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
