Straight Roads and Railway Crossings

The title says it all. Both Poland and Lithuania just delivered straight roads and level crossings. Just as you wind the bike up to speed a crossing appears. Every so often there was a bend and that had a crossing on it too!

It is brakes on, stop, look left, look right, doubt yourself so look left again, right again, wonder if you would even see the train if it was coming full speed, rely on your hearing (wearing earplugs and a helmet) and think sod it, shut your eyes and open the throttle. Only a few km until you do it again

Basically the route today was going around the little bit of Russia that is Kaliningrad. I considered getting a visa etc but would have had to go in person to London, get biometrics done and paid over £125 just to do about 100km through it. In the end it was time that decided against it as my Belarus visa only came back the day before I left.

So after 400 odd km of riding I got to my campsite here at Karkle near Klaipede which is nice and basic but still 12 euro a night. Must be the Lithuanian version of the Algarve.

After pitching my tent I headed off to the beach (400m walk) for a swim in the Baltic Sea to relax. It was surprisingly warm. However, relaxing was not excatly how it went as there were loads of jelly fish around so I got a few (very minor) stings and then whilst walking in the sand stepped on a snake. It was black and about 50cm long, it shot off before either it bit me or I could identify it. I made my way back to the safety of the campsite! 

At the moment the roads are not great and it is fairly mundane riding. I do hope that this trip delivers some better stuff later on.