01 July 2019 A fairly relaxing day. With some of the group, we walked into Voru, had a tasty trout salad for lunch, looked around the sights and strolled back.... read more

29 June 2019 As we left Trakai we visited The Hill of Angels, a growing collection of wooden sculptures in a scenic location donated by individuals throughout Lithuania which has been put together over the last ten years. Then we drove 250k north east and into our second Baltic State, Latvia. We stayed the night at the village of Aglona, home of a large Basilica. Hundreds of thousands of Catholic pilgrims descend on it on August 15 each year to celebrate Ascension Day. It has also been visited by Popes John Paul II and Francis. We had a guided tour of the Basilica in the late afternoon followed by supper of traditional local food in a nearby Bread Museum.... read more

27 June 2019 Trakai has a heavily restored picture-postcard castle on a small island in Lake Galve linked to the town by a couple of footbridges. In showery and sunny weather, we took a boat ride there across the lake from the campsite and spent a pleasant afternoon exploring the castle and town.... read more

25 June 2017 The reason we stayed at Elblag is because it is the Northern terminus of the 82 k canal which links several lakes and finishes in the town of Ostroda. The canal needed to climb 100m in a 10km stretch and to achieve this the engineers built a series of 5 slipways up which boats are dragged on a rail-mounted trolley working on the principle of a funicular. We drove to one of the slipways and were fortunate to see a couple of pleasure boats using the facility. Then it was a 150k drive to the lake district in the north eastern corner of Poland where we met up with the rest of the group who are doing the Baltic States tour.... read more

23 June 2019 We took the bus and tram into Gdansk’s centre and under cloudless skies but in comfortably warm temperatures had an excellent day exploring the city’s ancient Main Town which has been lovingly restored following extensive damage in the 1945 German Russian fighting. We entered through three gates, walked along the 500 metre Royal Way, climbed the Town Hall tower which gave us wonderful city wide views, went into St Mary’s which is often cited as the largest brick church in the world, visited several museums and admired the Zuraw, the unique medieval dockside crane.... read more