, how many museums and art galleries can one take in in one lifetime, really? 
I will add that we had a great Airbnb in the heart of the old town. It is on the 4th floor of a very old rundown building (as most are). They had sent us a good little pictogram of how to get around the back to the entry through a dingy alley/porte to a large untidy courtyard with grass and trees. The entrance to the staircase for our apartment stairs is a plain sheet steel door into a Victorian or earlier stairwell.

This pic is one floor down from our apartment with the entry below the camera.

Any how I am going into too much detail. Young Artem met us with his lovely laid back relaxed  Russian nature. The room we had in the apartment he shares with his lady Lera is totally charming. If you were going to have an apartment in an ancient rambling old building in an old part of a historical city that was unique and charming this is it. We loved it to bits.

Then the bike trip with Elenka, a local St Peterburgh girl historian and journalist. We spent 4 hours roaming the quieter (and not so) streets taking in the many golden palaces and sights of interest in the old city. 

Here is one of the many golden spired palaces to god, and to/for royalty of the Russian Tsars. The opulence of their lifestyle is grotesque, no wonder there was a revolution. Its a pity that it did not turn out better for the normal Russian people after the October revolution.

Here are some revolutionary scars on a grand old building, can you imagine a cold October day with the Bolsheviks being machine gunned by the kings soldiers. Ice & snow on the ground maybe some blood staining the snow.

Would I recommend St Petersburgh? absolutely! Russia? perhaps a bit of Russian would help? I would love to travel more acrosss to the east. In Stockholm there are lots of faces from all over the world, in St Petersburgh there are lots of ethnic faces from all over Russia. This gives me an itch to visit where they came from, Siberia, the Ural mountains, the desert Stan's in the south, Georgia? Russia is massive and still a bit secretive but more open than before, so much world so little time! Sigh.

Sweden & Norway Done

We are in Stockholm and so are done with our traverse of the lower parts of Scandinavia. 

The regions of Norway and Sweden in the lower latitudes that we have travelled through have not exhibited any spectacularly remarkable scenery but has been a sensational bike ride through rolling, green lush agricultural land in the height of a very pleasant summer. 

Yes it rained a bit on us, moderate for a few hours early on in Sweden and a few showers here and there since. Our friend Knut informed us that well what did we expect after we had crossed the border in to Sweden. 

The friendly rivalry of countries that border each other is alive and well up here. A lot of the time we have ridden in perfect cycling weather on bike trails, empty dirt roads or quite roads. Maybe twice a car has come a bit close (1meter). The people have been patient & polite to a tee.

Now although I said we have felt that there has not been remarkable scenery there was a sunset one evening that is as good if not more sensational than any I have ever come across. A short memory helps here. But not to dilute the fantastic feeling of the sunset on the Skansen fijord it was good. One of the attributes of a Swedish sunset is the shallow angle that the sunsets at is that it goes down slowly unlike our Australian sunset that is very quick. As the long evening was settling in at Skansen we were out  on a timber jetty while a gorgeous white swan was paddling around with her cygnets on the shoreline alongside. They were oblivious to us, she was "talking" to them and they were feeding at the same time. My ears picked up a gentle, sound of air beating behind me. As I turned 180deg I was presented by two swans in full flight about 50m out in the fjord, flying by. They were at water level using the ground (water) effect for enhanced aerodynamics which in turn helped reverberate the sound to me. These were the only two audio tracks on the planet as the sun kept changing the pinks, violets and crimson mixes in the west. I'm still tingling with the sensation.

Unfortunately we did not have our cameras out on the jetty, this is a pic from our dinner table 2 hours before the sunset came on with full effect.

30 kms to Stockholm

There is so much more to Sweden & Norway but we cannot do it all. We are now in Stockholm and had a full Indian Tamil breakfast at our Airbnb. Vida & Bala's Airbnb is very nice out in the northern burbs of Sweden's capital city. We had a quick walk around Stockholm last night and will give it the full tourist snappy, museum, art gallery workover today and tomorrow.

This is typical of Sweden, a beautiful young soldier guarding the palace in Stockholm. While we were there an American guy stepped over some decorative rope barriers nearby, she levelled her gun and said something loud in Swedish to him. It scared the living bejeasus out of him and he promptly jumped back to where he should be, on the public side of the fence.