AndrewAndHelen

Our journey home began with a short hop from Vilnius to Helsinki; from there, unlike all our long hops on the route to Europe, the 11 hours to Singapore were undertaken without exit-row or bulkhead seats to benefit our respectively long and dodgy legs. Happily, we slept a few hours each, which was unlikely to be the case for the neighbours of a hard-drinking, Putin-T-shirt-wearing Russian passenger a few rows forward, who was eventually refused further service from the trolley. Like our stopover in Malmo, Singapore was intended mainly as rest and only a little recreation, to break up the long journey home. We were surprised to hear from our taxi driver from the airport to the rather classy Goodwood Hotel (taxis are cheap there) that we had arrived in the middle of the Deepavali (called ... read more

The cruise finished at noon in Bergen. We disembarked and used our new favourite app, Here We Go, to navigate to the apartment where we were to bed down. Martine was a bubbly presence as a host, with a refreshingly untidy place, and she helped us with a plan to see as much of the town as possible in the few hours we had available. Highlights were an impressive town square, 12th-century palace and that famous row of coloured shop frontages along the Bryggen foreshore. And we did make the trip on the funicular railway up the mountain overlooking the city for a spectacular view, which was enjoyable even without going too near the edge. An even better view is enjoyed by a handful of goats – they must by definition be mountain goats – that ... read more

The transport system served us well again the following morning when we were able to leave Maya’s apartment at 7.00am for a 7.14am train that took less than thirty minutes to take us 60 km to the airport with a stop along the way. The plane journey to Kirkenes was one of keen anticipation, as our destination was remote and cold way beyond Peter Dutton, our first time inside the Arctic Circle, by several degrees of latitude. Also, not unexpectedly, several degrees colder than we had been used to. The downy jackets from Iceland were starting to work for their keep. A not-so-new shuttle bus took us to one of the two hotels in a small port/industrial town with tourist overlays, just 10 km from the Russian border. There is a kind of passport-free zone for ... read more

Malmo to Gothenburg by train is an unremarkable journey. Arriving around lunchtime, we orienteered our way to the docks where our hotel was moored. Yes, a boat that is a hotel. Boatel. The Hotell Barken Viking is an old schooner repurposed for accommodation, and a job really well done. Some things were a little cramped in our room, but the quality of everything about it was great, at a very reasonable off-season price. Apparently the place rocks over the summer. I was feeling worse again by this stage, and opted to spend an afternoon in bed trying to marshal the antibodies while Helen took off for a ramble around the city, an opportunity to shop without feeling continual pressure either to buy something or move along. She scoped out several shopping and eating options for a ... read more

Riding day for Helen: up early for two and a half hours and many kilometres in the sole company of the amiable Louise. The ride went down to and along an empty black-sand beach (they all are, here), and on her ready mare Rekna Helen quickly gained proficiency in the tolt, the so-called fifth gait, which looks a bit like a disrupted pacer’s gait, or maybe a quadruped Jared Tallent. I took the chance to wander out among the horses for a bit of in-paddock photography. The lack of sunshine for the camera is a continuing frustration: almost every photo taken so far has been in cloudy conditions, thus understating a country where the landscape often dresses in surprising colours. Yesterday’s wind had eased, though, which was a blessing. In the afternoon I took it easy ... read more