Well 3 days and 2561km later, that’s 1600 miles to those of you who are mathematically challenged, we finally arrived in Jurmala, exhausted but relieved. Jurmala is a coastal town 25 km from the capital city Riga, famous for it’s 30 km long beach, the plethora of health spas and the huge ostentatious mansions built by Russian billionaires and oligarchs who like to holiday here.

It’s problematic to take the most direct route to Latvia from Rotterdam as Kaliningrad is in the way. So what you might ask. Well Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic coast and you have to pay a lot of money to get visas to go through it. So you head for Warsaw instead and turn north east to aim for the Lithuanian border.

The journey through Europe was fairly uneventful, no wrong turnings thanks to the trusty sat nav. Glad I purchased a lifetime of upgrades for the sat nav as the road infrastructure through Poland had completely changed since last time we drove here 4 years ago. Amazing what a load of money and hosting the European Football championships have done to the Polish road system. We zipped through Poland whilst road works on the aging German autobahns delayed us on numerous occasions. Apart from road improvements around Warsaw we didn’t see one traffic cone. Combined with the stunning scenery the journey through Poland was superb. Even the Novotel in Lodz was a real treat despite it being in the middle of more road improvements.