Can I Unicycle Across a Country Using ONLY Hiking Trails? Day 11

Good morning and welcome back to my journey trying to cross Latvia on my unicycle along the Baltic Forest Trail. Today I'm leaving Riga. I've been here for two days staying in Mara's apartment with her two cats and her very sweet dog Mars. So I need to leave the city but I'm not going to be leaving alone and for the next few days I'm going to be riding with this chap. Some of you might know if you've been following his TikToks. Yeah I'm a big TikToker, making my mom proud of me you know. So I'm Silva, I'm French but for the last 10 years of my life I've been living in Estonia and so during this summer I took the challenge to go from France to Estonia with my unicycle. As I say it's my way to connect my roots land in France to my lovely heart's land, greatest country in the world in Estonia. Like so far I've been doing roughly two thousand three or four hundred kilometers. The goal is to do a total of three thousand kilometers over the overall trip. So while we've got an opportunity to weigh our gear we're both kind of curious to see how much stuff we're actually taking kind of compared together. 101 yeah and that was minus 65. 36. 36 yeah. 86 okay. 59.3. So all my gear including water and food and the unicycle and my helmet and my backpack it was 28.5 kilograms. And what was yours? 36. Yeah so you're about eight kilos heavier. Yeah. Which to be honest with a 36 that's pretty good. I've never toured with anyone else on a unicycle so I'm curious to see how it works and especially with the different size wheels I suspect there's going to be a bit of a discrepancy in speed but we're keen to try and make it work for a few days and we just want to get into the forest. I want to get out of the city. Yeah so do I. Let's get out of the city. So we're attempting to go through the old town to get to the river but yeah the issue with the old town, I mean it's not an issue it's beautiful, but the issue on the unicycle is all cobbles so you end up just like bouncing around all the time. Nice. Yeah it's cool. It's a blustery one today because I've been riding in the forest this whole trip. I haven't really experienced high winds but it's just getting used to it again being sort of fastened I look good actually it looks quite smooth. Yeah that sand stuff is so dodgy. This is going to be fun. Okay so now is the question where do I mount again? Go front. Let's go. Okay give it one more try. Yeah. Otherwise you're just walking. Yeah yeah yeah. Now you can do it because if you believe in your dream you can do anything. You feel prepared to do 200 kilometers on this? Hell yes. I was born ready. Our plan for the going back the way Sylvain had already come. Seeing as it's such a rarity for two touring unicyclists to intersect he decided to alter his route to join me on the trail. Once we reached Kaldiga I'd continue riding south to the Lithuanian border and his plan was to load his unicycle onto an inflatable kayak and continue his trip to Estonia that way. Which is absolutely mental but that's a story for him to tell on his own channel. Anyway for now we weren't thinking about any of that. Rather just trying to navigate the terrain of the forest trail the best we could. Sand sand sand. That's gonna work my cardio. Oh god you clearly see like the line of the yeah you see both of ours yeah just like wibbly wobbly. Yeah some of these tracks they're not they're not easy especially for Sylvain. It's quite impressive that he's even attempting some of this stuff on the 36. I mean it's the reason why I decided to get this smaller wheel for this trip. I feel I'm gonna lack of footage. It's really hard to film with this stuff right? Bumpy bumpy. Loved in. Oh we're making pretty good progress today. I think we've done about 20 kilometers. Something like this. I think it's pretty good. It's been pretty good. I'm quite happy with that especially considering it's 2 pm. And we're just approaching the Baltic Sea. Oh wow. Okay there's some serious wind here which I guess makes sense. Holy crap. Oh that's gonna be fun. Amazing. So this is the Baltic Sea and we're gonna be following this one for another like 20 kilometers or something. It's gonna be cool. So this is quite an interesting section of the Mezhtake. The route goes like along a cycle path down about 3.8 kilometers and then it comes back on the beach. I'm gonna push out this way on the cycle path and Sylvain's gonna just gonna chill here. I'm just gonna take a chill. I'm gonna edit my video with my 36. It will be just too much of a pain in your ass to ride on a beach. Yeah but yeah I feel like I'm committed to seeing the whole route. So while I would love to just kind of continue down, keep making progress, this is part of it. So we're gonna see what's this direction. I'm effectively going the wrong way now. I'm still following the route. I considered just skipping this section but the point of this challenge is to do the whole Mezhtake route regardless of where it takes me. So while it would be very easy just to kind of keep going down the beach, I have to. Like mentally I wouldn't be happy if I didn't complete this just out of laziness you know. So we're gonna push down the cycle path and then the official route goes on the beach. The sand feels okay. It certainly feels softer than that section of beach that I rode in New Zealand. But I guess we just need to give it a go. 3.5 kilometers this way. Let's try. Yeah I mean there's certainly a lot of resistance. But it is possible. It's just the wheel doesn't really glide over the sand. It just kind of sinks. Yeah this is going to be a tough ride. If I just stay where the waves are, I'm not going to be able to do the whole route. I'm sure all this salt water is going to be amazing for my bearings but there we go. This is part of the trip. What I'm finding really quite difficult is the strong wind coming to my right. I'm having to like bend to try and keep this unicycle balanced. There's also a bit of a camber obviously that dips down to the sea. So I'm like super skewiff trying to ride. But this is the only place that it's actually possible to ride on the beach because the sand is packed hard enough. I'll ride like this back to Sylvain and then I'll make a