To Estonia by Motorbike: Day 7, keys and crosses and crappy Mexican (2023)

The rain has indeed stopped and Saturday dawns bright and sunny. We pack up and head down for breakfast.

— Just starting? View Day 1 post of the roadtrip —

After breakfast we finish packing and leave. Packing was fun as we now have two people’s luggage and I hadn’t done a test pack but we manage to get everything in. There’s no room for souvenirs though, which is a relief to one of us and a mild disappointment to the other. You can guess which is which I’m sure. I meet Kris at the top of the car park ramp as they ave a barrier and they don’t always open for bikes. And there’s a gap so I don’t need it to open and therefore parking will be free. I consider this and being able to filter through jams as payback for being more exposed to the elements and not being able to listen to Popmaster like car drivers can.

There’s a few turnings and traffic lights to navigate outside the hotel which gives me the chance to get used to being fully laden. We’re two up and the luggage is full so it’s a very different experience but it’s not any more difficult as long as I remember we’re heavy now. It’s not long before we’re on the main road out of Vilnius, passing apartment blocks and business units, supermarkets and factories. It seems to take a lot longer to leave Vilnius than it did to arrive, so I ponder this as we ride along. Is it because Vilnius is now slightly more familiar? Is it because I was at the end of a journey and now I’m at the start? Is it because I had a lot going on when I arrived, it was busier and I had to get to Marius’ place? I fail to find an answer and suddenly realise we’ve left Vilnius behind.

The next hour or two punctuated by a fuel stop in a small town off the main road. The service station is tiny and there’s a small queue for one of the four pumps. I wait my turn as Kris wanders off to take photos of the fields of flowers that surround this village, I fill up and pay in the little kiosk and think what a nice place this is. The people I’m filling up with are nicely dressed in nice, clean cars, the village looks well kept and clean and everyone seems to be quite happy. This is my last real interaction with Lithuania before we eventually reach the border with Latvia.

Our destination is Latvia, but there’s no way I’m leaving Lithuania without visiting the Hill of Crosses so that’s where the sat nav is taking us. We travel along arrow straight dual carriageways before turning off onto arrow straight regular roads. This part of Lithuania is a lot flatter than the south so whilst progress is swift and stressless in a way that’s unimaginable in the UK, it’s not especially exciting. We pass small villages, lonely houses, catholic statues and isolated bus tops for what feels like hours but is less than two before the navigation suggests I turn off. I take the right turn and shortly I’m instructed to turn left. I do so, into a small village and some houses with nice gardens and onto a dirt road. A dirt road. This can’t be the way to one of Lithuania’s most famous tourist spots can it? It’s been raining so this road manages to be both muddy and dusty at the same time. I’m on a heavily laden motorbike with road tyres and no experience of off roading. I remember I wanted to do an off road course a couple of years ago and I curse myself for not doing it. I have read some articles and watched some videos on riding on loose surfaces, relax, let the bike find it’s way, smooth and steady so I immediately tense up like I’m made of iron and stare at the ground immediately in front of the wheel, wondering if we’ll fall off before I get a puncture or vice versa. I have to make a couple of 90 degree turns on this dirt road, which gives me an opportunity to confirm if I can get any more tense. I can. Then after maybe 10 or 15 minutes of terror the dirt road ends and we’re at a junction close to a main road. Kris says this is the road we were on when we turned onto the dirt road, I don’t want to hear this so I pretend it isn’t. We turn right again and a few moments later we’re at the Hill of Crosses all safe and sound. Dirty, but safe and sound.

The Hill of Crosses is somewhere you need to visit to fully appreciate. It’s in the middle of nowhere and it is literally a hill covered in crosses, thousands and thousands of them. The hill isn’t especially big but the spectacle is incredible. The density of the crosses is immense and it goes right up to a fence at the edge of a field and it’s just farmland. It’s impressive and a little underwhelming at the same time. It’s spooky and weird but also quite beautiful. There are statues of Jesus in glass cases, recordings of religious music and chantings, crosses of all sizes from all over Europe. Small groups of people dressed like they’re going to a wedding come and stand near a section of the crosses, have their photo taken and leave. I read the information boards and understand that it’s a sign of resistance for the Lithuanian people and I appreciate the reverence of the place. It’s very unusual, it makes me feel unusual because I’m not sure how I should feel here. I have a quiet, hopeful respectful walk around and we prepare to leave.

