12th
Sept 2015
An old church,
graves, and dirt roads.
Woke up and got
sorted out, and since wifi was so good right next door to the van, we spent a
bit of time on Skype etc, before packing up and heading back up into the
medieval town of Cesis. I wanted to get
a couple of photos that I had missed yesterday, and we also wanted to see St
John’s Church, which was consecrated in 1284, so we headed into town, found a
parking spot near the centre, and set off on foot.
On the way we
stopped to take a photo of the old castle that we had visited yesterday, viewed
from across a lake, But unfortunately
the great view that we had seen yesterday but not photographed was with the sun
shining from the other direction, and the morning sun was behind the castle
now, making the shot almost nothing. Ho
hum.
Then it was off
to St John’s. This church really is struggling to stay in one piece – and major
renovations are underway. Additionally,
where, over the years, buttresses have been added outside the main walls to
support them, and then there are further buttresses outside them supporting
them as well, now not only are the walls having difficulty staying up, but even
the later buttresses are no crumbling, compounding the original problem. Additionally, inside, enormous cross beams
have been inserted high up, fixed onto steel pins on the outside, in order to
try to keep the walls from falling outwards. Regardless of the problems, this
is a lovely 13th century church, and when you consider that it is
nearly 800 years old, and is still used regularly for services and organ
recitals, it is amazing.
The organ of St
John’s is apparently renowned for its sound, and we were fortunate enough to hear
it being played a little this morning.
In addition the church is famous for its sizeable collection of old
gravestones, some of which are currently being installed around the walls of
the church, while others are housed in a separate area. A very pleasant hour spent here. I must add that around the world, S America
included, churches are usually one of the oldest, most significant and
historical buildings in any town. So we
tend to seek out the churches not so much from any religious point of view, but
more from the history of an area that they reflect. Consider – The castle we visited yesterday in
Cesis that is in ruins, is the same age as this church, which is still standing
and in daily use. The living history of
the area is thus more usually in the church, more so than in the old ruined
castle where archeologists are often still trying to puzzle out what it looked
like and what parts of it were used for !
Just a thought…….
On the way back
to the car we passed a bakery. Bakery’s here are for cakes, not bread. Konditorei.
The only place we have found “decent” bread is in big supermarkets, who
bake their own. In fact today, in the
cake shop, they said they do not bake bread – You have to get that from a
supermarket, kind of justifying what we had deduced. Quite different from France and Germany who
of course have bakeries everywhere baking the most wonderful bread. Round here is a lot of that black bread – Not
my thing at all, but Janet likes it.
Give me a nice fresh baguette any day !!
Anyway, we managed to escape from the cake shop without handing over any
euros, and made it back to the car.
We decided it was
time to head south, or we would never make it before Christmas !! The choice was to head all the way back to
Riga on good roads, and then head south, or to try to cut across country. Yup – You know me – We headed cross country
! (I HATE to go backwards !!) So using a combination of (useless large
scale) paper maps, Garmin, and Maps.me (an app on my tablet that we use
everywhere), we set off towards a place called Aizkraukle. Not far into our route, we came over the brow
of a hill and there was this great big Russian Orthodox church in front of
us. On the right was a big house built
of similar brick to the church – And that was all. In the middle of nowhere !!! I think the village was called Nitaure.
We then stopped
for lunch beside a delightful little lake in Zaube, before heading on down
towards Klidzina where we thought we could cross the river Daugava before
continuing cross country in a generally southerly direction. Right ?
W-R-O-N-G !!! It turns out that
there is only one place to cross the Daugava river round here, and that is
several K’s to the east of Kidzina, in Aizkraukle, and then you have to turn
round and head all the way west again !
Why no bridges ? Who ever heard
of no bridges for 100 kms in either direction along a river, with villages and
towns everywhere ? Perhaps they had all
been destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in 1578 – Or maybe someone else more
recently ?? Anyway, we played “hunt the
bridge”, and suddenly came round the corner and there was an enormous dam with
steel sluice gates in it, and a set of traffic lights. On red.
With “8 minutes red” written on them in English. Where was the bridge ? Or was it a dam we were to cross on top of
? Well, 7 minutes later the lights
turned green, and we found out. Neither
! We actually crossed the river UNDER
the dam wall, through a tunnel that went along the edge of the water – Very
different and interesting. “Playnu Hes”
was written on the dam wall – Maybe Hes means dam ? But a big hydro electric scheme anyway. And once “across” the river, we headed back
to the west, but with a big lake now on our right, and it was obvious they had
had to build big levees to keep the now increased level of water out of the
villages and houses along the way.
Suddenly the
black top ended and we were on dirt !
Actually, the dirt surface was generally better than much of the tarmac
road we had been on recently – The minor roads in Latvia are in terrible
condition – just patched and patched and patched by hand, so they are very
bumpy. So apart from the dust, the dirt
road was actually OK most of the time. We
finally made it to Bauska, which was on the main A7 road between Riga and
Vilnius, and turned south on now a good road !
About 15 kms S of
Bauska we crossed the Lithuanian border. Quite interesting because while there
was virtually nothing in the way of signage to say we were crossing, the old
border station from “former times” was VERY evident. And parked right on the
edge of the road, with two policeman standing beside it, was a cop car – And
they watched us very carefully as we passed.
And I watched my rear view mirror very carefully afterwards, and they didn’t
follow me ! So here we are in Lithuania – I never thought I would ever drive my
car in Lithuania !!
By now it was
nearly 4.30 pm, and we headed on down the main road towards Vilnius. At about 5 pm I had had enough, and we
started to search on the Garmin and Maps.me for camp sites – Finding one just
outside Panevezys. It wasn’t the most
salubrious, but was totally empty and apart from a local family enjoying the
sauna and running naked between the sauna and the tub, we had a peaceful
evening !! We are not quite sure what
Vilnius has to offer, so we will find an Information Centre there tomorrow, and
take it from there.
Today ? Very interesting, again. Travelling through the countryside off the
main roads was very interesting – Much more agriculturally based, and seemingly
run down houses, but there are still plenty of Audis and BMWs parked out front
– Can’t quite work it out. They are
certainly not destitute peasants like in northern S America – Maybe joining the
EU and the Euro has enabled them all to improve their lot ? We spoke to one guy in Cesis today and
mentioned that we thought that the effort they were making to renovate old
historical buildings was wonderful. His
response was that while it was good, there were many people who felt that the
government could be putting their money into better areas, and there was an
increasing amount of resentment in many areas.
It must be VERY difficult to know where best to direct funds when
EVERY PART of the economy is in need of help.
As I said last night, those of us who have not been invaded repeatedly
over the centuries must sometimes be very grateful………….
And so to bed…..
Pics here :- https://picasaweb.google.com/110185357936043625130/0355CesisToPanevezys?authkey=Gv1sRgCI2IovG3sLyU0wE
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