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.

No Cakes or Ale

We have just arrived in Kongsvinger in Eastern Norway after a wiggly journey across central Sweden. We can't post pictures here. ( a very kind receptionist has let us use the office computer in this 110 pounds a night hotel. It's the only one for miles - honest) Main roads in Sweden are not for cyclists We'll post a picture when we get to Oslo to give you an idea. So we have had to zigzag around, through some fantastic countryside. Norway is very hilly, not a surprise, but we think tomorrow will be downhill to Oslo.

Ted has understated the horrors of the Route 61. We were on a perfectly nice cycle path out of town and were debouched onto a two lane dual carriageway which rapidly went down to one lane and the space for bikes to about 12 inches. Our panniers were scrapping along the crash barrier and the vehicles coming past us at 100 KPH were scrapping the central divider. We came off at the appropriately named Kil and took the back roads through some beautiful countryside adding 30 Km to our journey. You might ask why we didn't do that in the first place. We did today - this involved 20 Kms on a dirt road which was amazingly smooth and infinitely better than any of the Russian roads we went on.

Now to the cakes - or lack of them - and even worse the complete absence of cold beer in regular supermarkets in Sweden. I thought the archaic rules about buying liquor in the state stores had long since disappeared - but no. It was not possible to buy beer stronger than 3.5 % in the supermarkets. That would have been OK but it seems that supermarkets aren't allowed to sell cold beer. Apparently most of the beer sold in Sweden is this low alcohol stuff - it would be interesting to find out if it is the solution to binge drinking. We certainly saw a lot of drunks in parks - and Ted had a very nice chat with one of them when we were having our lunch. The next day we were back in the bus shelter! Cakes are also seemingly impossible to find and Ted needs his fix every night. We found shelves of crispbreads and other healthy foods but no unhealthy sweet stuff.

A quick picture based session from Sigtuna

This will be a picture intensive bulletin. we are in Sigtuna, about 60 km north of Stockholm. Apparently the oldest town in Sweden. We picked it as a close place to Stockholm as we thought that getting out of Stockholm by bike would be difficult. It was! lots of well marked cycle tracks that take you off into housing estates and then dump you. No moaning, the provision is miles better than the UK and these tracks, we think, are meant for locals.

Sigtuna turned out to be a wonderful place, but we won't go on about it.

Here are some pictures. We mentioned the tortuous route our ferry took through the islands, this is another ferry boat taken from ours as we approached the half way mark. We were both doing 40 km/hr at the time(my GPS). It's a crummy pic but it conveys the excitement.

Here are a batch of brides in St Petersburg

Here is Sarah retrieving some banana skins from someones post box which she thought was a litter bin.

For the haystack fans here is a Finnish haystack field