decision after this. Because while it's just about possible for me to ride, I think he's going to have a very hard time. Made it back. I think that was about 3.5 kilometers on the sand. The thing is it's okay. It's quite solid right by the waves. But occasionally the waves come in and you're just riding in the water. And the difficulty is all the wind. You're nervous. The wind is pushing on my kinks the whole time. And trying to have a decent speed but also being completely bent over. This is so difficult. I want to hear it. It's getting better. I think it's just like a little bit of sand on the disc. I think I've had my fill of sea sand riding. We're going to ride along these paths. This isn't a pure Baltic forest trail. But I just don't want to be riding on the sand for another 20 kilometers. We're also very hungry. So we're just going to push on another 5 kilometers I'll say. And get to a shop. And then we can stock up a bit for the days ahead as well. We've got some food. Just not everything we need. She's Gracia. I have two girls and this baby. We know Ukraine and Odessa. Oh, baby. Oh, sport life. This is Barovix. Chanterelle is good. We can get some Chanterelle. In forest. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Do you know? Yeah. Champignon. Yeah. I love you. It's okay. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Regina. Yeah. Supermodel. We're currently pushing through Yerevan. But to be honest, we're looking just to get out the other side. And find somewhere quiet to camp. I'm hoping we can find somewhere by the coast. But it's seriously windy today. So we might have to be slightly inland. But we shall see. Yeah, the spot where I was just before the night I came to Riga was just so nice. But I was like another 30 km away. Not gonna get there. Before we stopped for the night, we thought it might be a smart idea to ask a cafe for water. It was here that the reach of Sylvan's online presence became apparent. I've been seeing you on TikTok recently. It's very possible, yes. I'm going from France to Estonia. Yeah, I know. How's the trip going? It's lovely. I'm having so much fun. I'm really loving it. Latvia has been wonderful so far. Have you solved your problem with the sleeping bag? It was my first night below 10 degrees in a while. As you can see on my face, I didn't sleep very much. So clearly, I need to get a better sleeping bag. I got this vest. Because I did not have many nights when I was cold. I think I was more stressed of anticipation than actual problem. So I got this vest, which hopefully is going to help me to keep me warm at night. I wish you luck on your trip. Yeah, I wish you luck as well. Here you go. Thank you very much. Bye. Have a good trip. Svejki. Wow. I think what he was saying was that he recognized me from TikTok. Yeah, I think so. Because Silvan's got a hammock and I've got a tent, we need to find a spot that's going to work for both of us. But I'm hoping we can find somewhere here because we're right by the sea. Right by this beach. It would be amazing if we could make it work. That's good. Yeah. Good, I'm glad my sew's working better. Just needed a bit of a clean. As you've seen during the series, with unicycle touring, you're severely limited with what you can carry. Out here, we've both got the bare essentials of what we need to be able to camp and cook. But what if we weren't so limited and were instead on a car camping trip? Perhaps then we may have packed something like the new AC200L from Blue Yeti who are kindly sponsoring this video. The AC200L is a 2048Wh power station designed for use at home and on the go. There are many different ways you can charge it, including your car's 12V DC output, solar panels, or simply a standard wall outlet. With its two convenient carry handles, it's easy to pick up and throw in the back of a vehicle to take on a long camping trip. Compared to travelling on a unicycle, car camping allows you to pack much more. So if you want to head outside but still have the convenience of long-lasting mains-like power, the AC200L would be a great option. As an experiment, I'm curious to see if the AC200L can handle making a coffee. So I've got a grinder here. I'm going to whack that in. For outputs, it has two DC, four 230V AC, two USB-As, and two USB-Cs that can provide up to 100W each. I'm going to turn on the AC and give this a go. Using the electric coffee grinder was no issue at all, as this only pulled around 125W. But could it cope with a higher draw from a kettle? Yeah, of course it could. From the readout, I could see that the kettle pulled around 2,700W, which it dealt with perfectly. I'd say that was a very successful test. And when you get back home, with its 2,400W AC fast-charging capability, the power station can replenish from 0 to 80% capacity in just 45 minutes. So, if you think the AC200L could be right for you, please click the top link in my description to find out more. Thank you Bluetti, now back to the video. Yeah, it's going to be so interesting to see our video, in a sense that we're going to make the same adventure from two different angles. It's just two different perspectives. Yeah, I think it's so interesting. I've never had this, you know, to be with someone else but it's pretty comforting to make some cool video as well. And it's very interesting because the scenes that you film are totally different than the one I filmed. I'll tell you what, those mushrooms were incredibly tasty. Mixed in with pasta and carrots, it's made for a brilliant meal. It was a really good day today, we made pretty good progress. Tomorrow we'll be following the coast for a few miles, and then we're cutting inland, following the Mejtaqa, the Baltic Forest Trail, and I'm curious to see how we fare. Sylvain did very, very well on the rough terrain today. I wouldn't want to have a 36er on this stuff. It's just been really nice to have some company. I enjoy riding alone, I enjoy travelling alone, but it's just a different dynamic, travelling with someone, and I'm just looking forward to the next few days riding with him. It's 10.30, I'm very tired, I'm going to get some sleep, and I'll see you in the morning as we continue riding across Latvia. Goodnight. 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