Can I Unicycle Across a Country Using ONLY Hiking Trails? Day 6

Thank you FlexiSpot for sponsoring this video. Good morning and welcome back to my journey attempting to cross Latvia on my unicycle on the Baltic Forest Trail. Last night I camped in a little shelter inside Gauja National Park. I'm just about seeing the first rays of sunlight on the trees over there. I'm glad that I was a little bit elevated from the floor because tonight has definitely been the coldest night of the trip so far. It is 6.45 and I should probably get up. One of the reasons I decided to camp here is because of this drop-down toilet. Oh yeah, that's cute. Yeah it's identical to the one that I saw a couple of days ago. I wanted to be able to cook my porridge and drink coffee at the same time but I don't have a separate like cup to hold the coffee. But by pouring the hot water into this bottle it made it shrink a little bit which is a bit annoying because I've lost capacity now. I just need to be more careful in the future. I need to make sure it doesn't go in like super super hot. If it goes in warm I think it's all right. Fruit and nuts and I also like to whack in some chocolate as well. With 182 kilometers already under my belt this was the beginning of my sixth day on the trail. I hadn't seen a single other person all morning and sitting here watching this peaceful place wake up was magical. The terrain over the first part of the morning was far from what I deemed rideable and still feeling tender after yesterday's fall I had absolutely no desire to take on any unnecessary risks. So instead of attempting to ride over the dense network of routes I pushed the unicycle like a wheelbarrow enjoying the lush scenery and patiently waiting for my next opportunity to jump on. All right this looks just about doable. Let's try and get this right. So while I do feel a bit of bruising from yesterday's fall I don't think I've done myself any kind of lasting damage so that is a relief. Now it's a new experience for me, unicycle touring trails, but I'm enjoying it greatly. You just have to accept a much lower mileage but that's fine. I've got the time. We will get through this trail eventually. And I think that is the big key to this stuff. Sometimes you have to accept that you're going to be going slightly slower than you perhaps want to be but as long as you keep moving you will eventually get there. And that's not just true for the kind of physical challenges that I've done over the years but also just everyday life. So the big challenge that I'm facing at the moment is trying to get through this Latvia edit. It's taken me much longer than I wanted it to but what has helped with at least getting the stuff out that I have done so far is having the right tools which is why I'm very happy to say that Flexispot is once again sponsoring one of my videos. So in the past I used to just work just on my laptop and I realise now just sort of how unhealthy that was sort of hunched over which is why I've really been enjoying using this desk. So this is the E7 Pro and this one I've got with it I think it's 160 centimetres by 80 centimetres deep and that depth has been really good for me. I've used desks in the past where I'm kind of just like crunched up here whereas being able to put this stuff and move around it just keeps me comfortable throughout the day. Obviously it's got motorised legs as a sit-down desk so I can move it down if I want because let's face it sometimes you do want to sit down and work but I don't want to be constricted to only being able to sit down or only be able to stand up and I've been finding this keypad is really intuitive you can set four custom heights I've just set these to the sitting one the standing one the little icons so I can set it back to this one and it will go back to the height that I customised. I've been finding that kind of flexibility of being able to choose whether I'm sitting or standing has been really beneficial to how I've been working and if you've yet to try a sit-down desk for yourself I think you probably should because they're great. Please do check out the link in my description you can choose how big the desktop is to fit your space you can choose the colours and I don't think you'll regret it. All right I'm going to get back to my edit thank you Flexispot the link is in the description. From day one of this trip I've been told to keep one eye out for the heaps of tasty mushrooms that littered the forest floor. See the size of that it's bloody huge. As I was travelling alone and also had no idea which ones were edible and which might kill me I kept my distance but that morning upon spotting some locals collecting some mushrooms nearby I had my first opportunity to learn a little more about the foraging past time that seems so popular here. Are you collecting mushrooms? No problem no problem I just want to do you speak English? No. I just want to see what you're collecting. across Latvia the Meritaka. Meritaka from Estonia to Latvia to Lithuania I mean yeah your rabbit's um greeby. No. It's good. Okay this one's no good. You fill up the bucket? Okay. Thank you. Mushroom English. Okay. Thank you. Ever since I entered Latvia I was told that this time of year is like really good mushroom season so I'm pretty chuffed that I managed to sort of see that today. They were really kind like no English but I think we just about got there. I think they were a bit confused at first. I thought I was just kind of following them around but they were yeah they were gracious letting me film bits and bobs. Okay let's uh let's keep moving. It's been some fun sections today some of it's super rutted and not really possible but there's other bits which are like smooth and flowy and they're just gorgeous. I think we're about a quarter of the way into the trip so we've still got a long long way to go but that's fine. Means I've got three quarters more of the trail to enjoy. Damn it I went the wrong way. I was just looking at the trees and I was going I'm not seeing any of those symbols and then I had a look at the map and yeah I've gone about 200-300 meters off course so I gotta go back. Well isn't this novel. I'm on tarmac. It's been days. Oh so we're crossing back over the gouger river here. It's getting big. Look at it. Wowzers. It's making this road must be incredibly new. They're still doing work on it. Off the bigger road now and I suspect we'll end up on track sooner than later. It's a nice little change though. A few kilometers on tarmac. So I think this might be the last little hamlet that I pass through for a while and I do need to restock with water so I'm going to try and spot someone and see if I can ask. I think this house might be the chosen one. Hello. Do you speak English? I'm Ludzu Udins. Yeah. Yeah? Is that okay? Can I help? Yeah? Yeah. Is there more? Is there more to say? Oh I don't know. But you have