As usual the Caterham attracts a lot of interest with other travellers in the Q: one chap with a US accent has done pretty much the same trip as me, but on his trail bike: another guy tells longingly of when he owned a Lotus Elan in the late sixties/early seventies. Generally i get a mixture of admiration for my sense of adventure and scepticism about how i cope with the weather….

However, there is no doubt the car’s the star: especially with female admirers!!!

Here are a couple of pics around our departure from Helsinki….

….and a short vid for you of the port at Helsinki as we were leaving:

The sea voyage of 30 hours and almost 600 miles was largely drama free: i had resolved not to pay the mad prices the shipping lines charge for on-board WiFi, but having followed the England Test Match against India as far as i could on my phone, it all became so exciting my resolve weakened – highest ever 4th Innings England score in a Test Match in the history of Test Cricket!!! No doubt the Cousins are as impressed with that statistic as i am….???

I usually pride myself i can sleep on a clothes line, but for some reason on this trip i have found it difficult to sleep on the long ferry journeys…. So it was with this one: finally got to sleep about 2:00am!!! Maybe having slept well in 18 different hotel beds in three weeks, my system has had enough???

Still quite a long way north in Travemunde, so we have some pretty sunset pics for you:

Our brief visit to Travemunde showed it to be picturesque and something of an upmarket beach resort. Put me in mind of Naples in Florida, although much older of course……

Here are some pics for you:

The last couple of pics show the rather leisurely approach the Finnish crew were taking to disembarkation – trucks of course get priority, they are what pays the overheads for the shipping line…..

The timing on arrival in Travemunde was not exactly ideal: we arrived in port around 10:15pm Finnish time, 9:15 German time, got off by about 10:30 German time and had a short drive to the hotel for an overnight prior to setting off on the long haul from Travelmunde next morning to Hook of Holland for the ferry to Harwich. A rather splendid hotel, but we didn’t have a lot of chance to enjoy it….. Mind you, i made the most of a great breakfast the next morning, sitting on the restaurant’s balcony overlooking the Baltic, once again in great weather – wall to wall sunshine and low 20s even at that time of the morning!!!

Although the drive to Hook of Holland looked to be long and far from scenic, my ferry to Harwich was not scheduled to depart until 10:00pm so i was able to take a leisurely approach to the 380 mile drive…..

Nearly home…..