Day 5 Arrive at Riga

Our final day cycling into Riga - it was hot and thirsty work today but not so many km to cover. First stop was to visit a wonderful bicycle museum - the private collection of an enthusiastic Latvian engineer who has spent 30 years collecting bikes and everything to do with them.

There were Latvian bikes, Dutch bikes and English bikes as well as German Army bikes and children's tricycles. It was strange to think how Latvian families have served in the Russian, Latvian, German and then Soviet armies, and now presumably again the Latvian army.





In the afternoon we stopped off at the Riga Zoo before checking into the Central Hostel in Riga for the night.

Cycled 60.16 km
Busking earnings - 0
No punctures

300km

Got to 300km exactly at this bus stop. Bus stops were useful places these last 2 days because they gave us a place to stop, some shade and a seat for our sore bottoms!

This is the first bus stop we passed with someone in it, though!

Day 4 Down the Latvian Coast

Our fourth day cycling was down the lovely Baltic coast of Latvia with the sound of the waves off to our right through the pine trees.


After failing to find a campsite, we checked into an inviting guest house with an en-suite room with jacuzzi! Also a trampoline in the garden, which Isla somehow found lots of energy to bounce about on. evening and morning. Obviously she's not getting enough exercise cycling!


Cycled 76.65 km
Busking earnings - 0
No punctures

200km

I achieved 200km on day 3. Here I am at 200km on the main road beside some Scots Pine forest.

Scots Pine is the most widely distributed species of pine in the world, stretching from the west of Scotland and Portugal to the Russian Pacific coast. We dont know why its called Scots Pine! To win another bar of chocolate, send us an answer using the comments link below. The bar of chocolate goes to the person submitting the most plausible answer!

Day 3 Into Latvia

Despite staying in a hotel and meaning to get up for an early start, we somehow fail to get going until 10am. We spend half the day on the main road south but despite heavier traffic than we have been used to, the going is good, the surface excellent and we spin along at a good pace until we manage to turn off onto a smaller coastal road where we get our first sight of the Baltic beaches. Cycling is good, legs still sore but getting less so.

In the early evening we cross the border into Latvia and find a campsite in a garden in Ainazi. At last we spend out first night in our tent.

Cycled 73.55 km
Busking earnings 0
No punctures

Day 2 To Parnu

After a lovely sleep, we have a wonderful Estonian breakfast and set off south to Parnu on the Estonian coast.

We normally tootle along at around 15 - 20 km/hr but today, Islas top speed was 31.4 km/h, due to two massive Estonian dogs chasing us! It was very scary and we havent beaten that speed record yet! Another long day with some busier roads, but the legs keep going and we arrive in Parnu to look for a campsite - none to be found - so we found a room at the Strand Hotel and after a wonderful dinner, collpased into fresh linen once again - Andy says who needs this camping lark, but Isla would rather be camping!

Cycled 73,53 km
Busking earnings - 0
No punctures

100km

We are going to take a photo every 100km as a way of obtaining some random snapshots of our travels. Here am I at 100km in front of an Estonian bog - Estonia has extensive peatlands.

There is something strange about this photo - a bar of chocolate to anyone who spots it - use the comment link below.

Day 1 Off we go!

At last we set off from the lovely City Bike hostel in Tallinn.


Leaving Tallinn, we set off south to a farm halfway to Parnu. Heavy traffic out of Tallinn and then the road gets smaller and the traffic thinner. Soon we are spinning our bikes through the Estonian countryside - farmland and forest. It takes this first day to sort out pace, nutrition and timing. The first day is hard - over 90 km - and when we arrive at the farm to camp we decide instead to take a room - the Three Bears room with a little bed for little bear, a normal bed for middle bear and a huge bed for big bear. We sleep..........

Cycled 92.88 km
Busking earnings - 0
No punctures

Tallinn

The train journey from St. Petersburg to Helsinki took 5 hours. We then got our bikes and stuff and cycled off to the ferry to Tallinn. Thanks again to our Katya and Teemu at Bike Tours Finland for storing them for us. Two hours later we were in Tallinn. We cycled off to the beautiful old centre of Tallinn and booked into the City Bike Hostel. City Bikes Estonia is a great outfit who run two excellent hostels in the beautiful mediaeval old town.


Estonia is a fascinating little country - it is very tech savvy - here in a 500-year-old house we have broadband, the city is bathed in free wi-fi and in the countryside you can use your mobile phone to listen to details about all the historic sites. Skype was invented in Estonia and the country seems to really be going places. Three cheers for the EU for admitting all our Baltic friends.

The next day we went on a City Bike cycling tour of Tallinn, seeing a summer palace of Peter the Great, the President's palace, German war graves, a monument to the 1980 Olympics of which the sailing took place in Tallinn, the stadium for the Estonia Singing Festival which takes place every 5 years, and a monument to the 800 or so people who died in the 1994 Estonia ferry disaster.

In 1990, 300,000 people sang in the singing arena for independence and they got it! Well, it wasn't that simple but they made a nice film about it (watch the trailer).

