Smalininkai

Last night's campsite was quaint - the old guy who owned it was constantly on patrol looking after his 2 sets of guests. Still on a power crash after Poland we struggled to get up this morning. It was light until 11 pm and then a thunder storm and burst of rain woke us before our 7 am alarm. The reset process went until 9am when we needed to get up in order to manage our 85 planned kms today.

Breakfast was last night's pizza remains, eaten standing, simultaneously using the carton as a plate AND a table. We had a leisurely coffee/tea with our very inspiring German Land Crusier camper neighbours enjoying their adventure stories and advice. The conversation kept us occupied in thought all morning and we've decided that such a Land Crusier trip would be a great way to see non-cyclable parts of the world!

The route for the day was a simple 50km straight on, then take a left for 35km.. pretty much...! Flanking Kaliningrad all the time as we head coastwards. Lithuanian roads lulled us into a false sense of ease for a slick 40km on beautifully smooth asphalt before we turned into a very strong headwind which pretty much halved our average speed. We had to make the decision of "shelter in the forest with mutant mosquitos" (who were biting through a couple of layers of clothes) or "keep riding in a monsoon". After trying the former for 2 minutes we decided the lesser of the two evils was to get soaked through and rode into the rain just like the cliché life mantra about learning to dance in the rain, as a cycle tourist sometimes your butt hurts too much for mosquitos to take a bite, you have to cycle in the rain from time to time. "A free nature experience" as Peter called it. ;)

Tonight's campsite is something special. You couldn't make this up in a dream;

It's a house /museum, owned by an old gentleman with a doctor title.
With a compost toilet. (No flush)
A well for water and washing.
The camp space is inbetween rusty farm equipment as part of his exhibits.
He boiled the kettle for us to mix with well water for a wash = naked washing in the exhibit field using our watering can head shower canister. Very surreal!
He guided us round the exhibits -printing presses, cinema equipment, Russian cars, huge stone busts of Lenin amongst other unrelated objects such as a corset from Bismark's era and some heavy old russian hair curlers.
A stork nest, complete with offspring, is just meters from the tent.
The owner wouldn't accept any money for the camping and said we shouldn't pay as we are tourists. We insisted he took a donation for the museum because such kindness deserves a bit of reciprocity.

We're now camp cooking in a lovely little covered area (hand built) using a tree stump as a chopping board and cooker table. Its experiences like this that money can't buy and you won't find in a guide book.

What an amazing day!Read more