I went to bed feeling grimy. Shockingly that didn’t change by morning.
More time in Estonia points out subtle differences between Estonia and Sweden. There are bicycle paths, but they don’t extend as far from the city, they’re narrower and slightly less well maintained. The roads have a shoulder, but it’s narrower than it was in Sweden. The roads are well maintained, but not quite as well as Sweden. In a few places I found the asphalt sloshed up, in the same manner I saw in Hungary and Romania, where the road wasn’t built quite right.
I picked the direct route to Parnu, on a small highway. Traffic was light for the first 20 km, but when it picked up I didn’t have anywhere to go. A lot of the day after that was being passed by large trucks. Almost always giving me plenty of room but it’s still nerve-racking. It wasn’t until 15 km out of Parnu that I managed to route myself off the highway and then eventually back on to bicycle path. About the same time my route merged back with Eurovelo 10/13.
OSMAnd showed a number of hostels in Parnu, but only one appeared in booking.com as available. A very functional hostel, but that’s about it. It did come with a drying rack and drying yard, providing the chance to get everything washed and dried. And getting the tent dried out as well. Without the mosquitoes.
Speaking of which, the main zipper on the tent is struggling. So far I’ve always managed to get it to close, or I probably wouldn’t be writing this after the mosquitoes from yesterday.
One of the showers in the hostel wasn’t working. While it was easy enough for me to switch showers, I messaged the host. He came by to take a look, and I had quite a pleasant conversation with him.
Parnu has a surprisingly high number of hostels. Parnu also has the best surfing in the Baltic. Otherwise there’s not much here.
Not sure how, but I’ve lost a pair of underwear. I noticed the absence a few days ago, but figured they were just lost somewhere in my gear. However a dedicated check today showed that they’re just lost somewhere. Not like it’s the first time that’s happened.
Today was a relatively short day of 70 km. Riga, one of my target destinations, is almost exactly 200 km from here, so that sets things up well for arriving in two days. I also wanted a bit of a break. And I needed to take care of some tasks from home.
And hey, here’s the underwear.
Addendum. Arriving at a major tourist location in high season on a Saturday doesn’t provide a lot of options. So time to slow down a bit. I’ll take three days to get to Riga instead of two. The Eurovelo route now runs directly along the coast, with what appears to be a large number of campgrounds.