Day 21 - Past Saldus to past Nigrande

received late after technical difficulties:

34km (640km) - 7 hours 30 minutes - weather overcast and windy, early drizzle

Today marks 3 weeks of walking. When I set out, I had difficulty believing that I could continue walking for so long. I thought that at least I would need one or more rest days. Perhaps that is an indication of the power of the challenge I set and the parameters for achieving the objective.
The eastern and western points in Latvia were easily defined and a walk from one to the other was a simple, though not insignificant, concept. Walking about 30km a day, staying in mainly commercial accommodation and including some friends' houses to stay at, limited the flexibility of approaching the walk.
Most things have worked wonderfully well and this has left me really with not much more responsibility than putting one foot in front of the other.
This morning, Ieva (journalist) and Ingus (photographer) from the Saldus Zeme arrived at 8am to interview me, but not to walk. It was cold and drizzling and generally uninviting.
Ieva asked most of the questions in English. She asked me, 'Don't you ever get boring when you are walking so long'. I should perhaps have answered, 'Not just when I'm walking'. I didn't think that Ieva wanted me to take her literally.
When I finally set off the drizzle had abated and I was photographed in full stride.
I found out tonight that the newspaper comes out on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I am almost out of the paper's circulation area so I may miss this one too. Anita passed on another interview request today - for a women's magazine. Where is New Idea?
I have finally seen some genuine wildlife (apart from a couple of wild pigs as road-kill). Two days ago, Janis pointed out 2 deer, about 150m away. But yesterday, on the way to Remte, 2 more deer (mother and doe) rushed out of the forest, about 20m away, and across the fields.

Today, I felt I walked strongly, particularly the first 20km to Pamparli. It must have been the two dinners last night or at least the pork dumplings in the soup.
Pamparli has an attractive little weir - I assume it powers something, perhaps a mill. The buildings in the town all seem fairly new, though a factory building had as its centrepiece what looked like a church steeple. It possibly was as, during Soviet times, the churches were used for all sorts of purposes including as storage facilities.
There was some forest walking before arriving at Nigrande. The facilities were marginal for what seemed to be a reasonably sized town. There was no kafejnica, although I did find a yellow highlighter I had been looking for (to mark the route on the maps).
Tonight's accommodation is at Ginas, which promotes itself as 'green'. I can't quite get used to the toilets where you must put the paper in the rubbish bin. The saimniece, Valda, is very helpful and at dinner-time invited her English-speaking, teacher, sculpture friend to converse with me. She offered to show me the local sights by car, but I had to decline as it would have been contrary to the rules of cross-country walking.

Tonight, I finished Bernard Schlink's, Homecoming. It is a strange book - the narrator's search for his father who his mother said had been killed during the war. And the story of his relationship with Barbara, with whom (in one of the many strange coincidences of the book), he may share a sister. Parallels are drawn between the relationship with Barbara and the joining of East and West Germany when the wall came down. And much much more, including a bizarre student 'retreat' conducted by a law professor and the constant references to The Odyssey, the classic 'homecoming' story. I was disturbed by the violence of the relationship in Schlink's, The Reader, but very much enjoyed the book of short stories, Flights of Love. This book is beautifully written - say 7 out of 10.
I have started the next book, Victoria Hislop's, The Return, about Franco's Spain. It is a large book and I probably won't finish it by Thursday.
I haven't been able to access the blog today so I am unaware of any comments. I had better try and discuss some further thoughts about victims and the media in a separate email to Jana.

Received by SMS yesterday:

34km (640km) - 7 hours 30 minutes - weather overcast and windy, early drizzle

Seem to be in a black hole here. Will have to try and send in the morning ...

Technical note
Mobile phone operator LMT claim to have the best coverage in Latvia (of 3), but what Graham thinks is a black hole is the third white patch from the bottom left corner of the map below which, incidentally, shows you how far he has got(and by no means in a straight line)! See you in the morning (GMT + 3).