MOTORHOME TRAVELLERS' DIARY FOR OCTOBER 1999

01 OCTOBER 1999 EST PEOLEO HOTEL, TALLINN

Showery, with a strong warm wind from the south. We made some phone calls to Pärnu, the next town down our road, where the campsite was closed but there are possible parking places at 2 guest houses, 1 hotel or the yacht club. M (who has lost half a filling) made an appointment tomorrow at 'Maxilla, Professional Dental Clinic in the Heart of Tallinn', as advertised in the city guide with a colour photograph of a blonde and a brunette leaning over an unprotesting patient.

After lunch, needing bread, we set out for the nearest shop, which the hotel receptionist said was '1 km down the road, back towards Tallinn'. This kilometre took over half an hour and was a good 2 miles, walking the edge of the dual carriageway that forms the beginning of the Via Baltica, our road, stretching all the way to Warsaw. We did learn the Estonian for 'shop' - Pood - and liked the price (about 50p for 2 loaves, which were £1 each in Finland).

In the evening the hotel hosted a show for the local Radio Sky and was packed with the Glitterati of Tallinn who parked on all sides of us, but we heard little of it. We sampled a Pizza Marinara from the 24-hour pizzeria by the hotel entrance for supper. We're getting to like it here - most younger people speak some English and there are 8 channels on TV (3 Estonian, 4 Finnish and 1 Swedish). There was even 'Casualty' in sub-titled English and an episode of a 'soap' set in Huddersfield called 'Where the Heart Is', with nostalgic scenery. We hope it becomes as popular as 'Summer Wine' and pushes the house prices up!

The hourly 190 bus to Tallinn turned out to be every 2 hours on Saturday (and none on Sunday), so we turned out for the 8.57 am. It was only 5 minutes late and almost full (a long bendy-bus). We paid the driver 6 EEK (Estonian Kroon) each (25p for the 10-mile ride) and 30 minutes later were in Viru Square, the terminus on the edge of the Old Town. We located the Maxilla Dental Clinic, on the 4th floor of Hobujaamaa, a new building near the 22-storey Viru Hotel (a refurbished Intourist hotel from Soviet days), then started our walking tour of Old Tallinn. The Old Town shows the layers of Estonia's varied history of occupation - by Danes, Germans, Swedes, Russians - but mainly Germans. In a thousand years they have had less than 30 years of independence; the latest episode is only 7 years old!

Through the twin towers of the Viru Gate (only survivor of 6 gates in the Lower Town walls), along Viru (past McDonald's - the 3rd certainty in life, along with Death and Taxes), we came to the heart of the Lower Town in Raekoja Plats (Town Hall Square). The square (reputedly bustling with outdoor bars and concerts in summer) was almost empty. The sun came out and we bought coffee to sit and take in the atmosphere, opposite what claims to be the only surviving Gothic town hall in northern Europe, built at the end of the 14thC. 'Old Thomas', the warrior on the weather vane at the top of its minaret-like tower, has guarded Tallinn since 1530. The Citizens Hall and Council Hall within were closed at weekend, sparing us their vaulted roof and medieval woodcarvings. The Raeapteek (Town Pharmacy) on the north side of the square dates back to 1422, but its 17thC façade was under restoration. We walked under its arch and up 'White Bread Passage', past souvenir shops of amber beads and Russian dolls, to the 14thC Gothic Holy Spirit church, still used by Lutherans. The exterior clock is the oldest in Tallinn and the bell in its tower the oldest in Estonia but it was locked.

Now a climb to the Upper Town on Toompea, the limestone hill overlooking the Lower Town and the harbour by at least 150 ft, protected on 3 sides by steep slopes with parks at their feet. In German times it was the seat of the feudal nobility and their Bishop looking down on the merchants and peasants below. (Toom is from German Dom).

We walked through a 14thC gate tower, along Pikk Jalg (Long Leg), arriving at the imposing Aleksander Nevsky Russian Orthodox cathedral. Ordered by Tsar Alexander III and built in 1894-1900, it dominates Toompea with its quaint onion-domes, like a scale model of Moscow's St Basil's. Estonians resent the domination of the hill by this reminder of their most recent oppressors but we liked it - open, alive, in use. We mingled with the head-scarved babushkas and the black-hatted Orthodox priests to admire the icons, inhale the beeswax and incense and think on Greece.

Behind the cathedral, across Lossi Plats is Toompea Loss (= Schloss), the Baroque castle which is now Estonia's parliament building. On the site of the 13thC Danish castle (Tallinn meant 'Danish Town'), and of its successor built by the German Knights of the Sword, it was rebuilt by Catherine the Great in the 18thC. The moat was filled in but 3 of the 4 medieval corner towers remain and we identified Pikk (= Tall) Hermann, 1371, topped by the Estonian flag (horizontal striped blue, black and white). Free visits on weekdays allow visitors to watch parliament in session from the balcony, a far cry from the days of Soviet secrecy!

Walking round Toompea, the viewpoints looked out over the roofs and spires of the Lower Town to the east, the cranes and ships of the port to the north, and the grey Soviet-style workers' flats across the railway lines to the west. Tallinn's medieval centre of cobbled alleys, turrets, towers and ramparts is certainly picturesque, a Hanseatic port reminiscent of Lübeck, and amazingly well preserved through 50 years of Soviet rule.

The dentist was now beckoning (for 11.30 am) so we skipped the Lutheran Cathedral (Toomkirik) in Estonia's oldest church, founded by the Dominicans with a monastery in 1229, to descend to the Lower Town and return to Viru Square.

The young blonde blue-eyed dentist and her twin assistant donned gloves and masks, asked M if she was afraid of pain (!?) and set to work, talking among themselves in Estonian, in an ultra-modern hi-tec surgery. The filling, in the latest white material (as at Agadir), was a large one and took over the 30 minutes allotted to each patient, so they regretted they couldn't fit in a scale & polish.

Barry talked to the man waiting his turn - a business consultant who had some chilling tales about driving in Poland, which we hope are exaggerated! One was that when you stop at a petrol station, the attendant rings up the 'mafia' to let them know that you are around and available. He hoped that our 'car' was old, small, dirty and inconspicuous! Barry said that he did too, but doubted it.

As white fillings set instantly, we were both ready for lunch, in the Finnish 'Carrols' fast food place (much quieter than McDonald's with good chips, reasonable burgers and lousy coffee!) Then back to Town Hall Square for the northern part of the Lower Town, up the street called Pikk (Long), lined with tall medieval German merchants' houses. The lower floors were living and reception areas, the upper storeys for storage, some still wtih a pulley above the goods hatch. Some Guild houses (German-dominated trade or artisan associations) dating from the 15thC were well-restored and in use as museums or concert halls. With the LP book we identified the HQ of the Brotherhood of Blackheads (unmarried merchants, taking their name from their patron saint, Maurice, whose black head appears on the façade - surely not a German!) At the northern end of Pikk is the Great Coast Gate, the medieval exit to the port, adjoining a rotund 16thC bastion known as Paks Margareeta (Stout or Fat Margaret), now a maritime museum.

Outside the gate, overlooking the harbour, is a white cross and a dramatic monument called 'Broken Line' in memory of the victims of the 'Estonia' ferry disaster. A 10-ft-long granite plaque lists the names of all 852 who died when the ferry sank on its way to Stockholm on 28 September 1994. The 5th anniversary of the tragedy had just passed (2 days before we crossed the Baltic) and the plaque was covered in flowers and wreaths. We returned along Lai (Wide), parallel to Pikk, another street of fine 15-17thC houses with little courtyards, now various museums, backed by a length of the old town wall with towers. With long queues in Viru Square and 2 hours between buses we took a taxi back to Peoleo in 20 minutes, well worth the £5. Margaret took 'Niflamol' tablets (left over from the Greek extraction) and had an early night.

We left Tallinn for the 84-mile drive to Pärnu, a Hanseatic port founded at the mouth of a river in 1251. Now its beach and spa resort is known as the Summer Capital of Estonia. Our route lay south towards Latvia, along the Via Baltica. It was a good single-carriageway road with light traffic, running through forest (roadsigns warned of Elk). We passed one police checkpoint (after a warning flash from an oncoming car) but were not pulled over. Bypassing the only town on the way (Märjamaa), we soon crossed the Pärnu River and found our way through quiet streets to the Yacht Club on the estuary, opposite the timber harbour. The recently-built clubhouse offered bed & breakfast, restaurant & bar, mooring with hook-ups for yachts and secure parking for Rosie. Our camping deal included a good electrical hook-up and a key to the new, stiflingly hot, sauna, showers and toilet block.

After lunch we walked through the leafy Rannapark to the long white sandy beach, almost empty now but backed by wooden villa hotels, cafes, a small amusement park with ferris wheel and, right on the seafront, the elegant Mud Baths building of 1927. (Pärnu has been a bathing and mud bath spa for 160 years and still has 5 mud-based 'rehabilitation centres'.) Along the beach of Pärnu Bay, watching a tug pull a huge raft of logs out to sea, we came to the mile-long breakwater of boulders marking the entrance to the river. As the incoming tide was washing over it, we didn't risk walking out to sea, but took a path across the boggy creek back to the Yacht Club. Stone Age finds from 7500 BC in Pulli (7 miles up the river) have shown that was the original river mouth and the site of Pärnu was on the sea-bed, ie the land is rising.

