Beyond Riga, the forest closed in. The bus to Kolka followed empty roads through an autumnal landscape of aching melancholy, the last whispers of golden birch leaves just visible amid the muted greens and browns of spruce, pine and fir. Here and there, remote farmsteads crouched beneath thick walls of forest: small clusters of stone barns, log houses and fences that were quickly swallowed up again by the trees.