I was standing somewhere beyond Pape, in the dunes, looking for a place to spend my second night.

It was dark already. Another few dozen kilometres behind me, tired legs, tired shoulders. All I wanted was to pitch the tent, take my shoes off and finally lie down.

Back on the beach, I had seen anglers arriving to fish for flounder through the night. I walked another couple of kilometres and decided to leave the beach for the woods.

I put on my head torch and headed over the dunes.

There were bushes ahead, with a few worn paths between them. Suddenly, my torch caught two small points of reflected light.

At first, I couldn't work out what they were.

Then they both blinked.

That concluded my interest in this particular patch of woodland.

I had no idea who those eyes belonged to. And I had absolutely no desire to find out. I turned round and went back to the dunes, where at least I could see what was around me.

When I finally found a suitable spot and got the tent up, I felt as pleased as if I had checked into a five-star hotel.

My hotel had no shower, electricity or proper bed. It did have a sleeping bag, an inflatable mat, a pillow, and the opportunity to remove shoes that had spent the whole day trying to convince my feet they were too big.

I crawled into the tent and found myself thinking something that comes up regularly on these trips.

What the hell am I doing here?

At home, I have a comfortable bed. Hot water. Food that doesn't need boiling water poured into it. Somewhere to put my things without wondering whether they'll end up full of sand.

And I had voluntarily given all that up so I could walk forty kilometres and feel delighted at the prospect of lying on the ground.

Though I already knew part of the answer.

I walk because I want to find out what I'm actually capable of. The part I love most is crossing a limit I had set for myself. Discovering that I can go a little further.

And out here, very ordinary things become a source of enormous pleasure again.

For a few days, I take away almost all my usual comforts. Then I give myself a few back: hot food, a dry sleeping bag, a chance to rest my feet.

And that's enough to make me happy.

It is a fairly strange arrangement.

But let's start at the beginning.

On 2 October, at six in the morning, I boarded a bus in Riga. Around midday, after roughly 260 kilometres on the road, I got off in Klaipėda.

I had three days and two nights ahead of me. The plan was to walk to Liepāja, cover about a hundred kilometres, and catch a bus back to Riga on Sunday.

This was my fourth hike along the Baltic Sea. I had walked other stretches before, including the Gulf of Riga and the coast near Ventspils. This time I wanted to explore the southern coast, somewhere I hadn't been.

Starting in Lithuania and walking back into Latvia had a particular appeal.

I hadn't prepared a precise GPS route for each day. I hadn't marked the places where I would definitely pitch my tent. There was no checklist of sights I had to see, either.

I had a starting point, a destination, a bus home, and everything I needed in my pack.

The rest I would work out along the way.

With every hike, I become more certain that I like this freedom. Of course, the equipment needs thinking through. You need to know what to do if the weather changes or something goes wrong. But you don't have to know which tree stump you'll sit on for lunch.

There is one thing I still haven't got better at over the years, though.

Packing in good time.

At midnight, six hours before the bus, I was still sorting out my gear.

If you would like one practical piece of advice from this trip, here it is: please don't do that.

I give myself the same advice before every hike.

So far, with limited success.

After the first five kilometres, I found somewhere I wanted to stop.

A bluff about fifteen metres above the sea. Wooden steps. A bench among the pines. And a view that made the lunch decision for me.

It was 2 October, but it felt like summer.

The sun was shining straight into my face, the sky was bright blue, and my phone said about 20 °C.

I took off my fifteen-kilo pack, got out the gas stove and put some water on to boil.

I had five different freeze-dried meals with me. At that point, I could still afford to take my time choosing which one I fancied.

I hadn't eaten anything hot since five in the morning, so my appetite was excellent.

My feet were already a little sore. My shoulders were getting used to the straps, and I could feel quite clearly that this wasn't going to be an easy three-day outing.

But I sat on the bench, held my hot meal and looked out to sea.

Five kilometres behind me.

Ninety-five ahead.

There was no rush. Nobody expected me to be somewhere else in an hour. I had three days, a good pack, the sea, and an October behaving like July.

I remember feeling very happy just then.

It's one of my favourite moments from the trip.

And if you look at the photograph where I'm holding a spoon over the sun, almost everything I wanted at that moment is in the frame.

I didn't yet know that one of the main characters in this story would be my shoes, ahead of the sea, the woods or the tent.

Before the trip, I had decided to try the LOWA Fortux trail running shoes.

Sand-coloured, with no unnecessary details, even the logo almost blending into the shoe. I really like that understated design. Built for a quicker pace, with a good tread, cushioning with enough spring, and no membrane, so my feet could breathe better.

Exactly what I wanted for this route.

After the first five hundred metres, I realised something.

The shoes were half a size too small.

Five hundred metres down. Approximately 99,500 to go.

An excellent set of opening statistics.