M rang Mum (back yesterday from holiday in the Lakes) to let her know we had crossed the Baltic after getting Rosie's documents safely in Helsinki.

84 miles. £5.43 inc elec.

It rained steadily all day long - a good time to update the diary, print out September, read and plan. Barry finished Martin Amis's difficult and intriguing 'Other People' where the fantastic is made plausible until it descends into chaos and time is re-run.

The new building opposite is some kind of college and we watched the students gather and disperse in classrooms with globes on the table and maps on the walls. Estonia is keen to line up for EU membership, foreign trade has become very important and they'll have plenty to learn.

The TV shows the familiar mixture of Estonian news, weather and serious talk, along with subtitled British and American stuff ranging from 'Bay Watch' to 'Sherlock Holmes'. What do they make of Rik Mayall's humour (?) in 'Bottom'?

We walked through the park and into town through the 17thC Tallinn Gate in the Swedish ramparts. Impressions were of quaint charming old wooden buildings, some restored, some gently decaying, with lots of garden space and trees. At times we could have been in the Arad suburb where we stayed with Dan and his family in Romania. On Esplanaadi in the Charlie Chaplin Centre (a bookshop-art gallery-cinema-cafe, housed ironically in the former Communist Party HQ) we saw an interesting photo exhibition of pre-war and modern Pärnu. Beyond the town centre, the daily open-air market was busy and we bought fruit, veg and bargain German chocolates. Most stalls sold home-grown produce and old women offered windfall apples, mushrooms and lingenberries gathered in the woods. There was plenty of cheap clothing and shoes, meat and fish, soap and toiletries, but no bread or bakery.

Back at the Yacht Club we made lunch and turned the kilo of bruised garden apples (costing 20p) into a crumble and an Eve's pudding. Then we walked back through the park to explore the Old Town, taking in the Red Tower (a corner tower of the vanished medieval walls), some 17thC German merchant houses, a half-timbered house and the beautifully painted yellow & white classical Town Hall, both 18thC, and a house on Kuninga (King's Street) where King Carl XII of Sweden lost a shoe in 1700! (Wooden models hang from nearby buildings!) The 1930 Art Nouveau Victoria Hotel is on the site of the Riga Gate, linked by Kuninga to the Tallinn Gate. In the park is a statue of Lydia Koidula, the poet of Estonia's national revival, who is pictured on the 100 EEK note, but we skipped her memorial museum. We saw no food shops but did find an indoor market for bread, cartons of milk and bags of eggs. Back home, there was a message on the Vodafone from Eve and Barry rang her after dinner.

In a pattern we were to see repeated throughout the Baltics, restored and rebuilt town centres (often of Germanic origin) are surrounded by leafy suburbs where unpainted, rickety wooden villas housed (and still house) the elite, edged by horrendously decrepit high-rise tenements for the workers and the vestiges of industry, universally squalid and polluting. All post-war building we saw was as cheap, poor and falling apart as the restoration work on the few fragments of the past was thorough, caring and effective. It was as if the people had turned their backs on the present and future and looked only to a re-invented and mythical past for inspiration and sustenance. But the next Big C, Capitalism, will soon change all that.

Our overall impressions are of a country recovering fast from very many years of occupation and exploitation. Suffering 3 invasions between 1939 and 1944 (Russian then German then Russian), all 3 Baltic Republics (they call themselves 'the Baltics') were incorporated into the USSR, a status quite different to that of all the other central and eastern European countries we know behind the former Iron Curtain. Many Russians settled into the Baltics and many remain, uneasily transformed from being the dominant race to becoming supplicants for the benefits of the citizenship that is denied them. Finnish, Swedish, EU and American help will slowly eliminate the horrors of Soviet industry, housing and pollution and a new, young, English-speaking Estonian elite is visibly emerging, modelling themselves on their ethnic and linguistic cousins 50 miles away across the Baltic in Finland.

Reluctantly, after 6 fascinating days in Estonia, we drove another 40 miles south to the Latvian border in the rain. The road parallelled the sea, glimpsed occasionally to our right, through the ever-present birch trees in their autumnal colours. We are beginning to see Storks' nests (unknown in Scandinavia except Denmark), their occupants having left in favour of warmer climes, leaving us to wonder whether they had been white (6500 pairs in Latvia) or the rarer black variety (1000 pairs). We waited 40 minutes in a short queue at the border between Ikla (Estonia) and Ainazi (Latvia). The guard inspected our papers, looked briefly inside, and sent us to change money and buy the compulsory 3rd party insurance for those without Green Card cover. The currency is Lati and one Lat = £1.07, making it the only one we know with a unit worth over £1 apart from the Cyprus pound (and perhaps the Irish punt?). Insurance cost 6 Lati for 1 day, 9 for 2 days and 11 for up to 15 days, so we took that. We still need our headlights on (compulsory all year round in Scandinavia and Estonia) as they are required from October to March.

Safely through, we bypassed the ship-building town of Ainazi and turned inland onto road P15 which looked a good route to Valmiera but it soon became a dirt road so we returned to the Via Baltica. We stopped after 5 miles for lunch in Salacgriva, a small town on the river Salaca, parking in the empty bus station, then continued south with a short stretch of dual carriageway and brief views of the Baltic Sea through the trees at Dzeni.

Latvia immediately looked poorer, more rural, horses pulling ploughs in the fields, reminding us very much of Slovakia but there are still no horse-drawn carts or donkeys on the road. People were walking, riding ancient bikes, waiting for a bus or driving old cars.

Feeling confident, we left the Via Baltica 27 miles after the border, turning inland on the P11 for 40 miles via Limbazi to Valmiera, a narrower but surfaced road. Valmiera is on the river Gauja, at the northern end of the Gauja Valley (partly a national park) and the Baili sports centre and camping, 3 miles SE of the town, was well signposted. The site has chalets to let, a car park with hook-ups, good toilets and showers, a BMX bike track, and organises summer canoe trips on the Gauja. Most surprisingly, it's Latvia's top winter ski resort (where are the mountains?) with an artificial ski slope down from the restaurant balcony and an extremely tall ski jump, with a rickety wooden walkway up the side (no lifts here!)

We settled in, alone apart from the German-speaking guardian and a few students from the local university working part-time round the site. The 2 resident dogs, one an alsatian, were soon 'dazed' into leaving us in peace.

115 miles. £6 inc elc.

Dropping at least 150 ft from the ski resort (!) we cycled into Valmiera through woodland, past the bus station (joining a queue at the excellent little bakery there) and across the Gauja bridge into the centre. Most of the old town was burnt down when Russians took it from Germans in 1944 but St Simon's Church (founded 1283) had survived and we headed towards its spire.

Originally Catholic, now Lutheran, it was open to view and we were welcomed inside by two old ladies of the parish who sold us a booklet on its history (in Latvian, English and German). It was lovingly decorated for Harvest Festival with pumpkins, marrows and other fruit and veg laid before the altar. The altarpiece painting, 'God, Your Earth is Burning', was done by a Latvian artist in a German refugee camp in 1948 and brought back by Valmiera's priest, serving there at the time. There is a fine 19thC organ (and an appeal for its restoration) and an inscribed stone in the porch records the first Reformation sermon given in the church in 1525 by an envoy of Martin Luther. The church and town were attacked several times (canon-balled by Ivan the Terrible in 1560, burnt by the Cossacks in 1792, shot at in Russia's Civil War of 1917) and the Communists closed the church completely in the 1960's. The Lutherans worshipped quietly with the Baptists through the Soviet era (as in Romania) and have now restored the destroyed altar from old photographs. There is a stone memorial to the Latvian President of 1936-40, killed by Communists in 1942. Quite a story. Our meditation was shattered by the arrival of a German coach party (our first for many a peaceful long month) come to climb the church tower, so we moved on.

Behind the church were the ruins of a castle (also 1283) and a little museum. We visited the Tourist Office in the town hall and shopped at the excellent outdoor market and indoor supermarket with all we need at prices a fraction of those in Scandinavia. We climbed back up the hill to our ski station home for lunch, after which M wrote up the diary while Barry cycled back into town to leave a film at the Kodak photographer's and to do some photocopying.

Evening TV gave us 3 Latvian channels and 4 from Estonia. The latter included subtitled 'ER', 'Chicago Hope', 'Ali McBeale' and 'NYPD Blue', all on the same night! The Latvian channels turn the simplest film into a Tower of Babel, talking over the original English soundtrack in Latvian, with Russian subtitles (only 55% of the population are ethnically Latvian), making their programmes impossible to follow.

We rode back into the town to collect the film and phone the campsite in Sigulda, our next destination down the Gauja Valley. Then we cycled through extensive parks beyond the town centre to the Lucas Hill, with a memorial to victims of WWII (a soulless Soviet monolithic sculpture), and saw a Swedish fairground setting up for the weekend. Back along the banks of the Gauja, a lovely parkland in need of new steps and paths, and home for lunch.

In the afternoon we gave Rosie a wash (Baltic roads + rain = mudspray) and talked to today's part-time campsite attendant - a helpful young man studying Political Science and English at Valmiera University. We wished him luck.

