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.