The End

So we are now back home in London. Whilst we have been pedalling my mum has been keeping up with us on her exercise bike, so here is a picture of the three of just before we left to cycle to Durham to get the train home.








ST PETERSBURG

This was a journey to St Petersburg. It has taken us till now to come to a conclusion on St Petersburg. We didn't like it that much, and we couldn't put our finger on why. We think we have finally got to the bottom of it, so here goes. St Petersburg is a place of huge ostentation. The buildings are massive, art galleries have vast collections in room after room, which are well able to mop up the massive numbers of tourists that troop around. Enormous public squares abound, almost entirely dedicated to car and coach parks. The city seems to be in thrall to cars and coaches. It seems you can park your car anywhere. If there's no room for your SUV, just put it on the pavement. Want to park your coach in the middle of the equivalent of Trafalgar Square? Go ahead. Public spaces are not celebrated; we only found 100 metres of pedestrian only street in the week we spent there. The layout of the streets and squares has precluded any alleyways, intimate spaces, and what my architect pals call glimpses. This is not a city on any scale you could call human, but it does look good from a distance.
Enough. The Russian people, were almost universally friendly and helpful, and helped us out of many scrapes.

All up we cycled just over 4000 km; 2700 to get there and 1300 to get back. So if you should ever want to cycle to St Petersburg, you'd be better off going the way we came back. You would also have the wind behind you. It wouldn't be any cheaper, as accommodation was more than twice as much in the Nordic countries as it it was on the south side of the Baltic.

We have weighed the bikes, us and all our gear, and will publish an analysis later for anyone interested. We need to find a way to get the weight down for the next trip; we are both brushing up our French

Bergen - The last bit by train

What's this bird all about? The pied wagtail has become our mascot on this trip. Not a day has gone by on the road without seeing one. The cuckoo was singing in Germany but changed its tune by Poland. The Stork appeared in Eastern Germany and was with us as far as the Russian border. Skylarks, Corncrakes and Swallows didn't follow us to Scandinavia. Rosebay willow herb began to flower in Belarus, Heather appeared in Finland and both are still with us. But the wagtail was with us all the time. A more poetic person might think it was leading the way.


Sorry about that - Ted's having one of his bucolic moments. Now what was I saying about Swedish haystacks ...?

We only did about 200 km in Norway on our bikes but it seems the best place so far for bikes that we have been to. The last 40 km into Oslo was along a really well marked cycle track and the centre of Oslo seems to be given over to bikes. If you could stomach the the price of accommodation here it would be a great place. We have had our most expensive half litre of beer at 5 pounds, and some hotels, after charging 100 quid a night, cheerfully charged us 15 pounds a night to put our bikes in the hotel carpark. I did get my own back in one place by replacing the beer we had drunk from the minibar by identical cans we bought in a supermarket at one third the price. I don't want to put people off. Part of our problem is that we we were on a mission to get to Oslo. A properly planned cycle tour could have made use of the "Summer Hotels" which are very common in the Nordic Countries. These rooms are in halls of residence with en suite and cooking facilities. We managed to find a few of these along the way and they were great.

In fact part of the problem is that the northern summer holidays seem to be squeezed into just a few weeks around now. Although we have been booking a few days in advance we had to take what was available - so last night it was a palatial suite of rooms into which we parked our bikes at the suggestion of the receptionist.

It is a great place to cycle - in fact we are already planning our next trip. We have been enjoying the luck of the Irish with the weather and have had an unbroken 3 weeks of beautiful sunny weather. In fact over the whole 10 weeks we have only been soaked 5 times. Yesterday we took the train from Oslo to Bergen over the mountains. It was pretty cold and snowy on the plateau but there were loads of cyclists piling on and off the train to ride an old track down to the sea. It looked fantastic but maybe that was because the sun was shining. However it presents us with lots of new opportunities to kit ourselves out in a new wardrobe of cold weather cycling gear.

Today our luck has run out and it's pouring - typical Bergen weather so we are told. It doesn't matter as we are on the ferry to Newcastle tonight.

Although we had to pay in some hotels this one didn't charge us for putting the bikes in their cellar. The hotel was a conversion from the town's jail, and the cellar ( the punishment block) is still maintained as a museum. They have never been safer.






In our last post we spoke of narrow main roads in Sweden. How do you fancy cycling down here?










Here's a picture of the train half way up to the plateau. We would love to have cycled up to here ...honest.