We headed south-west down the Gauja valley, gingerly crisscrossing the railway line which shared the route for Sigulda and Riga, stopping after 25 miles at C esis, another historic Hanseatic town, complete with castle founded in 1209 by the Knights of the Sword, and the country's oldest brewery. However, the town was busy with Saturday shoppers, the small car park for castle & museum was filled by cars and 2 coaches and it was now raining, so we viewed it from without and eventually found a place to make coffee in the woodland below the town. Continuing, we joined the A2 to Sigulda (after which it becomes a motorway to Riga - we look forward to it!)

Sigulda, the 'Switzerland of Latvia' (?), is only 35 miles from Riga and a centre for day trips and holidays, on a steep-sided wooded section of the Gauja at the southern edge of the National Park, with medieval castles and legendary caves to visit. More recently it has added a cable car across the river (with bungee jumping from the car in summer!), a ferris wheel, annual hot air balloon festival, etc, to its attractions, and there is a 1200 m long artificial bobsleigh track, built for the Soviet bobsleigh team (the only track in the former USSR), where you can have a go in a wheeled bob (no thanks!)

We parked by the bus station to shop and found a replacement for our exhausted pocket calculator (costing £1.40 including battery - less than we paid for a new battery for the old one!) The small campsite, 3 km from town down an 11% hill on the banks of the Gauja, in view of the bobsleigh and a short ski run, is run by Makars Tourism Agency, which also has chalets to let and arranges canoe and raft trips. The site is unreformed and we are, in effect, parked on the road but there is a 10-amp hook-up, potable water (from a deep well, we are assured) and the use of a single usable toilet. Again, we are alone here.

Out of range of Estonian TV, with only Latvian/Russian language programmes to watch, we turned to our video collection and watched half of the film 'Highlander', which killed Sean Connery off in the early scenes (perhaps they couldn't afford a bigger part for him!)

55 miles. £5.50 inc elec.

As the rain died out after breakfast, Barry cleaned the bicycles and changed our drinking water filter, for maximum protection. M updated the diary and began a letter to mum.

After lunch we cycled over the bridge, watching the aged cable car cross the river above our heads, and up the wooded hill a couple of miles to Turaida. The Turaida Museum Reserve, complete with restored castle (founded in 1217) and 18thC church, was busy with Sunday visitors from Riga, souvenir stalls, horse riding and cars. We rode on tracks through the woods to the cable car station, a relic of Soviet engineering, with a queue of people (who have obviously not seen a Swiss Seilbahn or they'd never use this one). Tucked away in the surrounding woods were the scant ruins of 13thC Krimulda Castle and the more substantial Krimulda Manor House (1854), now a children's sanatorium, its gardens and allotments overgrown and neglected.

Still on muddy tracks, we followed signs for the Velna Cave and Cliffs which we hoped would lead down to another bridge across the Gauja. The track ended at a car park and a very long steep slippery wooden staircase down to the riverbank, too risky for carrying bicycles, so we retraced our route via Turaida. M's front wheel began to protest with a grating noise from the axle, giving Barry another job when we got back. Water had got into the bearing and half the balls had to be replaced (luckily we had some spares of the correct size) and the hub re-assembled and packed with fresh grease.

A few visitors were having a picnic-barbecue around and within the campsite, which has no boundary fence or markers, at the bonfire hearth by the river, but everyone left as darkness and a cold chill fell. Really, this isn't a campsite at all, in the sense that we might expect. There is space on the grass by the river to pitch a tent and for a few pence there is use of a cold water tap and toilet. Vehicles park on the road, £3 per night for a camper-van plus £1 per person. For the equivalent of 50 pence, the part-time guardian (who appears now and again to lurk in the distance) will light a wood fire which will heat water for a rudimentary shower (emphasis on 'rude', given both the lack of privacy and the grottiness of the showering contraption). We guess that German summer visitors have prompted the only new feature - electrical connections for caravans and camper-vans. For 50 pence a day we get power enough for the fan heater, hot water, deep freeze, kettle, microwave, electric blanket, TV, etc, but not all at once. We use our own shower!

We cycled along the lane to look at the bobsleigh run, built by Yugoslavian engineers in 1981, then climbed up the hill into Sigulda. We eventually found the laundry, wrongly marked on our town plan, but did discover the little outdoor market in the process. Both were across the railway line among housing and flats. We left our dhobi to be done for tomorrow and, as it was now cold and raining, returned home. After lunch we finished mum's letter, to send with September's diary, and prepared to move on tomorrow.

Another ride up the hill to look at Sigulda's old bits, post mum's letter and collect the dhobi (2 loads, washed, dried, neatly ironed and folded, for £4). We saw Siguldas Pilsdrupas - the ruins of Sigulda castle (the German Crusaders' first fortification outside Riga, finished in 1226 and destroyed in the Great Northern War of 1700-21). In 1207 the Gauja River was defined as the border between the lands of the Knights of the Sword to the south and the Archbishop of Riga to the north, and there was a good view across the river to the Archbishop's reconstructed Turaida Castle. Near the castle mound is the 19thC New Sigulda Castle (now a restaurant and sanatorium) and the church, dating from 1225 (and appealing as ever for funds for a new roof), set among trees by a pond complete with ducks. We climbed the church hill past the well-tended cemetery and continued cycling on a woodland track up to Gleznot aju Kalns (Artists' Hill), about 4 miles from the church - a viewpoint some 300 ft above the river, claiming a 12 km panorama of the Gauja valley. We paused to take in the view and a bar of chocolate and it began to rain. It's a familiar pattern now - a bright morning lures us out, turning to cold wind and rain by lunchtime. We descended to the post, collected the laundry and turned for home.

After lunch, we filled with reasonably good water, the first potable since Helsinki, and dumped 7 buckets of assorted grey and black liquids in an ancient earth closet in the woods. We drove the short distance to Riga (population 830,000), most of it on a good dual carriageway, the A2, becoming busier as we approached the capital. Rupert had written of safe camping at the motor racing track, near the motor museum, in the outer suburbs 5 miles east of Riga's centre. We eventually found it, with luck and some vague directions from a taxi driver ('left, going, going, going, right, going, going, going ...') and were relieved that the 2 men on the gate let us in, though the 'camping' had closed at the start of October. It consisted of a place in the corner of the guarded car park, with hook-up and the use of a dingy toilet and one cold tap. We were warned not to drink the water and found that the shower block was now locked. They tried asking the summer price of £10 per night for this, but quickly halved it when we protested. As it was pouring with rain and about to go dark, we looked no further, glad to be safe in an unknown city with enough power in the electricity to run the fan heater, water heater, microwave, electric blanket, etc, but, as ever, not all at once.

32 miles. £5 inc elec.

The morning was still wet and we read our guides to Riga, drawing a steady 2 kilowatts of warmth from the fan heater. Later, as the rain eased, we walked round the area of grim tower-block flats, locating the no 14 trolley bus stop for the city. The motor museum further along Eizen steina contains cars which belonged to Gorky, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev driven by life-size figures of the Soviet leaders, with Brezhnev at the wheel of a crumpled Rolls Royce which he drove into the path of a lorry! There were several car dealers in the vicinity of the race track, even an American one with a Swedish hotel's airport bus built on a Ford E350 in for repair, which was reassuring if we should need help!

A Statoil (Norwegian) filling station had a good shop for a few essentials. Most of our high-rise neighbours gave every indication of being Russian. Their homes, like almost all the buildings we saw in the Baltics, were made of very poor materials, thrown up by workers with very little skill and no motivation and given no maintenance over the many years of their life. Concrete was almost always cracked, with bits missing and rusty steel rods showing through - in fact any metalwork was deeply corroded. Bricks were laid haphazardly with varying separation and wavering levels, and woodwork (such as door or window frames) was as unpainted, cracked and discoloured as unseasoned soft wood. Roofs were commonly made from corrugated iron or asbestos and sad, dirty grey net curtains drooped at the windows. We were constantly reminded of the worst parts of Romania (the industrial suburbs of Arad), Bulgaria and Slovakia. Where could change begin amongst such poverty? It's easy to believe that the average family wage is less than £200 per month!

It was still wet as we set off for Riga, a 30 minute, 18p trolleybus ride along Bikiernieku, which edges a forest, then into the heart of the capital along Br v bas (Freedom) Boulevard. Driver and conductor were both women and the bus soon filled, M standing for one of the many old women, laden with bags and muffled against the cold. We got off by Esplanade Park, outside the Orthodox cathedral (Riga's population is 44% Russian and only 40% ethnic Latvian). It had been turned into a planetarium in atheist Soviet days but is now being restored, with a couple of young artists busy inside repainting the frescoes.

Founded in 1201, Riga grew into one of the richest and most beautiful cities in northern Europe but was badly damaged in both World Wars. The city and the country were occupied by the Germans from 1941-44, then taken by Russia and incorporated into the USSR to become the most important industrial centre in the Soviet Baltic region, with an ice-free port at the mouth of the Daugava river less than 10 miles away on the Gulf of Riga.

