London & Home

On Tuesday, we flew from Copenhagen to London Stansted, where we picked up a hire car. We stopped at a small village pub for lunch and we found it great to have "pie chips and veg" after all our time on the road. We drove through Ely, to see the cathedral, and Cambridge then on to Seven Oaks. After a brief stop at our B&B, we headed round the M25 to have dinner with John and Gabrielle. It was great to catch up with them.

The next day, Wednesday, we collected James and went for a long drive. We headed for Brighton for a quick look around and then on to Peter's at Goring-by-Sea. From there we headed, by a somewhat round-about route, to Stonehenge. At least we had the opportunity to see the country. That night we had dinner with James and the other volunteers at Chipstead (Edwina, Chloe and Gareth).

We were due to leave on Thursday evening, so we spent the day around Seven Oaks. We had a look around the Chipstead Cheshire Home, meeting residents and staff. We went to nearby Hever Castle (a disappointment - the Castle was significantly remodelled internally in the early 20th century), then Chartwell (Churchill's home) and then to Knole (a magnificant old house near Seven Oaks, which was much better then Hever).

We were set to go home. Out to Heathrow and then - complete shambles and all flights cancelled due strikes at the caterer and at BA. After much delay, we found ourselves a B&B in nearby Hounslow and were very pleased to get there and have a room for the night.

We spent the next day in London. It was an opportunity to have a look around (Harrods, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Notting Hill). Then off to the airport again, more frustration and uncertainty, much stress, but (just) onto a plane asnd home. Disruptions sometimes can't be avoided, but the ability of BA and London Heathrow to communicate (with each other and with their customers) and to organize was really quite terrible - they really should be getting better as apparently they have one of these major disruptions every summer. Interesting that all sorts of strange and dodgy connections by trains, ships, buses and planes across Mongolia, Russia, Lapland and Scandanavia went ontime and exactly to plan and then the last and simplest (a major long-distance flight from London) was a complete mess.

Anyway, after seven weeks, we are back home.

Copenhagen & Bornholm

We took the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen, which is quick and efficient (as are all Scandinavian trains). We found our hotel, which is a short distance from the train station. Shortly afterwards, our son James arrived from London. It was good to catch up.

We spent the next day looking around Copenhagen. We made our own way on public transport, which wasn't always free from error. Of course, you have to see the Little Mermaid, but it really is little, and not worth the bother. A nearby statute of the goddess Gudion using four oxen to plough the land that became Zealand is much more impressive.

We saw the Rosenberg Palace and the Crown Jewels, the Ameliaborg Palaces (a royal residence) and various other attractions. Copenhagen is an easy city to stroll around and we did much of this. We enjoyed sitting at outdoor cafes and having a drink, as do much of the population.

Early on Sunday morning, we took a train to Bornholm. Actually it's a train to Ystad in Sweden and then a ferry to Rønne on Bornholm. Bornholm is a Danish island in the Baltic, which is closer to Sweden. My mother's family are descendents from Didrick Lyngberg, who left Bornholm as an 18 year old in the 1850's, so we wanted to see if there was any sign of the family. We hired bikes and rode about 10km to Vestermarie, a small inland village. The neat church graveyard contains the graves of two of Didrick's brothers. From there, we rode to Nylans, where we found the "ruan kirke". This church is built as a round tower of three stories and is as much a fortification as a church. It dates from 1150 and was built as a refuge for locals against pirates. It is one of four such churches remaining on Bornholm. We found another Lyngberg in the adjacent graveyard.

We rode back to Rønne - Bornholm is a popular holiday island for its white sand beaches and for it's easy cycling through flat country of forests and wheatfields. We couldn't find any Lyngbergs in the Rønne graveyard, but we did find a dozen or so in the Bornholm phone book. The sun was shining and it was easy to have a drink in the town square (Store Torv).

On Monday, we returned to Copenhagen. We completed our tour of the city with a tour of the royal reception rooms in the Christianborg Palace (the palace is used for royal receptions, for the Prime Minister's office, for the Supreme Court and for the Parliament) and then a one hour tour of the canals.

Bergen, Oslo & Stockholm

Bergen is a pretty town. The old Hanseatic buildings lean against each other on one side of the old harbour and are an interesting place to look around. There is a funicular tram which takes you to one of the mountains that ring the city to give a great view over the town.

On one of our days, we took a "Norway in a Nutshell" tour. This is simply a ticket on a number of linked transports. You take the main Bergen-Oslo railway to Myrdal (giving excellent views and many tunnels), then the Flam railway takes you on a journey that drops about 1000m in 20 km., including a 180 turn inside a mountain and great views down the Flam valley and of rushing waterfalls. The train ends at Flam on the shore of a fjord. Then you take a ferry boat through two fjords to Gundavagan; with great views of these fjords, of small villages and of abandoned farms that occupy impossible positions clinging to the fjord walls. From Gundavagan, you take a bus up a twisting road to end in Voss, where you catch the train to Bergen. it's a long day, but is really gives a great picture of the western fjord country.

From Bergen we took the train to Oslo. This train ride is justly famous for its scenery, particularly the mountain scenery in the first half of the journey. Our Oslo hotel was right next to the station. We had a good look around Oslo, including various museums and palaces. We enjoyed the Viking Ships museum, which has two well preserved Viking ships from burials over 1000 years ago. We also went out to the ski-jump at Holmennen, on a mountain in the Oslo suburbs.

We took another train from Oslo to Stockholm (with no customs checks anywhere). We wandered around the old town (Gamla Stan) and saw the requisite museums and palaces. Stockholm has a museum with the restored ship Vasa, which sank at its launch over 350 years ago. It was built to be the pride of the Swedish navy and the museum allows you to get a great view of it. A brief tour on the canals allowed us to get a better picture of this city built on an archipelago of hundreds of islands.