Klapkalnciems Beach to Ventspils, Latvia

3rd August 2016

A slow morning saw us in The Baltic Sea again for a quick swim before showers and packing away. Our van is slowly filling with sand and will need a darn good hoover when we get back home.

We left the beach carpark for a short drive to Ventspils where we were booked in for two nights before our ferry to Germany. It was a ok drive where we stopped for fuel and a supermarket. The fuel station was very small and manned by a single friendly old lady.

The men folk had been jokingly comparing fuel economy and who could get the most fuel in, as Neil finished and we were heading in to pay Michael proudly carried on fuelling. As we joked it’ll probably be spilling out sure enough he was pissing fuel all over the forecourt. A nervous Michael crawled under his van to investigate and then had to apologise to the lady and ask for the sand.
Luckily it turned out it was some kind of overflow, not a damaged tank and as it dripped off we stayed away back on the roads.

Still in search for a Birthday cake for Jake we stopped in a very large supermarket and restocked our vans but not with too much as we would have 24 hours on the ferry with no fridge.

I hadn’t done any research on Ventspils if I had I might have insisted on booking in for more nights. Cows, cows and cows everywhere. They have a large collection of Cow Parade with tours and maps to find them all, a bit like Zebras in Southampton. We would be doing this!

When we arrived the receptionist told us to find any space of our choice but did point out on the map where there were some ‘unsavoury clients’ to avoid. We never did find out why she thought they were unsavoury but we took her advice and picked two large pitches.
After a short while in our pitch a very over friendly Dutch man started waving over shouting hello London, along with his wife he became our friends and we struggled to shake him off, boy could he talk and he knew everything.

We barbecued for dinner, sitting out in the sun. People kept whizzing passed our pitches on very fast three wheel scooter type vehicles, all the kids and men folk were itching for a go. Left to wash up and clear away myself and Vickey stayed at the van while the men took the kids for an hour on the scooters. I’m sure they should have had helmets but luckily no-one fell off or crashed, it was close.

A walk along the beach to check out the local area saw us stumble upon a few cows, we agreed a cycling tour would be the best way to see as many of the cow parades as possible so this was the plan for tomorrow.