In the afternoon, we walked about the old town and Isla did some busking in the town hall square, just outside the very old town hall.

Busking earnings:- 177 Estonian Krone & 2.70 Euros (in 30 minutes - it was raining.)
Kilometres cycled: - 0 (haven't started yet)

BUT.......we start in 20 minutes - yipee!!!!

St Petersburg

On Wednesday morning we arrived by sleeper train in St. Petersburg, where we were met at the station by Lyuda, whom Cathy used to visit every week when a student in Leningrad 25 years ago. Lyuda and her family were like a family to Cathy then, so it was lovely to see her - looking just as young as she did 25 years ago!

We took the bus to Lyuda's flat, in the suburbs, and Isla had a sleep. Then Lyuda's husband, Kolya, arrived home from work - also looking just as he did 25 years ago! It was great to see them both.

Lyuda then took us on the underground to the centre of town, where we walked around the beautiful town centre. St. Petersburg is like a museum, where every building is a palace or a church. It's built on over 100 islands on the wide Nyeva River where it comes out into the Bay of Finland, and it has lots of canals and little bridges. Designed by Italians and built by Tsar Peter the Great as his "window on Europe", it was once the most northerly capital in the world, before Moscow became the capital of Russia.

In the evening, Lyuda and Kolya gave us a lovely dinner and they and Cathy caught up with news and remembered old times.

On Thursday Lyuda took us on the bus to Petrodvorets (Peter Palace), one of the Tsars' summer palaces. It is huge, with large, formal and informal gardens. The gardens are full of statues, ponds and fountains - including some for children (big and small) to run about in, avoiding the surprise sprays of water which spurt out randomly. You can see St. Petersburg from the shores of the Bay of Finland, in front of these gardens. Russians like to call Petrodvorets the Russian Versailles, and indeed both palaces are on a similar scale and display similar wealth.


You can see why both Russia and France had revolutions (the big question is why the Russian one took so long to happen)! Petrodvorets was destroyed during the Second World War, and was restored shortly afterwards.

On Friday Isla did a bit of busking in front of the Church of the Spilled Blood, which looks like the more famous St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Then we went to the Hermitage, most of which is located in the huge Winter Palace. We went round this huge art gallery very quickly, but didn't manage to see everything. Lyuda told us that if you spent one minute looking at every object in this gallery, and if you didn't sleep, it would take you 11 years to get round it! We saw paintings by Picasso, Ruben, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Matisse... As well as two throne rooms, a ball room, the peacock clock, the knights' room and other elegant and extravagant rooms and staircases.

In the afternoon, we walked to the university, where Cathy found the building she studied in 25 years previously! We went inside, and sat in the garden at the back. Much of it Cathy recognised, though it's been done up and has a new garden with sculptures.


We didn't have time to go to the hostel where Cathy lived as a student, so we'll do that another time. That night (and one of the highlights of the visit) we went out after midnight to experience the "white nights" - the days in the middle of summer when the sun doesn´t really set. All the bridges on the Nyeva are illuminated and at 1am the open to allow large ships to navigate up the river - it´s a fantastic sight and crowds gather to watch. It´s also a chance to see the raucous new Russians at play (more booze). At one point, an expensive Range Rover drove by the front of the Hermitage with a young lady sitting on top of the roof with a bottle of champagne in both hands. yollering and flashing her knickers to the crowds.....weird!

On Saturday we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where St. Petersburg was founded. We went inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, where members of the tsars' families since Peter the Great are buried, including the last tsar and his family, who were shot just after the Revolution, and who were buried just a few years ago, after their bodies were found.

We then had tea in an Irish pub and then were delighted to see Swan Lake. This was a real treat, from Lyuda, who had managed to get tickets for us. At short notice, this is quite hard to do, so well done, Lyuda! Lyuda used to take Cathy to the ballet and opera frequently during Cathy's year in Leningrad in 1982 to 1983, so this trip to the ballet also had a special meaning. The ballet company was the St. Petersburg Russian Ballet, whose members are connected with the old Kirov Ballet, now called the Mariiykovskiy (Mary) Ballet. Isla and Cathy were almost dancing in their seats to the music, and Isla couldn't stop doing ballet for a few hours afterwards!

On Sunday we got up early to get to the train station. Saying a sad goodbye to Kolya and Lyuda, we left on the train to Helsinki. Many thanks to Lyuda and Kolya for their superb hospitality, guiding and cooking. It was all lovely, and we'd love to see them in Scotland some time.

Andy finished reading Charlie Wilson´s War, a cracking account of the efforts of one Democratic Congressman in the US to wage a secret CIA war in Afghanistan. Kind of strange reading this in Russia when the constant motivation for Wilson´s efforts was that the Afghan campaign was the "one place where we are actually killing Russians". Afghanistan is the Russians´ dirty little secret with the former USSR denying that they were ever fighting a war. There is now apparently a museum in Moscow to the war - read more in James Rodgers´ Moscow diary here .

Busking earnings:- 299.60 Roubles & 1.80 Euros (in 30 minutes.)
Kilometres cycled: - 0 (haven't started yet)