I suspect you’re way ahead of me here, yes I’ve lost the key to unlock my helmet. Everyone else has gone, it’s deserted and of course miles away from anywhere. I immediately engage my fight or flight instincts to this benign threat to my existence and go marching off to find the key, half joking that I will tear the place apart until I find it. I’m of course rather anxious at this point but I am fairly confident I will find this small but bright blue key on this predominantly brown hill. I know what’s happened, I’ve been taking my phone in and out of my back pocket to take photos and it’s dragged the key out with it so I go striding off grumbling to myself and flicking my eyes left and right. I’m more annoyed with myself as you will recall I even said to myself I shouldn’t lose this key but I’m still 80% sure I’ll find it. I cross the open area between the road and the hill without finding the key and tearing the hill of crosses apart now seems like it might be a possibility. Luckily for e Kris has a cooler head than I and she finds the key. So we can mount up and leave and I can think about what an idiot I am like that time I left my tank bag on a petrol pump on Anglesey. Kris knows this is what will be happening for the next half an hour or so and turns off her intercom.

The rest of the journey to the Latvian border is fairly uneventful. We encounter a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere but being on a bike we can filter up to the front to find some temporary traffic lights that take at least 5 minutes to turn to green. Then we’re back onto the long, straight dual carriageway.

I get quite excited by these borders. It’s like entering into a new world where everything is familiar but everything is different. The border itself is undramatic, a few derelict buildings as the road splits around them, the signs telling you the speed limits in Latvia and that’s about it. Not very much happens on the road in Latvia, we head for Riga and pass through the outskirts, riding down some residential streets and onto what feels like the ring road. We stop at a Circle K, the finest of all Baltic fuel stations and have a hot dog. We clean up our fly spattered helmets, have a drink and I admire a rather wonderful Mercedes SEC before we continue to circle Riga. Riga, like Vilnius and Tallinn, has a beautiful old town with cobbled streets and delightful old buildings but instead we seem to be passing the less salubrious districts to the east. Large soviet era tower blocks in frying stages of decomposition loom over the highway before thinning out and we’ve passed into open countryside once more.

We’re headed for Sigulda which for some reason I have in my head is by the sea. It’s not, but as we enter the town it looks like it could be. We approach the town centre and cross the railway line before a 90 degree turn to the right. On our left is Sigulda, low rise residential buildings, shops, restaurants and a smattering of people who look like they’re on holiday. A couple of hundred metres on we find our hotel, pull into the parking lot, shut off the bike and immediately realise that its very hot here.

Sigulda is quiet so there are no crowds to follow and unlike my previous stops I’ve done no research so we decide to eat at a Mexican restaurant across from the station. It’s not bad, but it’s quite obviously out of jars rather than made fresh. We eat and decide to go find the sculpture park that google promised us. We find some scooters and head off to and a fairly small statue of a spider. Heading back into town there are more sculptures of yellow walking sticks, the symbol the town apparently and not a lot else. So we park up the scooters and take a slow walk back to the hotel through the parks and quiet streets of Sigulda.

232 miles, riding time 5 hours and 23 minutes.

***
Pam pam pam… It’s time for Part 2: Kris’s view!
***

We have our breakfast, pack our bags and – off we go. I’ve been on a bike with luggage before – but it has been an either-or situation. Either with the side boxes (for when we go to Wing Lee’s fantastical mystical Chinese grocery store) or with a strapped on travel duffel or a helmet box on the back. My first attempt at swinging the leg up to the hight of my shoulder and over the stuff is… uhmm, not exactly graceful. But on I get, and our ride begins!

The heatwave in Europe is only gaining momentum, and the visor steams up the second we stop moving – so I do not clip it in place, and let the wind howl freely inside the helmet. Jay is trying to tell me about our route, but since I only have one working speaker anyway, it’s impossible to hear him over the noise. So I say “mhmhhh”, and breath in the scenery.