I carried on in the thinnest socks I had brought. That helped a little, but the shoes remained on my mind almost constantly.

There are different sorts of fatigue. Sore shoulders. An aching back. Tired legs.

But when your shoes are too small, all those other sensations can suddenly fade into the background.

On this hike, my feet had been given the leading role.

And I should make something clear. I have no complaint about the LOWA Fortux shoes themselves. I liked their construction, grip and behaviour on different surfaces.

I had simply chosen the wrong size.

It's a distinction I always try to keep in mind when judging equipment. A bad experience doesn't necessarily mean a bad product. Sometimes it means you've made a bad decision yourself.

In my case, I had about a hundred thousand opportunities to reconsider that decision. One with every step.

By the evening of the first day, I was approaching Palanga.

Sunset, people strolling along the beach, everything looking lovely. Except I already had about thirty kilometres behind me, and what I really wanted to look at was somewhere I could pitch a tent.

For me, a hike with a night outdoors is a different experience from a day walk. We could argue about definitions, but the night in the tent is an essential part of the adventure for me.

You go somewhere and move your life outside for a while.

And every evening, you have to find somewhere to set that life up for a few hours.

On the first evening, this proved harder than I had expected.

Palanga goes on for a long way. And people apparently enjoy spending their evenings by the sea very much indeed.

I walked another five kilometres or so before the beach was quiet enough to start looking for a camping spot.

I turned in towards the trees.

There weren't many pines, but by then I barely cared. Around nine in the evening, I could physically hardly stay on my feet. A couple of square metres of ground would do.

Then some teenagers on electric scooters rode past, about fifty metres away.

Followed by a car.

I hadn't found a forest.

I had found a park.

For a while, I just stood there looking around.

Then I put my pack back on.

Another five kilometres.

I don't remember feeling particularly grateful for the opportunity to test my limits at that point. I had some rather specific thoughts about my route planning instead.

Eventually, I reached some woods where it was quiet enough.

The day's total was now around forty kilometres.

I found a level spot, put the pack down, and took out my phone to record a video about how happy I was to have finally found a bed for the night.

Then the shots started.

At least, that's what I thought they were at the time.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

One after another. About ten of them.

I froze.

Only then did I look up and see fireworks above the trees.

Somebody nearby was celebrating something.

I had no desire whatsoever to find out what.

My own celebration had begun the moment I realised I didn't have to walk any further that day.

The original plan was to walk roughly a hundred kilometres from Klaipėda to Liepāja.

But on 3 October, Latvia was holding its parliamentary election.

And I wanted to vote.

You might think that someone on a solo hike in Lithuania, carrying fifteen kilos with already rather tired feet, could put that question to one side.

I didn't see it that way.

If I could find a way to vote, why wouldn't I?

So on the second day, I changed my route. From Palanga, I took the road towards Latvia.

In Šventoji, I also had to find somewhere to charge my phone. I had brought a power bank, but it wasn't enough for everything I wanted to do.

So I spent a while hunting for a socket. Not quite the adventure you picture when planning a coastal hike, but these things are part of a trip too.

I crossed the Lithuanian–Latvian border on the main road.

When I saw the Latvia sign, I felt unexpectedly pleased.

I was a long way from Riga. My feet were tired. My pack was heavy. But suddenly, I felt almost at home.

I continued to Rucava and walked into the polling station.

The people working there were genuinely surprised.

I explained that I had walked from Klaipėda.

Judging by their expressions, I suspect they wouldn't have believed me without the large backpack.

Then I told them the next part of the plan.

Vote here, walk to Pape, then carry on to Liepāja.

That seemed to surprise them even more.

I found the whole situation fairly funny myself.

Picture a small polling station in Rucava on an ordinary election day. In comes someone with an enormous pack, announces that he has walked from Klaipėda, casts his vote, and heads off along the coast again.

But I was very glad I had done it.

Voting wasn't another sight to tick off on a map. I simply wanted to take part in the election, and I was pleased I had managed to combine it with the hike.

That little departure from the original plan added some distance in the end.

The planned hundred became 114.

Fourteen extra kilometres.

My feet were not pleased, obviously.

I was.

It felt good to have done something that mattered to me. And to have gone beyond my own planned limit again at the same time.

Sometimes the things you haven't planned become some of your best memories of a trip.

After Rucava, I continued towards Pape.

And gradually made my way back to the sea.

What surprised me on this hike was how different the Lithuanian and Latvian coasts felt.

On the Lithuanian side, there were more settlements, houses, boardwalks, maintained walking routes and people.

In Latvia, especially around Pape, Bernāti and Jūrmalciems, there are stretches where you can walk for hours without meeting anyone.

In October, you really notice it.

The sea on one side. Dunes and forest on the other. A wide beach. Flocks of birds heading south.

And you, alone with a backpack.