Old Riga lies on the east bank, a zone of narrow, mostly pedestrian streets (motorists pay £5 per hour to enter), with 17thC German buildings, dominated by 3 steeples (St Peter's, the tallest; the Dome Cathedral tower, the largest; St Jacob's, the Roman Catholic cathedral) and ringed by 19thC parks and wide boulevards.

We walked into the centre, past the Freedom Monument (1935), topped by Milda (Mother Latvia), and followed the Walking Tour suggested in our little guidebook, 'Riga in your Pocket', starting past the 1330 Powder Tower and Museum of War, the Jacob Barracks, through the Swedish Gate (1698) in the Old City Walls and along narrow medieval cobbled streets past the parliament building and St Jacob's church. Then the Three Brothers (3 adjacent medieval houses on Pils Iela or Castle St), Riga Castle (built in the 14thC by the Livonian Order and today the residence of Latvia's first woman President) and the Dome Cathedral, the largest church in the Baltics founded 700 years ago (its 1884 organ was once the largest in the world, now overtaken by 6 others!) We could hear it playing but the cathedral was closed until 1 pm. By now the showers had turned into a heavy downpour and we made for the Museum of Occupation of Latvia, near the river bank behind the Latvian Riflemen Monument (3 Latvian riflemen who guarded Lenin and have somehow escaped the fate of all his statues.) The museum was temporarily closed for the visit of a group of VIP's, who were being ushered out and escorted to their waiting black limousines by flunkies with umbrellas, so we went in search of lunch. Paddy Whelan's sounded good for Irish pub grub, but the reality was noisy, smoky and crowded, so we retreated to good old McDonald's near the Freedom Monument. Their capuccino beats any coffee in the Baltics! Back into the rain, we returned to the Occupation Museum, passing St Peter's church without taking the lift up the spire to its viewing platform. (Dating from 1209, its wooden tower was the highest in Europe until it collapsed in 1666. Rebuilt and destroyed several times since, most recently in 1941, it was reconstructed and topped with a spire in 1973.)

The museum, dedicated to the victims of over 50 years of Nazi and Soviet occupation (1940-91), was both fascinating and harrowing. There were plenty of photographs and exhibitions showing the atrocities and the destruction of the nation's independence. About 450,000 Latvians were lost during the war; another 175,000 were killed or deported by the occupying Russians in the post-war years (the present population is 2.7 million). The museum contains a reconstruction of a Gulag barracks, articles made in the Siberian labour camps, messages thrown from the trains by deportees, letters written on paper made from birch bark and smuggled out of prisons ... too much.

Eventually we made our way through Philharmonic Square, bordered by the Great and Small Guildhalls and the Cat House (named after 2 black cats on the roof) and crowded with art and souvenirs on sale. As dusk fell, we walked back up Br v bas to Elizabetes, a street of more modern shops, to find the comprehensive Jana Seta book and map shop (Rupert had sent us their map of the Baltics, which had brought us thus far). We bought a map of Poland showing campsites, shopped at the Interpegro supermarket, did some photocopying at a Russian kiosk, and joined the queue for the no 14 trolleybus home. It was packed, the roads were packed, the rain continued, but it felt its way along its wires and got us safely home.

In the evening we tried to ring Rupert to arrange a meeting but his home number and our Vodafone were incompatible. A phone call from Turners got through and we confirmed it was OK for the tenants to paint the lounge (white ceiling, yellow walls) at their expense, and for a leaking gutter to be replaced at ours. They also wanted our permission to get the lounge curtains relined and the outside woodwork repainted - decisions put on hold till we get the mail and reply.

In the morning M shopped at the small market serving the nearby flats, got a phonecard and managed to ring a campsite at Trakai (20 miles from the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius) to check it was open. Attempts to phone a motel for an overnight on the way there failed completely, the phone systems in the Baltics being in a chaotic state of change from Russian analogue to Scandinavian digital. Barry found the Vodafone did connect with Rupert's office (digital, whereas his home is still analogue!) He seemed surprised but pleased to hear from us and will come round this evening.

After lunch the rain finally stopped and we took the trolleybus into Riga again. M telephoned mum and we walked through the Old Town and along the river to the vast Central Market, which fills 6 aircraft hangars by the railway station, spilling outside into the streets. The first hall was fish (with long queues for a variety of fresh and smoked fish), with other hangars for meat (not inviting!), fruit & veg, flowers, dairy produce (milk, yogurt, etc, sold loose and poured into re-used Coca Cola bottles, margarine tubs, or whatever) and groceries. We did find wrapped cheese claiming to be Cheddar ( Cedara) which was very tasty, outdated Cadbury's chocolate and a tin of Nescafe Classic, the favourite of Greek markets. The indoor stallholders were very friendly and wore neat caps and uniforms, while outside rougher types sold contraband vodka and pirated videos in between the sweet stalls. Cigarettes sold for as little at 23p for 20; even Marlboro were down to 60p (we had paid more than 80p 'duty free' on the Tallinn ferry).

As McDonald's was crowded with a kids' party, we got coffee in 'Subs' American sandwich bar (a bitter experience, with no sugar and only powdered milk to modify it!), then another trolleybus ride home in the rain.

Rupert came for the evening and told us more about life in Latvia. In his 30's, from East Anglia, he's lived in Riga with a Latvian girlfriend for 6 years in some kind of import business. His most recent commodity was 'metals' but that's no longer working as well as it might and he's looking for a new commodity. He doesn't like Russians under any circumstances - as neighbours, customers, drivers or businessmen, but likes Latvia and the Latvians very much.

He has a motorbike and a VW camper van, owns an old farmhouse and some land in France and has made 3 trips to Morocco, so we had plenty to talk about. We were only the 3rd MMM readers he'd heard from, and only the 2nd he'd met (one couple turned back in Poland). We gave him some books we'd finished with, made tea and popcorn, thanked him for all his help (where would we be without him? - safely back in Germany we would imagine) and wished him luck which we thought he might need.

Off early on a cold bright dry morning, bound for Lithuania, our 3rd and last Baltic Republic. To avoid the chaos of Riga centre, we retraced our route down the Sigulda road, turning south on the A4, back around Riga on the A6 and past Salaspils, site of a Nazi concentration camp where 100,000 were murdered in 1941-44, nearly half of them Jews from Riga, the rest from other occupied countries. We saw the memorial stone (inscribed 'Behind this gate the earth groans' from a poem by a Latvian prisoner) at the entrance to a woodland path.

A bridge took us over the shallow Daugava water reservoir dam, past the hydro power plant and eventually onto the A7 (the Via Baltica and main road for Kaunas). We drove through forest which gave way to agricultural land, horses still working the plough. At Bauska, an old town at the confluence of the M emele and M usa, we crossed both rivers, pausing for coffee in the car park of the castle, built on a hillock between the 2 bridges in the 15thC and partly restored. We turned west, leaving the Via Baltica, to visit Rundale Palace before crossing the border just south of Eleja, then straight down the A12 to Lithuania's Hill of Crosses north of Siauliai.

Pilsrundale (or Schloß Ruhental) is a palace built in 1735-68 by Russian Empress Anna for the Duke of Courland, one of her lovers, and designed by Rastrelli, the Italian architect of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. We paid to park and tour the building (total £2.90) and flip-flopped round 2 floors plus basement kitchens in slippery slippers issued to protect the parquet flooring and carpets. Half the rooms have been restored - splendid Russian Baroque, with crystal chandeliers, silk wallpaper (made in Moscow), rich stucco mouldings (especially pretty in the boudoir of the Duchess), a huge tiled heating oven in the corner of each room (reproductions made in Leningrad), the Pink Room, the Blue Room, the Golden Hall, etc. The palace was inhabited by successive Dukes until 1920 (come the Revolution), then fell into decay. Restoration began in 1972, and the formal gardens, fountains and park are now in order. As a palace-museum, it must be unique in the Baltics. A more sombre exhibition in the gatehouse had a display of photographs of Latvian churches, before and after the Soviets took control. Most were badly damaged and perhaps used as collective farm barns or warehouses for the last 50 years. Some paintings, altarpieces and so on had been retrieved - a sad reminder of what had been.

We continued to Eleja, the last Latvian village 5 km before the border, and spent our loose change on a few groceries. Leaving Latvia was easy - only about 15 minutes of form-filling and there appeared to be only a short queue waiting to enter Lithuania. In the event, it took a further 2 hours before it was our turn to fill in yet more chitties. We had our lunch in the queue, which rarely moved (one of 2 tins of Latvian sardines - the other will go to a deserving cat who is less particular!), read and generally enjoyed the view of lorry drivers doing what lorry drivers do when there is a long wait and they have had quite a lot to drink. There wasn't much to do when our turn came: about 4 different offices had to be approached with various 'papers' including the 'car's papers', very small chitties were completed and stamped and then given or received from the next station. We think the total was 3 different chitties. Rupert had warned us that Latvian insurance was not compulsory, but as the agent only asked US$4 (for 3 days) we paid up. We had to pay in US$ as the exchange office had run out of Lithuanian money and the surly attendant told us to take our Latvian notes to a bank (on Saturday?)

The problem was that only one person was processed at a time, so that while we were working our way through all the above, no-one behind us in the queue could make a move.

