Day 4 - Plateliai to Taurage

---

---

On Wednesday morning we had a 70+ mile ride south to Taurage. We had the most panoramic start of the trip (see the photos), starting from the jetty on Lake Plateliai, which is the cleanest lake in Lithuania.

The weather was, yet again, blue skies, bright sunshine and very hot.

The morning was a series of seemingly never ending inclines that only ended after about 2 hours of cycling, just north of the A1. From then on the story changed. The remainder of the route (on the whole) was flat (or slight declines) and we made excellent time, averaging 20 miles per hour (~30 kph) for long sections and eating the miles towards Taurage.

It seemed like a very short day before we were pulling up and the Taurage city limits sign for our regular photo opportunity, where we were met by Remy, a local army chaplain who was our escort for our evening festivities.

We cycled through Taurage and into the forest to the south, where we headed to a local military base to meet a local Rugute family whose father was a Sergeant Major in the battalion.

The trip was only marred when Mr Quinlan bottled a corner in a gravel trap and wound up sitting on his backside wondering where his bike had gone. Fortunatley for us all, he only suffered minor scrapes to his elbow and a bruised ego and was only 1.5km from the base. After a quick patchup job at the side of the road, we headed to the base where he was whisked away to the medical facility to be checked out, whilst Mr Miles and I were escorted to the officers mess and ate all the food :-)

Actually, we were very polite and waited as long as possible before tucking in.

I would like to say a huge thank you to all involved in this event. We were very well looked after and the base hospitality is second to none. Remy was the perfect host, mixing excellent brandy cocktails, the food was wonderful and the tour of the base (together with the ride in the APC) was fantastic.

We were even invited back if we are ever in the area, an offer that I am seriously considering.

---

Photos

Lakeside start
What better way to start the day than on a jetty on Lake Plateliai.

Quenching the thirst
Riding in this heat is thirsty work.

Silale beckons
Another mile, another town

End of the road
We reached Taurage at a blistering rate of knots.

Looking for targets
Borris directs the battlefield

Borris sits in the "Chair"
The chaplain (Remy) showed us his chapel and allowed Borris to sit in a very special chair.

Borris over does it
Sadly Borris had one too many of the local moonshine in the officers mess.