I think those of us who live in Latvia sometimes underestimate how unusual it is to have a coast like this.

We know our popular beaches, our usual places to relax, our familiar natural landmarks. But between them lie kilometres of coast without any particular attraction.

No bench with a lovely inscription. No viewing platform. No sign telling you to stop here and take a photograph.

Just the sea.

That's what makes it so valuable.

I travel to the mountains too. I love mountain landscapes, summits, and the feeling that nature is incomparably bigger than a person.

But on my recent hikes, I've discovered that I can experience something similar right here in Latvia.

Of course, the coast isn't the mountains.

But height isn't the only thing that gives you a sense of scale.

When you walk for several hours along an empty coast, nobody in sight ahead or behind, and the sea carries on as far as you can see, you suddenly feel very small there too.

And I like that feeling.

There's something freeing about it.

I used to think the point of a long hike was to keep walking for as long as possible without stopping.

I think differently now.

You can't just ignore fatigue. You can try to push through on willpower, get angry with your body, bargain with yourself for another five kilometres.

But sooner or later, you have to accept that your body needs a rest.

Regular, deliberate breaks work best for me.

I try to stop roughly every 45–60 minutes, even if I don't feel particularly tired yet.

Take off the pack, look after my feet, loosen up my legs and shoulders. Have a drink.

It doesn't make all the discomfort disappear. But it makes the overall tiredness easier to bear.

By the third day, those breaks had taken on a different meaning.

Sitting down was no longer enough.

I wanted to lie down.

And that was when one of the simplest items in my pack became an unexpected favourite.

It was the Bushmen lightweight insulating mat.

I had originally packed it as an extra layer between my inflatable sleeping mat and the ground.

During the hike, it became one of the things I used most.

Whenever I wanted a rest, I pulled it out of the pack's side pocket and could sit or lie down.

When pitching or packing away the tent, I could put my things on it instead of dumping everything into the sand.

It was so small and light that I hardly had to think about its weight.

Which is precisely why I kept using it.

When people talk about hiking gear, they usually want to hear about the big things: the pack, tent, shoes, jacket.

Sometimes a small thing turns out to be unexpectedly useful.

The Naturehike pillow with foam filling was another pleasant surprise.

I had used simpler inflatable pillows before. This one was considerably more comfortable.

After forty kilometres in a day, sleep is how you recover for the next one.

I was even a little sorry I hadn't tried a pillow like this earlier.

Back to the second night.

To that little tent in the dunes beyond Pape.

Once I had taken my shoes off and got into my sleeping bag, it was dark all around. I was hundreds of kilometres from home.

Everything I needed at that moment, I had carried there on my back.

And I felt very good.

That doesn't mean I had felt good all day.

My feet hurt, I was tired, and several times that day I had wanted to stop altogether. There had been moments when I wasn't thrilled with my own idea.

But after a day like that, rest felt especially valuable.

I think this is one of those things you can't fully understand just by reading about it online.

You need to experience it.

I know the feelings you get from sport. I've run, played football and done various other physical activities.

But there's something particular about walking for a long time.

You do the same thing for hours.

A step. Another step. And another.

At first, you think about the route. Your feet. Your next break.

Later, your thoughts go somewhere else entirely.

To something unresolved at work. To your relationships with people. To things you simply don't have time for in everyday life.

You can think about them for as long as you like.

Nobody asks you a new question. The phone doesn't ring. You don't have to switch to the next task.

I'm not saying a hike solves every problem.

But it helps me put my thoughts in order.

After days like these, I come home with tired feet but feeling much calmer inside.

The everyday worries that can seem so loud become quieter.

I first discovered this on my very first solo hike. Since then, I have tried not to miss a season.

And perhaps that's the main answer to why I keep wanting to shoulder a pack and go away for several days.

I haven't grown tired of being at home.

I just come back a little different after days like these.

The first day was about 20 °C.

The second was around 16 °C.

And every so often, I wondered why I had brought my FHM Pharos waterproof membrane jacket.

It sat in my pack taking up space.

Of course, I had chosen to bring it for a reason. Early October on the Baltic doesn't exactly guarantee summer weather.

But when the sun is out and it's warm, everything spare in your pack starts to feel particularly heavy.

On the third day, it turned colder.

The wind picked up by the sea, and it began to drizzle.

At that point, I was very glad I had the jacket.

I put it on and carried on along the coast.

I didn't have to look for shelter from the wind or make a detour of several kilometres inland to escape the unpleasant weather.

For two days, I had thought I was carrying it for nothing.

On the third, it was exactly what I needed.

It reminded me that the value of a piece of equipment can't always be measured in hours of use.

Sometimes one moment is enough, when you have precisely the thing you need.

If I had to repeat the route tomorrow, I wouldn't try to plan every last detail.

Being able to adapt to the circumstances is one of the things I value most about hiking.