Lithuania was clearly the poorest of the 3 Baltics, with the lowest standard of living and income. They are very jealous of Estonia ('they have Finland for a neighbour, we have Poland' was one bitter comment). Travelling south on the

A12 through large collective fields, pastures and woodland we soon saw the horse and cart in use for local transport, carrying farmers, agricultural workers, firewood, or piles of sugarbeet gathered by gnarled women in the windswept fields. The roads had wide verges for the carts - once common throughout Eastern Europe but the first we'd seen this time.

The first Lithuanian town we passed through, Joni skis, was quiet and the only bank machine (housed in a separate blue glass cage) would not yield to our bank cards, so we continued, armed with dollars and DM. About 25 miles from the border we turned left on a 2 km track to see Roman Catholic Lithuania's famous 'Hill of Crosses'. Beyond a large car park, edged with stalls selling religious items (and of course crosses in all sizes), is a 2-humped mound covered in a forest of iron and wooden crosses. Only as we walked up to them did we begin to realise that there were thousands and thousands of them, large ones festooned with smaller ones, hanging on rosaries or piled at their feet. Some are finely carved folk master-pieces, others cheap and simple. One of the largest, complete with a crucifixion, was a gift from the Pope, a souvenir of his recent visit. The mound is thought to have been a fortification and the tradition of planting devotional crosses there dates from the 14thC. In the Soviet era the crosses were bulldozed several times (as symbols of Christianity, nationalism, memorials to those killed or transported to Siberia), but they always reappeared. There was a small stream of pilgrims braving the cold wind to add their own crosses, including 2 wedding parties with brides in full costume, and a Christening group with well-wrapped infant. Hundreds come at Easter on pilgrimage.

Realising that, after the border delay, we wouldn't make Trakai, or even Paneve zys, before dusk we didn't linger. Siauliai, the 4th largest city of Lithuania, 6 miles to the south, had no camping or guarded parking but we found a Statoil station which took credit cards for a fill of Lithuanian diesel (about 25p per litre). Again, the bank machines rejected out cards. Turning east now, on the A9 towards Paneve zys, after about 20 miles near the village of Seduva we spotted a hotel with a small but empty car park, set back on the right of the road. The Manageress spoke German and was only too happy to take our DM in the absence of Lithuanian litu. She offered free overnight parking if we took either a room or a meal in the restaurant, so we chose to eat. Even at her less-than-generous exchange rate of DM1=2 litu, we had a good dinner (cheese & egg salad, chicken, pork, spuds and ice cream) and a drink each for a total of DM30 (£10). The band were warming up for the Saturday night dance and one wedding party arrived, but we were parked far enough away to sleep well. And next morning we could put the clock back an hour, remembering Lithuania is on Central European Time.

163 miles. Free parking.

We continued east, bypassing Paneve zys, an industrial city of Soviet-style factories and flats, and joined a good dual carriageway, the A2, linking it with the capital, Vilnius. The roads were very quiet, the weather cold, and we stopped to make coffee in an empty car park on the edge of a little lake before Ukmerge. Leaving the A2 at Mai siagala we followed narrow but hard-topped country roads via Vievis towards Trakai, turning off at Bra zuole to Sl enyje hostel and camping, 3 miles from Trakai and about 20 miles from Vilnius.

Set in the woods on the northern edge of Lake Galvé, with a view of Trakai castle, it's a big site with lots of holiday huts, a hostel, cafe-bar, space for tents on the shore and a big field with hook-ups for caravans which we have to ourselves.

There is even a drinking water tap, dump point, hot showers (functional but dingy) and a washing machine. In short, a real campsite! The manager even speaks English (having done a short course in tourism and campsite management in America, though they've not taught him a genuine smile).

We settled in for a late lunch, pleased to be on a rural campsite rather than a public car park. A local wedding party was in full swing in the bar, growing louder as the vodka flowed. At one point the men donned white sashes and everyone did a sort of conga outside, led by a drum. We kept away!

We cleaned the bicycles and fixed M's front tyre, which got a puncture back in Sigulda.

116 miles. £6.50 inc elec.

Wrapped against the cold wind, we cycled into Trakai, a small town at the centre of the Trakai National Park (lakes and islands). It was briefly Lithuania's first capital in the 14thC, with 2 castles built against the German knights (one in ruins, one restored on an island in Lake Galvé). Most of the town is on a peninsula of land between Lake Luka on the east and Lake Totori skiu on the west, with the larger Lake Galvé to the north.

There was just one main street with post office, tourist office, bank and 'department store', and we at last changed our Latvian money into Lithuanian, which will call for more difficult mental arithmetic at 6.5 litu = £1. The single supermarket had the basics and (oddly) one tin of Heinz beanz which we snapped up. On the southern edge of town was a busy bus station, a little outdoor market with stalls and kiosks and a railway station which looked locked and abandoned, though the tourist office had given us details of 5 daily trains to Vilnius.

Back to the campsite for lunch, reading and writing.

Too cold for walking or cycling, we did a few indoor cleaning jobs and 2 loads of dhobi. As M was pegging out the clothes it began to snow, but soon changed to sleet and ceased overnight. The days are getting shorter, dark soon after 5 pm now, and the fan heater is working overtime.

Dry, still cold, we spent the day cleaning the bicycles and Rosie's outside, well splattered by muddy country lanes. We made 2 friends (one black & white, one tabby) who didn't turn their noses up at Latvian sardines or well-travelled Greek 'Munchies' but we were less generous to a local peasant who came to pass the time of day, so drunk he didn't notice we couldn't understand any of the many words he was sharing with us.

In the evening we tried to ring Stan and Celia on the eve of their departure for Spain but found their phone disconnected! Their daughter was also out (perhaps at their send-off party) so we made no contact.

Cold and bright, the grass white with the first serious frost. The campsite Direktor ran us to Trakai at 9.15 am for a bus to Vilnius - large slow ones or faster 15-seaters costing a little more. We were lucky, a new minibus came first and took half an hour for the 18 miles to Vilnius for 40p each. We had coffee in a new McDonalds by the bus and railway stations, then set out to walk through the Gates of Dawn and round the largest Old Town in Eastern Europe, packed with baroque and classical buildings including a huge number of Catholic and Orthodox churches. Sadly, only one synagogue remains in the city which was known as the Jerusalem of Lithuania at the turn of the century, when half the population were Jewish.

Vilnius actually changed hands several times in the 20thC, occupied by Germany for 3 years in WWI, then by Poland until WWII (during which time Kaunas became the Lithuanian capital). Stalin returned the city to Lithuania in 1939, then it fell to the Nazis for another 3 years and most of the Jewish inhabitants were killed in the ghetto or in the nearby Paneriai forest. The Red Army took the city back after a 6-day battle and its Soviet era began. In the push for independence from the USSR in January 1991, the city's TV installations were stormed by Soviet troops, killing 13 and wounding many more, the most recent martyrs to freedom.

We walked through the only remaining gate tower in the old city walls, the Gates of Dawn, housing an 18thC chapel containing a miraculous icon of the Virgin, one of eastern Europe's leading Catholic pilgrimage destinations. A few ragged beggar-women sat forlornly by the entrance. From the workaday city we had entered the Old Town, totally different in appearance and affluence, and made our way to the Town Hall square, past the baroque St Teresa's church, the Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit with its pink onion domes, the National Philharmonic, the Jesuit-founded St Casimir's church (used by the Soviets as a Museum of Atheism), the Art Gallery - all impressive buildings lining the narrow winding street and courtyards.

After a few minutes in the Tourist Office, trying to discover how to reach Paneriai forest (one stop on the train or a combination of 2 buses, but no details of place or timing), we continued along pedestrianised Pilies Gatve (Castle St), which contained a few craft stalls, paintings for sale, restaurants and souvenir shops. It led to Cathedral Square, with a recent statue of Grand Duke Gediminas (the 14thC founder of the city) and his horse, near which you are advised not to linger (the Ukrainian granite pedestal is claimed to emit post-Chernobyl radiation!) The neo-classical Cathedral was used as a picture gallery in the Soviet era and was reconsecrated in 1989. The 3 brass statues of saints on its roof are replicas of those destroyed under Stalin, added in 1996. St Helene in the centre holding a 30-foot gold cross is quite a landmark, with Gediminas Hill, topped by the medieval castle, as a backdrop.

We headed left along Gedimino Prospektas, the main street of modern Vilnius, past the appalling 'Museum of the Genocide of the Lithuanian People'. This is housed in the former KGB headquarters, where we made a contribution to its upkeep and wandered freely through the original basement prison cells, where thousands of Lithuanians were held, interrogated and tortured before transportation to the Arctic Gulags or execution. Former inmates give guided tours in Lithuanian or Russian and there were explanations in English on the grim walls. Most hideous were the 'Soft Cell' (padded to muffle the beating and screaming, with a straitjacket hanging from a hook) and the 2 'Wet Rooms', punishment cells with a sunken floor filled with water, turning to ice in winter. Left in the dark, wearing only underclothes with no shoes, a small circular metal pedestal in the centre was the prisoner's only refuge. The KGB hid the wet cells when they left in 1991 and they were discovered under a false floor in the prison library. As recently as 1994 the remains of prisoners were found buried in a popular picnic spot in one of the city parks, now known as the Killing Fields. Emerging with relief into the noon sunshine we wondered how long we'd have endured such isolation before betraying all we knew. The same cells were used for equally hideous purposes by the Nazis during their occupation when the building was Gestapo headquarters.

