JayKay are now expecting to arrive in Denmark around Wednesday 5th June.

Our last message was from Lueneburg in German. From there we continued to travel northwards into Schleswig Holstein. Crossing the Elbe was interesting - it is HUGE! This part of Germany was delightful for cycling, with quiet roads and plenty of places to purchase those essential beers! The town of Schleswig is delightful, especially the 'half island' of Holm with quaint fishermens' cottages. Our last night was spent camping beside the river in Glücksburg, though was slightly marred by a dawn raid... the resident ducks took a fancy to the foil shield from our stove and tried to steal it at 5am!!! Certainly an original alarm call.

We took a little ferry across to Kullund in Denmark and spent an hour searching for a bank/currency exchange and some food! Then we chilled out on a wonderful campsite. The Danish sites are superb, with every facility you could desire (the kitchens and laundries were particularly appreciated, as was the novelty of sitting at a table to eat!)

The sun shone, the sky was a perfect blue... and an easterly wind blew in our faces at around 60km/hour! Not ideal cycling... and it all got too much when we were blown off the road in Faaborg! No damage, other than to dignity and tempers! To escape the wind, we decided to follow the regional cycle route up the west coast of Fyn, and thus discovered the 'Fyn Alps' - delightfully undulating terrain in a country somebody told us was flat! A Dane we met in the supermarket was quite proud of the 133m high point!

The wind seemed to drop on our way to Odense, and has now been replaced by still weather and blanket cloud. Hopefully it will improve!

From here we plan to head towards Kertiminde and visit the Layby Viking Burial, then head down to the bridge to cross onto Zealand, and thus to Copenhagen. Hopefully we'll be there by the end of this week. After some sightseeing we'll take the ferry to Oslo - we haven't decided whether to do this overnight yet, will probably depend on how bumpy it's likely to be and how many Stugeron Karen can safely take in one dose!

The schedule is now completely out the window as we keep finding diversions (except Karen's 1st November return to work, honest Roger!). However, we are still broadly following our planned route and will cover as much as we can.

Many thanks for all your messages. Apologies for not replying personally to all of them - please keep the news coming.

Over and out for now - the sun has just put in an appearance (5.10 pm), so we'll head out for some sightseeing! Apologies for any spelling mistakes - this Danish keyboard is even trickier than the German one!

John & Karen

We've had a great ride around Fyn - except for the vicious east wind which had us off the bike in Faaborg! We've even managed to find the largest of hills and ride through the 'Fyn Alps'. It's raining again so we're sight seeing between showers! Heading off to the Ladby Viking Relic tomorrow and hope to make Nyborg ready to cross the bridge to Zealand on Wednesday (12th). Karen and John

Karen & John arrived in Copenhagen on Friday 14th amid rain. With improved weather - now 31deg.C, they have been able to see many of the sights and enjoyed a relaxing time in The Tivoli Gardens. Today (18th) they sail for Oslo where they expect to arrive on early on Friday 21st.

Oslo is beautiful - perfectly sited at the head of a Fjord dotted with islands. One island houses the small but fascinating museum devoted to 3 Viking ships. We had a fraught exit from Oslo - NOT cycle friendly! but now enjoy draw dropping scenery some 90KM north east of the capital. We should cross into Sweden by Sunday (30th June). Can't belive that it's 11:30pm and still daylight! Karen and John

Since the last great missive from Odense, the weather has continued to try us in more ways than one! It was so wet and black in Roskilde we turned back from the campsite and headed to the excellent youth hostel instead, managing to get the very last room! Roskilde was very interesting, with lots of Viking Ships etc.

Amazingly, we managed to navigate from Roskilde to the campsite in Copenhagen using only the brief regional map printed on the back of the Roskilde town plan! The campsite was OK, and Copenhagen lovely (once the rain had stopped!) - we even survived England knocking Denmark out of the World Cup! We sailed from there to Oslo on the night of the great thunderstorm, but the luxurious enormous ferry coped very well and there was only the slightest movement. We had two thoroughly enjoyable days in sunny Oslo, before setting off east to Stockholm. Getting out of Oslo was a challenge, but that done we had a delightful couple of days following a huge river in a big loop - relatively quiet roads and beautiful scenery. We spent Midsummer on a Norwegian campsite, shivering and cowering from the rain for the festivities and copious amounts of alcohol that were consumed by all present! Some summer!!!!

We packed up the tent in pouring rain and crossed the border into Sweden in pouring rain too... but things brightened up and we had a very enjoyable evening on a lakeside campsite with an absolutely stunning view! The weather broke again the next day, and that's been the pattern ever since. The Swedish countryside was lovely - we managed to see quite a few of the 96,000 lakes in the country, and the many little hills which abound. What wasn't so good were the roads: main ones are VERY busy, side ones have little to no surface!

The first were too scary and the second too dangerous in different ways. When we reached the mid-way point in Karlstad we decided to seek an alternative mode of transport to Stockholm, arriving here last Thursday evening in the middle of the biggest rain storm yet!!!

It was so bad we squelched our way to dinner until it had eased a bit to enable us to put up the tent... to save her only pair of shoes from a soaking Karen put on flipflips and zipped the legs off her only pair of trousers (J was more cavalier about this as he has gortex overshoes!).

In spite of the rain, we have had a lovely time in Stockholm. The many islands and the water make it a truly beautful city - this was enhanced when the sun made a brief appearance! For those at IYHF we failed to get beds at af Chapman, but did get to look around the ship, very nice. For the other divers out there, we also spent a fascinating few hours at the Vasa museum.

Next steps: we sail overnight tonight to Helsinki and plan to spend a few days there, hopefully meeting up with Betty & John Sentinella before we cross over to Tallinn some time next weekend. As AJ has informed us the main road in Estonia has been dug up (and we now know that unsurfaced roads and laden tandems do not mix!) we're not sure what we're going to do from there. We plan to cycle, but may have to seek alternatives if the roads are too tricky. We'll let you know!

Many thanks to everyone for the news updates - sorry we have not been able to reply to them all personally, but there is a certain amount of pressure in these cafes!

More news from the Baltic States. Karen and John

Helsinki, July 2002. John and Karen were asked by the local paper one queston about us Brits, here it is with the reply;

Q.Do the British Public have enough information about the EU?

A. "Its hard to get information about decisions made by the EU. It seems that the British Government take the credit when things go well and then blame the EU when they dont. The British are nationalisitic at heart but we believe the situation will change as more and more Britons travel abroad. there is much concern about the Euro but again think this will reduce when people see the benefits of using one currency, particularly when travelling."

Translation courtesy of Betty Sentinella.

Last updated 23rd July 2002