Thursday, August 5

The driver drops us off at the other end of the long walking street in Jūrmala and so we spend a long time walking down it. We notice the same thing as in Riga: an awful lot of shops have closed down. At some points almost every other shop is for sale or rent.

Eventually we get to the end by the church and turn left for the beach. The wind blows hard and hot. We walk down to the sea and take some photographs. The colours seem suitably bright and the gulls utterly unperturbed.

The toilets have moved off the beach and into new little alcoves. The huts have changed a bit. We sit and watch a man starting an extremely large sand sculpture.

Later we will eat at a restaurant we ate at last year. Last year people surrounded as at the neighbouring tables. Today we will eat alone.