HIGHWAYS OR HELLWAYS

We drove for 1100Km in Latvia and Lithuania.
The car was an Astra 1.6 (latest design) and I cannot fault this at all.
It was hired from Argus and booked through Car Trawler but the local Riga office were very helpful and met us in the centre of Riga with the vehicle and collected it the same way. Thanks.






I can, however, fault the roads.

In Riga centre most main roads are constructed of large stone cobbles. Usually the tram tracks are in the centre of the road where there is a pronounced crown. The road then slopes quite steeply to the kerbside and is often badly subsided. You overtake trams on the wrong side, but when they stop then you stop because passengers must cross from the pavement to the tram.

In the countryside, potholes predominate - even on main roads. Some roads are being reconstructed with EU funding, but whilst this happens you drive on the sub base !!!

Motorways only have 2lanes. There is a hard shoulder, but this doubles as entry and exit slip roads too and is used by people to undertake slower vehicles !!!. Oh and local vehicles can suddenly drive off the side of the motorway into their fields and presumably return the same way ! The central reservation is about 100feet wide and is not fitted with safety fencing at all - so nood good Shane applying for a job in the Baltic. I dont think that Jill or Derek would have much to do either !

The car is Russian (a Volga 3110) but is not typical of the country - it is CLEAN !!!

You cannot buy petrol in the Baltic, as all cars seem to run on some kind of liquid coal. But the fuel is 'Environmentally friendly' because it contains the same acrid noxious pollutants as already exsist in the atmosphere and is therefore friendly to those in the local environment. !!