Hi Again, We had a couple of days post trip to relax before the National State Nadaam Festival, a three day extravaganza of the three national sports of Mongolia, Wrestling, Horse Riding and Archery. This essentially meant do our washing and have a shower, although on our first day back the centrally supplied hot water for our region of UB was broken so we had to wait an extra day! We also discovered that, in our abscence, there had been some kind of political demonstration following accusations of election fraud where they burnt some govermnent buildings on the main square! This [View Full Entry]

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Hi All, Once again, it's been a while! Just don't know where time goes! So, we left Russia, they had one last go at being pointlessly stern and overly officious with a 4 hour border crossing, where they made the poor Provodnitsa take all the carpets up and open every cubby hole, god knows what they were looking for, I thought people could (and probably should) just walk out of Russia if they wanted to but hey. It is quite clear that if you want to wear a big hat and stomp around self importantly then you'd best take a job [View Full Entry]

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Hi All, I hope this missive finds you all well! We are still alive so the St Petersburg Mafia have not found us after our last e:mail. I fell I should add that everyone else we have met so far who has been recently has really not liked it either other than people who have lived/worked/studied there so perhaps it's more of a locals place. Anyhoo, we will start with the Trans Sib. After 3 city breaks in a row we were ready for a rest and a rest is what we got. 4 days aboard train 10 was quite honestly, [View Full Entry]

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Hi all! We left you last time in the finnish lakes promising to not leave it so long 'til the next one and it would appear we may have fibbed! Sorry for that! Anyhoo, Helsinki, managed to find a room in a massive hostel above a nepalese restaurant (very tasty!) although they didn't always have a room for us so we had to check in seperately every day we were there and had to experienced our first dorm stay, have to say, not too bad at all. No midnight feasts, reading the Beano under the duvet by torchlight or pillow fights, [View Full Entry]

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We didn't realise it had been so long since our last blog! We have travelled quite a few miles since then!!! We finished our last blog entering the Artic Circle so well continue from there I guess! Tromso was interesting, theres a great arctic museum full off stuffed animals in traps (to show how a trap works I'd guess) and a full size tableau of a man skinning a reindeer, including blood, all with a backdrop of old pictures of seals in traps being approached by trappers with captions like 'I wonder if they will escape' and 'guess what happens next' [View Full Entry]

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Ahoy there from the MS Vesteralen! The Fjords are absolutely stunning, we've been stopping off at lots of little villages (as well as some bigger ones) and they are all a bit, well…..small and wooden, I guess is the best way to put it, lots of timber buildings and everywhere is soooo tiny, even at the ports you can walk across the centre of town in 15 minutes! On Thursday we took an excursion to Gerainger Fjord and Ǻlesund, which meant boarding a smaller boat that took us to the shore. Gerainger fjord was beautiful, although it was raining all day, [View Full Entry]

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We have had a fantastic couple of days in Bergen. On Monday we had a leisurely walk around the town, which is a mixture of modern concrete buildings and beautifully painted timber clad houses situated along narrow cobbled streets, tucked away from the main roads, high density but highly colourful living! It’s a tiny place though so it didn’t take too long to get our bearings, so we took the funicular railway up to Fløyen one of the seven mountains which surround Bergen (and more importantly the only one with a railway to get you up it!) Wonderful panoramic views from [View Full Entry]

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Hi All! We have arrived safely in (incredibly sunny) Bergen although today would appear to be a bank holiday so its all closed! The train journey to Newcastle was fine (thanks for the packed Lunch Mum!) and we managed to traverse newcastle to make the ferry in plenty of time. As we left the mysterious 'fog on the Tyne' appeared but fortunately no Gazza or Lindisfarne for which we are eternally thankful. The North Sea was smooth as you like all the way across but the fog continued so our first sight of land came quite abruptly. Followed by a few [View Full Entry]

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