Well the trip to Latvia was always going to be a challenge, and that it was! We left the Hotel at Vilnius with a very shiny bike, having spent the best part of half a day cleaning it, (I have to use old drinks bottles filled with water to wash it, then use chrome cleaner and Harley polish to finish, it is labour intensive, but it means the bike is fly free and i have completed a general check of it, I intend to get it serviced in Saint Petersburg, so I am happy for the trip home, especially after the bumpy roads to come), and as usual were a spectical for the tourist groups, as we have to ride out of the pedestrian zone, so they snap awyt at us? the rumble for the exhaust reverberates off the buildings and they are blinded by the shine,( of course), we almost made it out of the city, without getting lost, but alas I took the wrong turning, we realised quite quickly and got ourselves onto the correct road to head out on the correct road.

There are no autoroutes in this country as far as I can tell, and the roads are bumpy right from the off, although we were only travelling about 250 miles it was going to take us about 8 hours, with stops. The roads are more like military roads they are dead straight and go on forever, there was very little traffic, so at times it appeared we were the only ones travelling in that direction. The scenery was Big forrests and lots of lakes,littler farms with wooden houses pne cow and a few feilds, and part from a complicated junction around a town called Daugavpils the journey was straight forward, I had to concentrate hard as the roads were very broken up, so speeds were between 30 and 50 mph most of the way, but the bike road them well, we passed several adventure bikes, who were lapping it up, they are made for this counntry. We made it to a city called Rezekne not far from our stop, but had to detour to get into the city, the roads were just awful here, we stopped in the city for a drink and a cake of some kind, lots of peopple were staring at us, I suppose it did not help I stopped in the bus terminal, still, refereshed were went to Ludza our next stop, when we arrived outside the hotel there was no road, just a dirt track and a great big hole, they are obviously re doing the towns roads!, Jack got off the bike and I bumped across to the car park of the hotel, warn out from the ride.

The hotel was ok, simple but clean and had its own restaurant, so we were sorted for food and a rest, we walked about the town, which is steeped in history as it has been a border town with Russia and Europe since the 11th century, it was hit hard in WWII as it was the Jewish centre for Latvia, there was a town walk which we followed and made us realise, once again how little we know of this area. After our walk, we had food in the hotel, which was not bad, and went to bed, both of us a lttle nervous about the border crossing into Russia tomorrow, so not much sleep, it was also the first time we encountered the midnight sun, even here it is light throughout the night!