But there are a few things I would definitely change.

First, I'd take more blister plasters.

Second, I'd choose shoes in the right size. Even very good shoes are no use if they're too small.

Third, I'd bring another power bank. A phone on a hike is for maps and keeping in touch as well as taking photographs. Hunting for a socket in Šventoji wasn't a disaster, but I would rather have spent that time walking.

I had overdone the food, though.

I had packed enough freeze-dried meals for three meals a day. It turned out that under that much physical strain, my body wasn't in a hurry to request the next portion.

I ate roughly twice a day and felt fine. Some of the food travelled back to Riga with me.

Most of the rest of the equipment earned its place.

I had a Naturehike backpack, a tent, a Fjord Nansen sleeping bag, mats, warm clothes, a gas stove, a torch, first-aid supplies, and everything else I needed for three days away from home.

It was satisfying that almost everything found a use.

Apart from the bear spray and a couple of spare food pouches.

I'm very happy about the bear spray.

At one point, looking at the map, I noticed that Latvia's westernmost point on land was close to my route.

I hadn't planned to visit it.

But coincidences like that always amuse me.

I walked over and took a photograph.

Sometimes the best little episodes in an adventure are the ones you weren't looking for.

Throughout this hike, I kept thinking about how many places in Latvia I had never visited, even though they were only a few hours from home.

We're quite happy to travel abroad for impressive scenery.

I go to the mountains myself and will keep doing so. I enjoy those trips.

But now I know I don't have to travel to the other end of Europe to feel that same excitement at the scale of nature.

Sometimes it's enough to get to Latvia's south-western coast and start walking.

Without a special list of sights.

Without an obligation to photograph every stop.

And without assuming that the most interesting things must be somewhere else.

As I approached Liepāja, my feet had made their opinion of the whole adventure quite clear.

I had a pair of ordinary pool slides in my pack. I had brought them to give my feet a break around camp in the evenings.

I walked the final five kilometres through Liepāja to the bus stop in those slides.

A large backpack and pool slides.

I probably didn't look like someone who had just finished a 114-kilometre hike.

But I was happy.

After three days in which tight shoes had become the almost constant background to every other sensation, slides seemed like a magnificent invention.

When I finally got home, as always after a hike, what I wanted most was a shower.

To wash off the sand, salt and sweat.

Put on clean clothes.

Rejoin civilisation.

For me, that's when a hike truly ends.

You've already reached the destination on the map by then.

Now you're standing under the shower, realising that for the next few hours, you don't have to walk anywhere at all.

After this hike, I had a new thought.

One day, I want to bring people to this coast who have never done a hike like this.

They don't have to walk all 114 kilometres.

They don't even have to find out how far they can walk in a day.

I'd just like them to see these places.

To experience walking beside the sea for hours without meeting another person.

To discover how interesting it is to find your own campsite in the evening, then wake up somewhere you had never been until the day before.

And perhaps discover something about themselves too.

Because the precise distance is no longer the most important thing to me.

Not even those 114 kilometres, though I had planned a hundred at the start.

What matters more is the feeling you get when you do more than you thought you could.

When the evening is hard, but in the morning you get up, pack your bag and keep going.

When you realise you can handle fatigue, discomfort and unexpected situations.

And more than that, when you come back to everyday life and find that some things you were so worried about yesterday no longer seem quite so big.

I can't promise everyone will feel the same after a three-day hike.

But I'm fairly sure many people could enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Perhaps because walking for a long time is one of the simplest things a person can do.

You don't have to compete with anyone. You don't have to win. You don't have to be particularly fast.

You just walk.

And somewhere along the way, you start to understand your own head a little better.

I left Riga intending to walk a hundred kilometres.

I ended up walking 114.

Some of the extra distance came from wanting to vote in the parliamentary election in Rucava. Some came from the fact that a real route is never as straight as the line you picture at the beginning.

I could say I got the planning wrong.

But it doesn't feel like a mistake.

I saw places I had never visited. Spent two nights in a tent. Walked into a polling station where people couldn't believe my route. Got through difficult moments and experienced others I'll remember for a long time.

And once again, I found the feeling that brings me out on these hikes.

In everyday life, we do so much to make ourselves comfortable.

We buy better things. Save time. Choose shorter, easier routes.

But a few times a year, I deliberately do the opposite.

I take the longer way.

Carry everything I need on my back.

Sleep in a tent.

Eat from a pouch.

Accept that my feet will hurt and things won't all go as I imagined.

And in return, I get something I can't simply buy.

Strong emotions. A calmer mind. The feeling that I can do more than I thought.

And a very welcome reminder of how good my everyday life actually is.

Perhaps that's why I need these hikes. To learn to appreciate the comfort I already have all over again.

And if that sometimes takes fourteen extra kilometres, so be it.

Next time, though, I'll get the shoe size right.