This was us riding on July 3rd and 4th. The part marked in red from Demene was done manually — I accidentally turned off the GPS on the beach in Demene. In reality, we were riding along the Belarusian border on the border patrol road! For some reason, I thought Lithuania was nearby, not Belarus. If we had been caught, they would have slapped us with a hefty fine, I think.
We spent the night at the Silene tourist base, and they don't even have simple tent space rentals, everything is geared towards RVs and cars, but we worked it out. Their spot and firewood are a bit pricey, but it turned out that it cost us a reasonable price. (Wow, I'm being so mysterious, zero specifics. Some things I just don't want to say publicly, and the rest I don't remember).
The road to Silene:
View Bike Demene Silene Elerne Day 1 in a larger map
The road back:
View Demene Silene Elerne day 2 in a larger map
I'm trying to master other track drawing services besides Google Maps here, so here's some Flash for you. We rode right into a swamp in one spot there, since we were riding adventurously at random, and not like boring nerds following known roads. We rode exactly 90 km on the first day, but mostly on dirt and country roads.
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The road back. Rode 70. For some reason, it's becoming a tradition for us to only do 70 km on the second day. Fatigue taking its toll, I guess.
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This is how the Aglona folks sell bread by the Solo mall:
They actually have a bread museum too, by the way, gonna have to go visit
This isn't the swamp yet, just our regular road, quite tolerable and picturesque.
But going in here was a mistake.
It's still sunny, but the mosquitoes are already trying to tear you to shreds.
This is undeniable mountain biking right here. Honestly, it's not as scary as it looks. The only bad thing is the bikes are loaded, makes 'em heavy to drag around.
But we have to.
The further we go, the more fun it gets.
The child discovers the world.
That very swamp we rode into. This is where I yelled: "We are not going to repeat the mistake we made in Belarus." We turned back. The mosquitoes were so fierce that we barely made it out.
If you're thinking, "But there's no road here, you can't even walk through," well yeah, I hasten to confirm. That's exactly how it is. But we made it through.
Stuff like this already seems like nothing.
Luckily, when we crawled out of the swamp, near a farmstead we stumbled upon a guy who was mowing man-high grass on the road! The guy let us know we'd make it out.
Very beautiful, though its purpose is unclear.
Made it to Demene, this is a monument there.
This is right on Lake Riču, Belarus is a stone's throw away. It's done up very beautifully, someone's living the good life right on the border.
And protects their waterfront property well, too.
That's when I smelled wild strawberries, and we were already looking for a place to pitch the tent near Lake Riču. We ate some strawberries, but didn't set up the tent, way too many mosquitoes and flies, plus the spot wasn't very convenient.
This is already the Silene tourist base, or campground. Call it what you want, the point is clear.
There's plenty of critters at the campground, and the German Shepherd puppies even have a pedigree.
We started the fire like civilized people.
WARNING, NSFW!
CANNOT BE UNSEEN!
Alright, censored it for you. A bit chubby, of course, but overall the muscles are visible too.
Trendy rapeseed these days.
Here we rode all the way around Lake Bruņu in search of some manor. It didn't really impress us, and we never got to swim in the lake either. Fail.