I’m in a cabin, they call it a bungalow in the hotel. It’s a large garden shed with a double bed and a table and two chairs, and a small stoop outside with two green plastic chairs. There are little pine bedside tables. When the booking site tells you two have been booked recently, or only one is available, don’t believe them. That’s what it said to me and this is No 25 and I’m pretty certain none of the others are occupied – oh the sun has come out for a moment, slanting shadows across the grass. There’s a strip of grass outside that stretches along, and a few rocks, and, well, the sea. I took thirty-eight paces last night from where I am now, sitting on the edge of the bed, and I was standing in the sea. There are gulls ambling from the south, I’m looking east, out across the Gulf of Riga, towards a distant horizon.

The trouble is I’m going home today, and my soul has left already. It’s sitting at the table where I write, looking out through the open garden doors at my wild garden and the plums that probably need picking, and the path through the garden that needs to be walked to continue to exist – I never cut the grass – and my little dog Boo is at my feet frowning because she wants to go for a walk and all I want to do is sit and look out and contemplate.

I have had an amazing trip in Latvia and Estonia. I came out here to research the novel I’m writing. That was the primary objective. I set the novel in Estonia when I hardly knew Estonia existed. I’ve travelled now to every corner apart from the north east coast. I’ve written here and I’ve filled notebooks and I’ve taken pictures. I have months’ worth of material to go through, quietly at my table at home.

But the things I have learnt on this trip have not been about my characters and my novel, but about me, about travelling itself, how it has given me something that I could not have found in any other way.

I can’t really put into words what that something is. It’s to do with little things. The car park attendant in Tallinn who looked after my car (that’s how it felt).  His only English word was ‘Russian?’ He spoke Russian and Estonian. Our interactions were gentle and amusing as I came and went over several days. His entire system was paper based, each ticket filled out by hand in duplicate, one for the car, one for him, and at the end I returned the one from the car to him and he matched them up and put them away somewhere. And each time I parked just outside his hut, he showed me where, and it seemed as if my car was receiving his special attention. I practiced my Aitah and Head aega and Palun. He listened patiently.

I’ve seen a sea eagle and I’ve heard my You bird calling to me all week ( I do know what it was now, but I’m saving that little story for later). A hoopoe was pecking at the grass outside my cabin last night. I’ve looked across Lake Peipsi and seen horizon from left to right. I’ve sat on a balcony in Beneport with a stuffed head of a wild boar behind me and stared across a mile of water at the Russian coast. I’ve heard Fantuzzi play a gig in Tartu. I’ve seen the glory of the inside of a church of the Old Religion. I’ve found a Graduation Art Show in a huge disused warehouse in the docks in Tallinn.

But the things that stand out are the interactions with people. The waitresses, the car park attendant, the glow of peoples smiles. The people I danced with in Latvia.

Two oyster catchers fly past my window. Sunlight dapples the grass. White horses gallop across the bay.

Kind people are the best thing in the world.