An antidote was needed and we soon found it in the English-owned Prie Parlamento pub-restaurant, a little further along Gedimino, where we tucked into excellent pies (chicken & mushroom and steak & onion) and the best apple crumble we've ever eaten away from home. It was busy with local businesspersons, though we didn't detect any ex-pats.

We walked some of this off by returning to Gediminas Hill and circling the tower before returning to the railway station, with a detour past 16thC St Anne's church (whose Gothic brick pinnacles Napoleon wanted to take back to France) and 17thC St Michael's, now a Museum of Architecture.

At the station we managed to get tickets for the Kaunas train (less than 10p each) and got off at the first stop, about 6 miles SW of the city, hoping it was indeed Paneriai since there was no sign (indeed, no platform!) The wide-gauge track meant spacious carriages and we could imagine the long distances these Soviet trains covered. We eventally found the road leading to the Nazi death camp and walked half a mile through the woods to the site where 100,000 died in 1941-44, 70,000 of them Jewish from Vilnius. There were several memorials in Hebrew, Russian and Lithuanian (though local accomplices are reported to have done as much killing as the Germans) and a small museum which was closed. The forest was deserted, silent, eerie, with a maze of paths leading to grassed over pits with Soviet inscriptions. In these, the Nazis finally forced prisoners to exhume and burn the bodies and pulverise the bones to hide the evidence of their atrocity.

Sobered, we walked back to the station and soon caught a train back to Vilnius. The guard seemed to want more than we'd paid coming out (perhaps we were being fined for not having a ticket, but there was nowhere to buy one). As he couldn't change our smallest note he gave up with a smile, finally taking only 8p each! We walked over to the bus station and found our luck had held, with the minibus to Trakai leaving in 10 minutes with the same driver. It took longer in the evening traffic but we reached Trakai by 5.30 pm and walked down the main street to the antiquated department store as dusk fell.

We found all we needed there - a new alarm clock and warm trousers for Barry (brown corduroys labelled C & A with a leather belt for under £10 a pair, off the back of goodness knows what lorry!) Then the last, and most expensive, link in our transport, a taxi back to the campsite in the clear moonlight. A full day!

On another frosty morning we rode into Trakai for a last visit. We sent Rupert a postcard of thanks and phoned the Hetman Hotel in Augustow, just inside Poland, to arrange our next overnight. Then coffee and buns in the supermarket cafe, unreformed style (tiny cups of thick black coffee with grounds, a sour waitress and no milk - though they sold it in the shop!) We bought 2 of the local Cornish-type pasties to take back for lunch, which turned out to be dry and unappetising. This was the only cafe open, the season was over, though our Camping Direktor had boasted of a very busy hot summer, with a full campsite including some Germans and Dutch, hot air balloons, swimming in the lakes, rallies - hard to believe today.

We rode on to the bus station market, where stalls sold candles and lanterns ready for All Saints Day, when RC families visit the graveyards. We bought a bundle of candles and rode on, past the well-tended cemetery and down to the shore of Lake Luca. Last night's frost and today's wind were fetching the leaves down and we rode over a thick carpet of fresh beech leaves, past frozen ditches and along the lakeside footpath to the restored medieval castle, on a little island reached by 2 wooden bridges. We looked into its huge courtyard, used for summer concerts, but didn't pay to explore its rooms and towers, needing to get home, warm and fed. In the afternoon we prepared to move on and found the only accessible drinking water tap had been removed for fear of freezing. This meant carrying several containers across the hilly site to fill at the restaurant kitchen. Although it was only open at weekends, there were 2 women busy peeling spuds and cooking to feed the many workers who are generally 'improving' the cabins or hanging about.

The free English-language weekly 'The Baltic Times', picked up in Vilnius, was an informative read and had us despairing of the flagging economies and EU-hopes of the 3 Republics. The Camping Director complained of the mafia and the communist-style government and thought Lithuania needed 20 years to emerge from its past.

An early start, along the A1 dual carriageway for about 60 miles to Kaunas, Lithuania's 2nd city and capital between the World Wars. No doubt it has a historic centre of fine architecture, but we bypassed it and headed south-west on the A5, looking out for a fill of low-cost diesel before the Polish border. We were back on the Via Baltica route but the dual carriageway soon ended and the road was slow, with roadworks, hills, bends, lorries, tractors and horse-drawn carts shifting the sugar beet which was being lifted in the fields. After Marijampole we had a choice - stay on the A5 for the main border crossing at Budzisko or take a minor road via Lazdijai to cross to Orodniki (further but possibly quicker as it is for cars and buses only, not lorries). We decided to continued on the Via Baltica. Despairing of seeing a western filling station (just one new Statoil not yet open) we stopped at a Lukoil (Russian) and risked a fill of their diesel. We made coffee, spent our last Lithuanian change in the shop and tried to ring mum with our last phonecard but couldn't get through to the UK. Soon we saw the end of the queue of lorries which stretched for over 3 miles to the border! Some must have been there since yesterday, if not longer, and the wayside cafe was doing good trade. We took the advice of the excellent 'Via Baltica Touristica User's Manual' and overtook the queue, a difficult manoeuvre with lorries entering Lithuania heading towards us on a narrow road, and reached the much shorter line of waiting cars. We were soon checked out of Lithuania, then sat for 2 hours in the limbo of No Man's Land eating our lunch.

We finally entered Poland, declaring (in German) that we had no antiques, liquor or contraband. Rosie and her driver visibly relaxed, now we have full Green Card insurance after 3 weeks without and the next country is Germany! There was no problem changing our Lithuanian notes for Polish Z oty (pronounced Zwoti at 6.5 to the £1) and we were on our way.

After 15 miles of hilly narrow road we reached Suwa ki, in Poland's green Masurian Lake District. We saw cows being milked in the field into zinc buckets, horses ploughing, and more horse-drawn carts than in the Baltics - often splendidly turned out, with red rosettes on their harnesses, carrying an old couple home.

Every other filling station offered LPG, as well as specialist Autogas places, and we were at last able to fill the tank for about 15p a litre and relax about running out - our first refill since Lübeck in July! The intervening 7 countries had been without gas, but Poles run their midget cars on it.

Another 20 miles south to Augustow, where we easily found the Hetman Hotel and Camping on the right before the town. The campsite, behind the hotel on the edge of a lake, was closed but we'd arranged to camp in the guarded car park, an excellent arrangement. For 20 z (£3) we were given a hook-up (through a basement window) and use of the hotel toilets and showers, in a wonderful centrally heated bathroom instead of the usual drafty grimy outdoor cubicles. We repaid their generosity by eating in the restaurant and had a splendid meal - pork, chicken, chips, salads, and layer cake with advokaat ice cream - all for under £10 including drinks. We think we'll like Poland.

146 miles. £3.08 inc elec.

On a still misty morning we took a short walk through the woods and along the lake shore before the long drive to Warsaw. On the advice of both Rupert and the Via Baltica booklet we took the longer route, E67 via Bia ystok, which proved narrow, twisting, bumpy and busy with lorries, leaving us to wonder at their choice.

A Via Baltica shortcut through the village of Tykocin proved to be a narrow country lane with an impossible surface and we soon turned back. About 60 miles before Warsaw, at Ostrów Mazowiecka, we turned off the E67 onto road 63, the main road for Siedlce, which passes the site of the Treblinka Concentration Camp after about 14 miles. The road crossed the railway line at Ma kinia, 5 miles before the site, then was abruptly blocked for us by a bridge over the river Bug - 3 m height limit, 2 m width limit and 2.5 tons weight limit. We failed on all 3 counts and stared in disbelief, as this was the only road and the LP Guide mentioned 6 buses a day along it. We retreated to the station car park in Ma kinia, had lunch and considered whether to continue to Treblinka by bicycle or look for a taxi, but as it was now raining, growing mid-afternoon gloomy and we still had to traverse Warsaw, we gave the visit up, leaving the memorial site, where the ashes of nearly 1 million rest in the forest, for others to find.

The wet single-carriageway road to Warsaw had 2 grooves worn into it by the constant passage of over-loaded lorries and it became increasingly busy as we neared the city. A long stretch through woods was lined with people selling mushrooms they'd gathered though it was wet and cold, with very few cars stopping to buy. After roadworks there were 15 miles of welcome dual carriageway before entering Praga, the right-bank suburb of the chaotic Polish capital, along Solidarno s c Avenue - the end of the Via Baltica we'd followed since Helsinki.

We crossed the Vistula River, managed to avoid the Old Town, circled what might have been an inner ring road in some confusion as dusk fell and finally found the only campsite open, no 123, near the central bus terminal off the Krakow road. Though designated 'Majawa Hotel & Camping', it's simply a collection of wooden chalets for rent, a grass strip with hook-ups which we have to ourselves and a grim toilet block, but at least the water is considered drinkable. The locked gates and nightwatchman suggested security but we soon found another gate to a park and building site open and various characters strolling through and staring! A long hard day.

242 miles. £8.92 inc elec.

