Blogs from Trakai, Vilnius, Lithuania, Europe

The small nation of Lithuania is overloaded with character, conviviality and culture. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the country’s capital, Vilnius. Although the city’s difficult post-Soviet past is ever present, a newly vibrant atmosphere has successfully subdued it. As you fly into Vilnius, you’ll still catch glimpses of the old – planned streets, factories, and those diminutive ugly high-rise apartment blocks. However, the centre of Vilnius feels like another world. Gone are those horrific grey edifices, replaced with a multitude of colour. For Vilnius, somewhat unusually, feels like a Mediterranean city. Winding cobblestone streets pass between beautifully coloured baroque buildings. Their faded blue, yellow and red façades deepen in intensity when the sun shines, while spectacular old churches appear behind every corner. You can’t help but ask yourself if you’re really in ... read more

Just a brief update to put out a link to the tracked routes that I captured using Map My Tracks (www.mapmytracks.com) with my iPhone. If you are interested in the detail regarding the route that we took on our epic journey around Lithuania, then the detail is here. Enjoy.... read more

Just a quick blog for now, more detail later this weekend. WE MADE IT! After about 520 miles of cycling over 5 days, we made it back to Vilnius to a hero's welcome at the Barclays office, Green Hall, Upes Gatve. We covered a mere 85'ish miles today from Kaunas to Vilnius mostly on the A5 road. This is the hilliest portion of the trip passing through some of Lithuania's beautiful national parks, forests and lakes with a few nice challanging hills. We stopped off at Trakai for our "traditional" Kibinai and soup in a bread bowl (nothing like eating your bowl whilst you eat your soup, before blazing the final trail into Vilnius and Green Hall. I will put full route details up shortly, but thanks to all who have supported us and my personal ... read more

The morning was bright and sunny and we had our obligatory photo on the pier. We headed out of Plateliai onto a long uphill climb to the A11 but at least it was warm and the scenery was stunning. Turning towards the coast and we met the Baltic breeze which slowed us down by 20%, luckily the Ibuprofen was working but my leg was starting swell and the left ankle started 'twingeing'. We recognised that we were lagging behind our time splits and decided not to have a dip in the Baltic but did follow the National Cycle route 10 which took us all the way into Klaipeda via a beautiful, car free, trail through woodlands with stunning views of the Baltic to our right. Met up with Rugute and more captains at Klaipeda - we ... read more

Plan was for all riders to congregate at Green Hall (Barclays building) at 9am as many others would be joining us for about 3 miles out of Vilnius. It was great to see Edita, Andreas and their little toddler, Sharunas (I will tidy up spelling later!). The start of the journey was a nice gentle run up a long hill as many of the riders were not used to a fast pace. We left them at the top of the hill and it started to rain...not too far into the ride and Denis (our Russian comrade) had a puncture. The temperature was a nippy 7 degrees with a sharp cold wind with driving rain at times...this unfortunately remained consistent for most of the ride. The road was well maintained and the terrain was gradual undulations (nice) ... read more