Baltic Adventures

David Leather’s account of a cycle ride along the Baltic gives you a serendipity of experiences ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime travelling across a part of Europe that barely merits a Mention in 21st Century travel brochures. From little tin huts with barred windows on the roadside in Poland selling everything from chocolate bars to washing powder, to a grand palace in the wilderness of Livonia built by a Russian Empress for her lover; from travelling down the main street of a small town in Mecklenburg in a steam train, to discovering the wonders of medieval architecture along the reedy banks of the Vistula; and, from small villages of wonky wooden houses in deepest rural Lithuania to the classical magnificence of a University town in Estonia. It took him and his wife Annemarie five years to complete the journey from Jutland to Tallinn in northern Estonia, which included a ride by bus and train to St. Petersburg and Novgorod in Russia. This account gives a sometimes quirky picture of the countries bordering the Baltic during the post-Gorbachev years, and describes their bewilderingly complicated past, which, from the Middle Ages on, witnessed the spread of western culture, along with countless wars and regime changes, resulting in continuously shifting borders and movements of people.