After yesterday's long drive in the rain and mud of the Polish highways, Rosie was in dire need of a wash and check-up. We gave her the TLC she deserves and also cleaned out the cab.

Trying to tune into out surroundings, we read of Warsaw's tragic history and troubled present. Over half the population and 85% of the buildings were annihilated by the Germans during WWII, much of the destruction being done when it was all over for them and they were on their way out, with the Russians sitting on the opposite bank of the Vistula for weeks, watching and waiting. With some uncertainty about what to expect, we planned a route for tomorrow's visit.

Dry and sunny, we cycled the 5 miles into the city rather than taking a bus or tram. We rode along the broad uneven pavements of Al Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Avenue) straight to the central square, Plac Defilad, with its monstrous 'Palace of Culture and Science', Stalin's gift to Poland in the 1950's! The inhabitants say the best view of the capital is from the 30th floor terrace, as it's the only place in Warsaw from which you can't see it! It's still Poland's tallest building at 231 m/759 ft, with 3288 rooms. If only they now had a use for it!

Nearby we found the Tourist Office for a better map, then headed north through the bustling city to the Old Town. Commercially, there was a bewildering mixture of modern multi-nationals (Benetton, Yves Rocher, KFC, etc), Soviet-era kiosks and pathetically poor stalls and street vendors. One old woman-entrepreneur (or was she just trying to survive?) had a large jar of instant coffee, paper cups and several thermos flasks of water, all served from an old pram.

The 17-18thC Old Town, left as rubble after the war, was rebuilt between 1949-63 using fragments found in the ruins and pre-war photographs. The resulting houses, churches, museums and cathedral are indeed impressive, as nothing looks less that 200 years old - buildings aged quicky in Soviet times! We entered through the Barbican and sat on the medieval walls overlooking the Vistula before moving into the Old Town Square or Rynek Starego Miasta. A diverse mixture of Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and Gothic buildings surrounded us on all 4 sides, the central fountain was being restored, but something felt wrong, out of harmony - they looked like façades, like a film set. Surely such a variety of architecture wouldn't have had identical windowframes? Rebuilt to order, without love and feeling.

We sat in the autumn sunshine, bought and sent a birthday card to Alan, then made our way back along the Royal Way, a 2½ mile route from the Royal Castle to azienki Palace, the summer residence. Passing numerous churches, museums, monuments and ministries, we paused outside the Radziwi Palace which is now home to the President and imagined Lech Wa esa moving in (and out). A huge complex of buildings made up Warsaw University, scene of many post-war student protests. The nearby Holy Cross Church (where Chopin's heart resides in an urn, brought from Paris as he wished) was seriously damaged in the fighting of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Outside, the statue of Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, had been scrapped by the Germans and was retrieved from Silesia and re-erected.

The Royal Way continued along Nowy Swiat (New World), the main pre-war shopping street, now reconstructed in its 19thC style. It was busy with bars, boutiques, bookshops and cafes, and we had a good lunch of stroganoff and cakes sitting outside on the pavement mixed in with an envious bus queue while heavy traffic rumbled by. All portions were sold by weight - old habits dying hard.

We didn't enter the treasure-houses of the museums, visit Marie Sklodowska-Curie's family home or tour the works of art in the baroque Royal Castle (blown up by the Germans after the 1944 Uprising and rebuilt 1971-84) - that would require more time, patience and interest in Polish history than we have. We cycled on, along increasingly pleasant wide leafy streets bordered by old embassies and parks, past the Botanical Gardens to the azienki Park. The sun was shining, the autumn leaves were falling thickly, peacocks strutted on the lawns and near-tame red squirrels darted up and down the trees. An unexpected oasis in a surprisingly pleasant city, which we'd imagined as unrelieved Soviet grey slabs. Once a royal hunting ground, the park contains a small amphitheatre, a glazed orangery and the 18thC summer palace, on a lake island. Uninhabited since the abdication of the last Polish King in 1795, it was partly burnt down by (guess who?) the Germans and, again, renovated and reopened as a Museum. In summer, plays are performed in the amphitheatre and classical concerts given round the Chopin monument (his mother was Polish, father French).

We lingered in the afternoon sun, drinking coffee at the outdoor cafe (it's almost November, and our 4th autumn of the year - 2 in Finland, above and below the Arctic Circle, and a later one in the Baltics, all in glorious Ruska colours).

We made our way back to the city centre, telephoned Krakow to arrange our next staging post at the Motel Krak, and returned to the campsite without difficulty apart from the many subway steps underneath the ring roads. The subways are packed with new shops, especially electronics and computers, and often have a public WC, guarded by a couple of retainers who collect a z oty (an expensive 15p) and hand out paper! This system makes for long queues at the free toilets in McDonald's or Burger King, where even the Tourist Office advise you to go!

After touring our 5th and final Via Baltica capital we rewarded ourselves with a video - Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callaghan in 'The Dead Pool', the whole film at one sitting. A real treat after weeks of Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish TV, whose foreign language films are talked over with a monotonous male commentary telling the story, with just the odd word of the original soundtrack audible. (But language isn't always needed - an episode of 'Allo, Allo' in Lithuania was the funniest thing we'd seen in months though we'd no idea why Albert was marrying Edith again.)

Another wet day's drive turned Rosie grey again. Heading south-west for Radom, we soon passed an out-of-Warsaw superstore complex with Ikea, Praktiker and such. We shopped for food and made coffee, then back on the road, no 77, stopping for a bite at McDonald's on the Radom bypass.

Gentle hills began to appear as we crossed the Ma opolska Upland and bypassed Kielce, a town at the foot of the 'Holy Cross Mountains' (hills really). In the next few miles we passed a turning for 'Paradise Cave', drove through Ch eciny with its hill-top castle ruins and past a big Skansen in the village of Tokarnia. (Large open-air museums of traditional folk culture, with wooden churches, houses, farms, windmills, etc, gathered from the region and re-erected and furnished to form a village. Skansens originated in Scandinavia last century, with about 35 in Poland.)

The route to Krakow was straightforward until we crossed the Vistula (the same river that divides Warsaw) and found the road diverted, then unsigned.

Eventually we found the Krak Motel & Camping, about 3 miles NW of the centre of Krakow on the Katowice road, by a busy intersection. The campsite proper was closed for winter but we parked in an inner courtyard surrounded by the motel garages. A hook-up was arranged by running a lead into the linen store-room and we were given a key to a toilet & shower, dingy but hot and usable. We were warned not to drink the water, so are glad of our tankful from Warsaw.

185 miles. £6.15 inc elec.

We sent a fax from the motel to Comfort Insurance to extend the Green Card for Poland by a week till 8 November, giving us time to revisit Auschwitz and Wroc aw.

Then Barry gave Rosie's grimy exterior a surreptitious wash (Motel Reception had told us we must use the car-wash at the BP garage opposite), while M walked over to check it out. It was far too small, but they did have a useful shop and bank machine. She also looked in the other nearby stores - a Swedish Ikea selling nothing we need, a Makro cash & carry only for those with cards (half the population of Krakow, judging by the car park), and an Office World. This had a vast selection of stationery at very low prices, providing us with ring binders, labels and Tippex. They had Canon spares but, sadly, not the right cartridge for the StarWriter, which Barry now has to coax into life when printing is demanded of it.

After lunch we made good use of the Motel cardphone. We arranged to leave Rosie for service at Wettringen on 15-16 November and checked our next possible resting places. In Auschwitz, the Roman Catholic Centre of Dialogue & Prayer were firm that motorhomes are not allowed (whatever our LP guidebook said) but the German-run International Youth Meeting House said we'd be very welcome. In Wroc aw the central campsite is open all year.

We also rang Comfort, as no reply had been faxed by teatime, and found they'd been unable to get through. Finding the motel had been 1 digit out in the number they gave, we rang Comfort again and our Green Card arrrived in black & white.

All arrangements completed, we read about Krakow, a historic city which was Poland's royal capital for 500 years until about 1600. Its old centre came through the war unscathed, its Jagiellonian University is over 600 years old (Copernicus studied here from 1492), 70,000 of the 750,000 population are students. In contrast, the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz was home to 70,000 Jews in 1939 (over a quarter of what was then Krakow's population) only a few hundred of whom survived. Across the Vistula river lay the Podgorze ghetto and P aszow death camp, scene of the book and film of 'Schindler's List'.

On a fine morning, trying not inhale the pollution from the busy traffic, we cycled the few miles into the city, mostly along pavements in the interest of self-preservation, our main task being to avoid broken glass. By bus shelters, telephone boxes and rubbish skips, on pedestrian crossings, in the gutters - in fact anywhere - it's a constant danger to our tyres.

At the centre of the Old Town is a vast Market Square laid out in 1257, claiming to be the largest medieval town square in Europe. It contains the huge Cloth Hall, St Mary's Cathedral, 2 smaller churches and the clock tower, all that remains of the 15thC town hall. The actual market was moved last century, leaving plenty of space for flower stalls, pigeons, buskers and cafes. We found the Tourist Office in one of the Cloth Hall arcades and bought the 'Krakow in your Pocket' guide and a small 'Schindler's List' guidebook. The Renaissance Cloth Hall now houses craft and souvenir stalls, with an art gallery upstairs, reminding us of Halifax's Piece Hall.

