Hello! Well, we skipped the blog last week because we made a mad dash back to the UK from Poland to vote in the election and see family. So this covers two weeks of travel (trains and boats and planes) and tells of leaving Poland and going North to Sweden and Norway. We’ve decided against going to the far North as the warnings of mosquitoes and ticks in July are very off putting so we’ll do that another time. Instead we’re going to do a trip round the Baltic.
We started off by driving right the way North up through Poland. We drove through a really sinister dark thunderstorm and took shelter for the night in Turon. The next day we walked round medieval Turon (known for its gingerbread and as the home of Copernicus) and also visited nearby Bydgoszcz (which was one of David Lammy’s first ports of call as Foreign Secretary days after we’d been there to meet the Polish foreign minister).
The gingerbread was delicious and skilfully decorated by the lady below. And the river view of the city reminded me of Flemish masterpieces. And my effort below.
We spent the night in Malbork camping opposite the thirteenth century HQ of the Teutonic Knights and the largest castle in the world. With Alex’s drawing below.
From there we drove to Gdansk in order to leave the Wildervan in a field at the airport and fly back to Stansted. Gdansk is a wonderful city which we visited eight years ago with my father. We had a short day there on our return so this time we just walked through the streets and visited the extraordinary Maria Basilica before catching the ferry to Sweden.
We sailed away in the rain passing a long row of bright red tugs and so out into the setting sun and waking up in Nynäshamn.
This was a speedy visit to Sweden which we will come back to next month but for the moment it was our best way to get to Finland as there is no direct ferry. The ferry to Finland was number 18 (!) on this whole trip and the best by far. This was a brand new boat, net zero emissions in port, very cool design, spacious, almost silent, with probably the coolest toilets I’ve ever been in anywhere…and delicious food too! This photo doesn’t really show it but it gives you an idea of the light and space, and also shows the now finished bowl of Finnish salmon soup.
The crossing took 9 hours and it passes beautiful little rocky islands covered with pine trees the whole way. Finland alone has 180,000 islands and this map shows the route into Naantali harbour in Finland. It’s very beautiful and must be complex to navigate so the ferry goes very slowly passing incredibly close to tiny islands some with a summer house but most uninhabited.
We arrived in Finland at 8pm and drove on through the forest to Espoo where we are now camped by the sea in almost the same pitch as we stayed on in the Wildervan’s first outing five years ago when we island hopped around the Äland islands for five weeks. The sun took a long time to set. Here it is at 11pm.
The map below shows the start of this next phase round the Baltic. But next…a sauna on the beach followed by football!
