Nothing prepares you for the sand. The Curonian Spit is a sliver of land nearly a hundred kilometres long, split between Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, lying between the Baltic Sea and the Curonian Lagoon and never more than a few kilometres wide. Great dunes, among the highest moving sand hills in Europe, run along its length, with pine forest holding the rest in place. UNESCO recognised it as a cultural landscape in 2000, because people have fought to keep this strip alive for centuries.
The sand has a history of its own. Villages were buried by drifting dunes in earlier times, and in the nineteenth century foresters planted pine and grass to fix the surface. Nida, the main village on the Lithuanian side, is a small place of wooden houses and smoked-fish stalls, where the writer Thomas Mann built a summer house in the early 1930s, now a museum. The Parnidis dune above the village has a sundial and a view across to the Russian border, and in Juodkrante, further north, the Hill of Witches is a wooded trail of carved wooden figures.
Riding here is a matter of patience. Cars enter the national park by paying a fee at a checkpoint, speed limits are low, and the single road is narrow and winding through forest, with cyclists and walkers. You reach the spit by a short ferry from Klaipeda to Smiltyne. Wind off the Baltic can be strong, and the sand blows across the road in places. Summer weekends are crowded, while May and September are quiet, and winter is bleak and fine.
Services are limited, so fill up in Klaipeda before crossing and carry some water. Nida has restaurants and cafes serving smoked flounder, eel and fresh fish, and amber shops along the lanes. Elk sometimes wander the woods, and the beaches on the Baltic side are wide and pale, with cold, clear water. Try to be at the dunes for sunset, when the light turns the sand pink.