{"id":21976,"date":"2016-06-12T19:14:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-12T18:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=21976"},"modified":"2019-04-02T13:25:33","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T12:25:33","slug":"valka-and-valga-these-twins-love-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/valka-and-valga-these-twins-love-the-eu\/","title":{"rendered":"Valka and Valga, These Twins Love the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zagan the motorhome is, ah, in a hospital car park in R\u00f5ngu, Estonia. Nah, don’t worry, we’re all fine, we spotted the parking area from the road and have winged it in here (N58.13981, E26.24586<\/a>). Only one car here, facing an orchard and fields, nothing to say we can’t stay and no-one around on a sunny-rainy-cloudy Sunday afternoon. Feels good to be here. We’ve given something back by shopping at the co-op next door, buying an Internet SIM (50GB for \u20ac6 for 30 days – edit – the leaflet with the SIM was a year old and now only 15GB is included, way more than we need) and finally, on our 3rd attempt, managed to buy some milk.<\/p>\n

\"DSC02933\"<\/p>\n

This morning we woke up here in Valmiera, Latvia:<\/p>\n

\"Free

Free camping spot in Valmiera, Latvia<\/p><\/div>\n

Not bad eh? Glen and Steve were parked alongside us in the sandy parking area, and reported a van had arrived in the night. I dare say none of the four of us are steel-balled wild-camping experts, and plans had been made to leg it if needs be. Van man was as innocuous as us though, and was gone before we woke up. After a couple of fascinating nights listening to snippets from two decades of their travel stories, we waved goodbye this morning, with us feeling more confident our budget can work, and full of new ideas for the future.<\/p>\n

Breakfasted (Crunchy Nut Cornflakes – not managed to get into eating oily fish first thing yet), we rolled on out onto the A3 and turned north. Shortly the A3 shrugged off its coat of the black ‘mac, and left us bumping and bouncing along for several miles. The cutlery shivered and clattered in protest and once again our milk turned to cheese.<\/p>\n

\"Oi,

Oi, Latvia, Noooooooooo!<\/p><\/div>\n

There ain’t much between Valmiera and the Estonian border. Pines. Mainly pines. The odd house, a field maybe, then a billion more pines, their lower regions a muted, branchless red as they hoofed off upwards to the skies. Eventually the pines gave out to a town, Valka. Half way into the town a border post pops up alongside an Estonia sign, and we’re in Valga, Estonia. Yep – these two towns were once one and the same place, and like a handful of other towns and cities across the world, are split by and international border.<\/p>\n

There’s a wonderful explanation of the whole thing here<\/a>, but I’ll very quickly summarise in case you can’t be bother to read it:<\/p>\n