About an hour in, we pass a wheat field, and there is a deer with her baby, laying next to the road, in the wheat, munching happily. Not more than, perhaps, 5 metres from the road?

And right there and then, I feel happiness fill me to the brim. We’re middle-aged people, with homes in two countries, riding a motorbike through Europe… 20 years ago, I would have felt a pang of envy for people like us, so I bask in the feeling and breathe in what feels like… utter and complete freedom.

And on we go, to our main highlight of the day. The Hill of Crosses was the very first thing I asked Jay to put on his road trip map. And that was already before Covid, long before we actually got to go on our ride through Europe.

Having inherited my great grandmother’s genes, I’ve always had a deep and, according to others, somewhat uncomfortably close relationship with death and the dead, and that includes all places of worship.

As Estonians are among the least religious nations in the world, and among the 15% who claim to be believers the vast majority are Lutherans, we lack the lavish and opulent celebrations of God in architecture. Our churches are barren, our ceremonies void of joy and our dead are buried in the forest. Religion is there to guide and to punish, not so much for comfort. I grew up in a Lutheran church, yearning for the festivity of other – more colourful and golden! – religions.  

Hill of Crosses has, according to the estimates a few years ago, over 300 000 crosses of varying sizes – and in addition to the Catholic significance, it also serves as a symbol of Lithuanian national identity. To say I am excited is an understatement of the year.

*
A few weeks earlier, a young colleague of mine had taken his own life. We didn’t work in the same team, and had had only a few dealings with each other over the last year, but – I had liked him a lot, and I knew his team lead very well. He’d not long ago been forced to move back to his childhood home in Šiauliai.

I can’t help but to think of him with every passing road sign. The closer we get, the more there are, and I wonder if I am passing his parents’ house, or the cemetery where he’s been laid to rest; or, perhaps, would see a cross brought to the hill by his family.
*

It starts to rain when we drive into Šiauliai, and Google Maps directs us to an unpaved gravel road… 

I don’t mind, I can finally click the visor closed, but now I hear him clearly – and the headset informs me Jay is pissed: for the slippery conditions, for the muddy bike, for feeling like Google Maps is screwing with him once more… It’s OK. I know we’ll be fine, and I’ll know he won’t crash no matter how muddy it gets, and whatever happens, it’s not like we’re hundreds of kilometres from civilisation.

By the time we finally arrive, the sun is shining again.

And while trying to lock things up, I twist the head off a key, and Jay has to pry it out of the lock.

Once he has pulled apart most of the grass around the area he was standing at and decides to head back for the hill, I tell him I’ll help him look. NO NEED, he barks, and off he goes – with a far faster pace than a person searching for a tiny key should have, and I cannot help but giggle.

The Hill is about 100m from the road and then it goes up into the actual rise – with steps and railings, and piles of crosses. If he has dropped the key somewhere up there, I have little hope of him ever being able to find it among the chaos, prayer beads, candy wrappers and tiny crosses on keyrings etc.

I follow him, and then I spot it. It’s smack in the middle of his path. He has just marched over it, and the dust from his boot is still not fully settled around the key…

I call out for Jay, and then again louder, but he is a man on a mission and pretends not to hear me.

If a man wants to tear a mountain apart with his bare hands, who am I to stop him?!?

But I not a complete arsehole, so I do not return to the bike and wait for him at the foot of the hill – before he comes down to start his second round of destruction. I tell him it’s OK, that I found the key, so everything is fine, and he looks at me like I am daft.

The hotel looks far more impressive from the outside than it does inside. Don’t get me wrong, it is perfectly nice, but there is a small army of ants marching around, and we’ve got two of the thinnest pillows I’ve ever seen (so I head back to the reception to charm some extras out of them, before more holidaymakers arrive. It was a good thing I did, as we get 2 from the last 3 they have left. I would have wanted the third one, too, but decided it’s my daily dose of charity, and fold a towel up underneath my pillows instead).