15.8: Jalgratas

After a few Skype calls in the morning, my mind turned to my next destination -Räpina. Räpina is a town to the south east of Tartu near Lake Peipus, the large lake which forms a good proportion of Estonia’s Eastern border with Russia. It is also near  the Setu region. These were two things/areas that I wanted to check out and this town was fairly centrally located, having accommodation within cycling distance of these things. The problem was that there is no bike hire facility in the town. There’s lots of bicycle stores in Tartu, so I was envisaging taking a bike with me on the train to the nearest station and riding the remaining distance into town, about 12 km. The other option was to buy a cheap bicycle from the bike shop in Räpina. Both of these options could have worked, but weren’t ideal. This morning it crossed my mind that it might be possible to take a bike on a bus. I wandered over to the bussijaam and spoke to a very nice lady who confirmed that it is definitely possible, so long as there is space available, which she didn’t think would be an issue. That was good and it meant I was able to go out and buy a bike! I’d done a little research and settled on a bike store which sounded good <http://www.kauplusjalgratas.ee>. I ended up buying a second hand hybrid style bike which seemed to be in very good condition, complete with plenty of gears, those wheel nuts that can be removed by hand, reflectors and a bell (apparently mandatory in Estonia). I also got a few extra supplies like a spare tube and a nice big lock. When I’ve finished with it, the store is able to buy it back, although a few other people have said they might be interested in buying it too.

New jalgratas

After another nice Skype call and a coffee and cake at Werners, I decided to put my new purchase to use and go for a ride! I set off to find some geocaches to the north of Tartu, in what must have been some sort of soviet base I presume – I couldn’t find any precise information… It was a an interesting, fairly creepy place to ride around. It felt like I had strayed into a base and at any second a bunch of KGB/NKVD dudes would leap from behind a bush and lead me off for an interrogation. Fortunately, that did not happen. The first geocache I tried led my to a bunch of crumbling cement block buildings – who knows what they were used for – to crack a safe. Well, I found a pretend safe but no geocache! The next destination was considerably more creepy, an old underground bunker complex. I was a hit apprehensive to enter but it looked safe enough. The geocache listing jokingly (I hope?!?) said that this place was inhabited by deaf mutes and what they did down there was unknown. Five fairly large rooms led off a central corridor. Fortunately both my phone and GPS have torches so I was able to see in the pitch black. There was a lot of rubbish strewn around the place, doors, wooden paneling, plastic containers, items of clothing, a mort fox and what looked tike original documentation in Russian. It was all very damp and cold - I imagine it would have been a horrible place to work! I eventually found the cache behind a small wooden panel in the wall. It was a relief to get out into fresh air again!

The road leading in

First building

'Safe'

First checkpoint

Second checkpoint

Jalgratas parked near bunker

Entrance to bunker

Entrance to one of the rooms

The geocache

Central hallway

Old documents

I then made my way back home via another cache which led me through a swampy, rather unattractive piece of forest to an area of garden allotments. I couldn’t find a way into the cache through the thick scrub so returned to the Raekoja plats for a beer. A pretty good day in all.