{"id":4960,"date":"2025-08-19T13:11:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T17:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/?p=4960"},"modified":"2025-08-21T13:11:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T17:11:20","slug":"roads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/roads\/","title":{"rendered":"Roads"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stayed up far too late last night hanging out with a crowd at the hostel. Along the way I learned a great deal about the Czech Republic power grid, as one of the group members works in the main control office, where they recently had about a quarter of the country go dark.<\/p>\n

I left the hostel about 8:30 am after the hostel-provided breakfast. The first 20 km out of Riga had bicycle path. The roads here however are so inconsistent that at one point I was riding on paved bicycle path, next to a gravel road!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On the one hand, OSMand incorrectly identified roads today as unpaved; I rode all day on paved road. On the other hand, that means I can’t rely on the data from OSMand for whether roads are paved. On the gripping hand, the low level of traffic I had hoped for failed to come to fruition. Not until the last 30 km did traffic decrease enough to enjoy the surroundings.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m spending the night in a hostel (that isn’t a hostel) in Aizkrakule. To reach it I had to cycle through a tunnel underneath the dam.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I heard back from the South African couple, who congratulated me on being in Aizkrakule one day out of Riga. They are staying in a hostel on the other side of town after two days of cycling to get here from Riga.<\/p>\n

Research shows that roads are significantly better in Lithuania. I’m curious what happened to all of the EU money for Latvia that I saw correspondingly spent in Romania and Bulgaria on road improvement.<\/p>\n

Need to spend more time tonight with the map, but I think I’m going to route myself more southward and end up in Lithuania tomorrow instead of three more days in Latvia. Should also put me closer to my intended schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stayed up far too late last night hanging out with a crowd at the hostel. Along the way I learned a great deal about the Czech Republic power grid, as one of the group members works in the main control office, where they recently had about a quarter of the country go dark. I … Continue reading “Roads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-touring"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4960"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4976,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions\/4976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}