After taking some more wrong turns on the motorway out of St Petersburg I was presented with no alternative but to settle down and accept that some of these roads would be bad, very bad (10%) and good (50%). Most of the drivers learned their skills by riding the Metro in St Petesburg. If it will get to 100kph in 4 secs, that is acceptable. Apart from having to constantly watch for crevasses and holes and rough bits the trip to Vologda took 1 1/2 days with a camp ...

Its the weekend in Saint Petersburg and everyone is out prominading the streets in their best with their best. This place is the jewel of northern Europe and from what I have seen rarely visited by the west this early in the spring. The locals however love it! The warm sun and cool air is perfect and no better place to be seen but Neviskiy Prospekt. It was literally teeming with thousands people on Saturday. Families, daughters and mothers, sons and fathers and L...

I have spent the last hour trying to control a PC that speaks Russian. Sorry but the photo download became difficult. I departed Vosu in northern Estonia 2 days ago after enjoying a peaceful break with saunas and an entire campground to my self. Already the jibbers was setting in in anticipation of getting into Russia as it had been so hard and time consuming and expensive to negotiate. Narva-Joesuu was a small but touristy place to stay before my last swansong ...

Departing Riga was much more difficult than arriving. It took me a full hour of riding in circles trying to get out of town. Directions from locals were very confusing. Eventually I asked some biking enthusiasts who gave concise directions. Whew! That was a relief. I spent that night at Litagne NP. It was so peaceful surrounded by a 50m wide clean flowing river and lots of Baltic forests. I had the whole place to myself. It was so warm I was down to under-clobber...

I departed Vilnius and headed for Trakai just 50 kms from Vilnius. I was feeling prtetty good as the Matron at the Monastry where I had stayed in Vilnius has given me a box of Chocolates as a good wish preso. There were plenty of things that I would not have taken with me as I had been busily chucking things out to reduce the weight on the Mule. Trakai was pretty touristy and I didn't actually wander through the castle because there were too many people walking o...