Directed to McDonald's for a WC, we found it tucked into the vaulted red-brick cellars of a 15thC building by the Florian Gate, the only remaining medieval town gate and length of wall, defended to the north by the Barbican. Other cellars round the main square were mostly underground bars. The pedestrian streets were busy with young people, window-shopping, hanging about, posing as 'living statues', filling McDonald's. Back in the square, we got coffee & buns at a pavement cafe and sat outside taking in the scene, to the accompaniment of the various street musicians.

Barry watched the bicycles while M visited the 15thC St Mary's Basilica (with one entrance for the faithful and another for the unfaithful, who have to pay 2.50 z for their sins!) Of course, Poland is deeply Roman Catholic (now supplying the majority of Europe's priests) and the Pope studied in his native Krakow and became its Bishop. St Mary's winged high-altar-piece carved from oak and linden by Veit Stoss of Nuremberg in 1477-89 is the largest medieval sculpture of its kind in Europe, depicting the Virgin Mary's life and death surrounded by the apostles. It was suitably impressive, intricately painted and gilded, backed by beautiful stained glass windows, in fact the whole church was light and colourful, perfect early Gothic symbolising the might and power of the church. Outside the 2 towers were shrouded in scaffolding but we heard the famous bugle call, still played every hour from the taller one, the city watchtower. It commemorates a watchman sounding the alarm during the Tatar invasions in the 13thC, when he was cut off in mid-phrase by an arrow. It's even broadcast on Polish radio daily at noon.

The Old Town is surrounded by a band of green park called Planty, once the defensive moat, with Wawel Castle and Cathedral on a hill at its southern end. This was the seat of Poland's kings, their coronation and burial place. In 1946 the priest who became Pope John Paul II gave his first Mass in the Wawel Cathedral crypt, repeated on his recent visit. We started up the cobbled lane of Wawel hill to be greeted by a No Bicycles sign and separate ticket offices for the Cathedral, Royal Tombs, Cathedral Museum, 'Lost Wawel' exhibition, Royal Chambers and Dragon's Den (the cave that was home to the legendary Wawel dragon, destroyed by the city's founding Prince Krak!) We'd seen the fire-breathing modern sculpture of the dragon on our previous visit to Krakow (cycling our way to Istanbul in summer 1989) when Wawel had been more cycle-friendly with no tourists in sight.

Home for a late lunch, after which we cycled to an Iveco garage, signposted as 2.5 km away (but further), to arrange an oil change for Rosie tomorrow morning. However, on phoning Wettringen to check what type they had last put in, we were advised against it and assured the oil would last until our return in mid-November.

A much greyer colder misty morning. Barry investigated why the electric blanket had stopped working last night and fixed it by removing the tamper-proof control switch so that it works on top heat only, which is just what we need right now.

M rang a couple of campsites on the edge of Berlin, with a 10th Fall-of-the-Wall Anniversary visit in mind, and found them open with no need to book.

The sun broke through after lunch and we cycled back into Krakow, through the Old Town and past Wawel Hill. We sent Pat Cue a postcard of thanks for the Green Card and note she'd faxed, then mixed with the trams and traffic to ride into the suburb of Kazimierz, the Jewish District tucked between the Old Town and the Vistula river. Originally founded as a separate town in 1335 by King Kazimierz the Great, it became home to Krakow's Jewish population when they were ordered out of the walled capital in 1494. Jews fleeing persecution came from all corners of Europe and there they stayed until the German invasion of Poland in 1939 literally sounded their death knell, moving them across the river into the Podgórze Ghetto and on to concentration camps.

Today there are only about 150 Jews living in the area, with just one of the few remaining synagogues open for worship, and two as museums. But 'Schindler's List' put this forgotten area of Kazimierz back on the map, with much of the filming done against the backdrop of its architecture (though the actual events of the book took place across the river, in the ghetto, Schindler's factory and the death camp) There were signs of restoration and revitalisation round the Szeroka square - the Jarden Jewish bookshop and restaurant offered guided 'Schindler's List Tours' by minibus, a couple of hotels and a cafe had opened and a few people were leaving a service in the Remu'h synagogue, Kazimierz's smallest, 1553. The Old Cemetery behind it was walled and not open to visit on the Jewish Sabbath, but claims to be the best preserved example in Europe, in use from the 15-18thC and restored since its German desecration. The 'New' Jewish Cemetery, still in use, was in a dilapidated area beyond the railway but we didn't intrude, seeing visitors in the graveyard. Izaak's Synagogue is a museum with posters advertising its documentary films but it was closed for the Sabbath.

Feeling the chill as the light began to fade we turned, depressed, for home. We took a new route back from the city, through parkland round the university, and bought a spit-roast chicken outside Makro for a comforting dinner.

As we put the clocks back an hour after breakfast, we were cycling into Krakow before 9 am on delightfully empty roads. The Market Square was much quieter and we took in coffee & buns to the sound of church bells before riding on to Kazimierz.

We were welcomed at the Izaac Synagogue by a young Jewess and assured our bicycles would be safe locked in the courtyard. Men have to cover their heads to enter and embroidered Jarmulkas (skull-caps) were on sale. Barry, naturally, wore his cap but bought one as a souvenir, to try in the privacy of his own motorhome.

The Baroque synagogue, opened in 1644 and the largest in the district, was a rivetting experience. In the main prayer hall stood life-size photographed figures of the orthodox of Old Kazimierz, while a television repeatedly screened 2 black & white films lasting about 15 minutes, showing Jewish life in Old Kazimierz and the Removal to the Ghetto. In another room a small cinema showed several other crackly old films, made by the Nazis for anti-semitic propaganda purposes, some dubbed into Hebrew, some with French sub-titles, one in English - a collection which fully absorbed the small audience, watching in eerie silence.

Film of Jews leaving Romania to sail to Palestine in 1934; training films for the SS; a piece about trying to improve the welfare of Jewish children in Poland in the early 30's to build a healthier and stronger generation; women and children being loaded into cattle wagons - an inventory of evil. In other rooms were tragic displays of photographs, some of them stills from the films - faces that remained with us all day. There were also pictures of recent visits to Poland's Jewish sites by dignitaries like Willy Brandt, Helmut Kohl, Bill Clinton, the Pope. We lost all track of time and finally emerged after 1 pm, just as a flamboyant group of American Jews on a conducted tour entered. 'Hey ma, d'ya wanna buy the video?' called one of them after his mother! It allowed us to smile again, and we went in search of lunch. The restaurants were all Jewish, with menus of Kosher dishes involving fishballs and goose liver, so we got coffee and cheesecake at the only cafe, sitting in the sunshine, watching the American group emerge and visit the bookshop, wondering how they can bear the legacy of their history.

Nearby the Old Synagogue, built at the end of the 15thC, is the oldest surviving Jewish building in Poland and houses the Museum of History and Culture of Krakow Jewry but we still wanted to visit the ghetto over the river and it would be dark an hour earlier (before 5 pm). We passed through the market square, busy with stalls today selling pathetic second-hand junk, shoes and clothes and basic vegetables, then crossed the Vistula on the Pi sudski Bridge (used in Spielberg's film, a replacement for the original blown up in 1945).

The walled ghetto to which the entire Jewish community of Kazimierz was moved in March 1941 on their way to genocide was right on the river bank in Podgórze but there are few visual relics in this neglected area. We found the 'Pharmacy Under the Eagles' in the central square which is now a bus station with a new name which means 'Heroes of the Ghetto Place'. The non-Jewish pharmacist stayed on to help the suffering families and it's now a museum of life in the ghetto, but closed Sundays.

With the imprecise aid of our guidebooks we also tracked down a short stretch of preserved ghetto wall on Lwowska Street with a plaque and a few candles. Further out, at Lipowa Street, we found what had been Oskar Schindler's enamelware factory, now the Telpod electronics factory with suitably forbidding rusty iron gates. To the south of the former ghetto we came to the area of grassland which was the site of the P aszów concentration camp. We climbed the grassy hill which gives a panoramic view over the nearby quarry where the camp was reconstructed for the film, and beyond across the Vistula to the city. We could even see the gigantic steelworks in the Soviet suburb of Nowa Huta to the east, a legacy of Poland's next oppressors. It was deliberately built in the 1950's to bring in a Soviet-style working class culture to dilute Krakow's aristocratic and religious traditions, destroying villages to erect it on fertile soil, with no local deposits of coal or iron ore. Its pollution threatens the city's health and historic monuments and it loses money, but closure would cause mass unemployment - a typical problem in ex-Communist countries.

Descending from our vantage point we passed a huge cemetery, incredibly busy on the eve of All Saints Day when all good Catholics visit the family graves with flowers and lanterns. Hundreds of stalls were selling chrysanthemums, wreaths, candles, night-lights in coloured glass holders, as well as sweets and titbits. We pushed our way through the crowd, disappointed that the only sausage grill had sold out. We did get coffee at a McDonald's down the road but didn't linger. We still had to find two monuments - a small Jewish one to those killed in the P aszów Camp and a much larger Polish one to those executed for resisting the Germans. That done, we cycled back over the river and home as it grew dark, to a chicken leftover curry.

It had been a sombre day but tomorrow we plan to move on - to a German camp in Auschwitz!