like Udins I can tell. No. Oh you don't have? Over here Udins? No. No? You don't have? Okay. Maybe up here? Okay. I'll do this. I thought initially she sounded quite positive that she did have water but I don't think she totally understood me. She was hauling a massive tree. I tried to offer to help but she was like no no no I've got it. So I guess we keep going. She kind of just pointed me onwards but I'm pretty sure I leave this hamlet. Aha. Okay. So it seems I hadn't actually entered the hamlet proper. Sveiki. Ludzu Udins. Could I fill a bottle? Yeah. Do you speak English? Maybe it's better if I go inside because this is not drinkable. Oh it's not clean? No not really but I can fill it up inside. I'll grab some bottles if that's okay. I've got a couple. Are you gardening today? No it's for dogs. We got puppies yesterday. Oh yeah? So we have two big puppies. What breed? Golden retriever. Oh very cute. How many of them? Two. One for me one for neighbor. Thank you very much. No problem. Hello. Thank you very much. What was your name? Laura. I'm Ed. Nice to meet you. Hello. What's this one's name? Noda. It's very cute. Thank you. Goodbye. It's very kind of her to go inside and fill up my bottles. That puppy was cute as well. Right okay we're heading back into the forest now. All these little spots in the forest are just so pretty. Yeah. I think I'll have lunch on that deck there. Ah so a good spot and again so peaceful. Apart from that bird. I still can't get over the fact that that old lady was... she was 86 and she was like hauling trees around. It's very impressive. I guess it's the clean air out here keeps you young. Oh I was looking forward to having lunch there but then that massive group of students that are on the boats just came and completely disturbed the peace. So I've just left and I'm gonna find somewhere else to sit. I've been carrying this bread since I left. It doesn't look too bad actually but it does need eating so I'm gonna try and get through as much of it as I can in this little lunch session. I've been carrying these olives as well. Six day year old olives. They've been in quite hot temperatures. Get them on. Get them eaten. I've carried on after lunch. I've hit a fork in the path and this is a funny one because that's the way up that hill but that also connects. It just goes around the hill but I've got to go up even though I know I'm just giving myself effort. Okay these are fun. It's a bit of a nightmare to get over all of them to be honest. It's really slow going. They've all just so conveniently just fallen over the trail but we're getting there. It's just as hard work as it is pushing this unicycle around and you've got to lift it over logs every now and then. Anyway I'm just complaining because I can. It's still super super pretty out here and I'm really lucky that I'm doing this in days where it's actually warm and dry. I can only imagine how difficult this would be if it was wet and muddy and no I can't complain. It's just very slow going. Okay the path has taken me down by the river now and I'm getting absolutely eaten alive by mosquitoes. These are just nasty. They're just everywhere and what's fun is that the path looks like it's super overgrown so I'm hoping it doesn't last like that for long because this is definitely not rideable. Yeah I don't know if this path is used that much. Oh here we go right by the river. Beautiful. Yeah I think the path might have washed away recently. I think I can get through there. I'm glad we're out of that. That's probably the least enjoyable part of this trail so far. Just being eaten alive by mosquitoes while trying to bat my way along the side of the river. Luckily I'm the kind of person that doesn't seem to react to mosquito bites. When I was in Kazakhstan it was awful. They're just going in my mouth. They're going everywhere. Or at least the sun setting. Look at the sunset. Isn't that nice? Isn't that pretty? Yeah enjoy that because I can't. I think having that kind of perspective knowing that it can get much worse actually means that when I'm in these kind of situations it helps me keep a sort of level head and just go okay I'm gonna get a few bites and that's it. From this point the trail cut away from the river and thankfully after hours of hiker bike sent me down some actual asphalt. Actually on a road. How exciting. How novel. Happy to have a nice mix today. It's been fun. And what's nice about mixing up roads and trails and walking and whatever, my bum isn't actually hurting that much because I'm not putting a lot of hours in the saddle. So I haven't got those persistent sores which I generally get when I unicycle. Bloody hell mate. It's on a rush. That sign really confused me for a second. Camels out here. But then I remembered that I had seen on the map that there is a zoo which I passed through. So this must be it. Zoo Raksi. There's a zebra. Why not? Oh it's a zebra and a donkey. Hello. Hello. You're very friendly and you're very fluffy. Hello. Yeah you're wanting food aren't you? Hello there. That's not a major fence is it keeping you in. All right I'm gonna leave the animals alone. The plan now was to push a little further but as the sun was becoming low in the sky, begin keeping one eye out for a decent place to camp. There's benches there and a bin. Okay. And a toilet and a camping place. Well I think we should just go here then. Well it's a little bit later than I wanted but we've found somewhere and it's ideal. Right it's absolutely ideal. Before I came to Latvia I had no idea just how good the infrastructure was for wild camping. It feels so welcoming. You can just come and you can pitch a tent and you don't have to worry about being on private land or just finding secret little spots to camp at. This one even has a seesaw. I mean what more could you want eh? I don't know why nobody's out here. You know it's lovely weather. It has been. I don't know why there's nobody here. My total distance for the day was 40 kilometers. Certainly not massive but considering the terrain I'll definitely take it. It's just gone nine o'clock. I've cooked my food. It's my standard lentils and carrots and onion and a bit of pasta. There's a bit of cheese in this one as well which I'm very excited about. It's not quite the early night I was after but there we go. We got there and we found again a really cool place. Right I'm shattered. I'm gonna get some sleep. I will see you tomorrow. Good night. Thank you for watching this video. The eagle-eyed among you would have noticed that I've got a new t-shirt design. It's some dude riding his unicycle in a they're available in various different colors. I'll leave a link below if you want to support the channel and check those out. Please do check out FlexiSpot and if you'd like to see the next video in this series it's available right now on my Patreon. Thank you very much and I'll see you next time.