Karostas Stirnu buks
It is crazy, but we have already come to the end of the season 2017! This year the final race of Stirnu buks will be slightly different form the other – we will end the season in Liepāja, a city, that loves and waits for us and is impatient to show our runners the rough beauty and charm of the Liepāja Military port.
Start/finish: Beberliņi wakepark, Karosta (Liepāja military port). GoogleMap here!
Race schedule: INFO PAGE
Detailed distance maps: bit.ly/KarostasBuks
GPX files of distances available here (click on "Save link as"): “Vāvere – GPX”, “Zaķis – GPX”, “Stirnu buks – GPX”, “Lūsis – GPX”.
Why Liepāja – the city of winds? With its white sandy beaches, steep coastline here and there, forests, marshes, lakes, rivers and the most bright folk costume in Latvia? And more than that – the Military port, which is a part of Liepāja, but at the same time – a small world for itself? The largest military territory in the Baltics takes about one third of Liepāja at its Northern part.
The Military port fascinates with its roughness – it is a miraculous, paradoxical and unique place not only in the history and architecture of Latvia, but in the world as well. It was built in the turn of the 19th and 20th century as a military base of the Russian empire – today in the urban environment the military elegance of tsarist Russia and the robust charm of the Soviet era has intertwined. In the Soviet times this territory was a closed area, therefore now it is barely known for the locals themselves.
You may like or dislike the Military port, but it definitely doesn’t leave you unaffected. And if you aren’t sure where to sleep after the race - Premier Traveler Magazine has nominated the Military port prison (Karostas cietums) as one of 10 most extraordinary places of accommodation in the world (World’s 10 Most Unusual Stays). Are you brave enough?
With the help of two locals of Liepāja – Reinis Rozītis, an organizer of Liepāja sport series Izrāviens, and a real roebuck Imants Ločemlis, nordic walking instructor and a chief of local nordic walkers - Stirnu buks had a chance to explore secret paths, abandoned military buildings, sandhills and more.