Advice gratefully received

I have just booked a ferry from Newcastle to Stavanger on June 23rd and am planning a trip through Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia (St Petersberg/Moscow), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, France and home. Four of us travelling, plenty of experience riding in Western Europe, but never ridden anywhere in Scandinavia or Eastern Europe. Advice on where to go, what to see, what to avoid etc would be most welcome. Mixed bag of interests and generally low boredom thresholds so not looking to stay anywhere for too long

Thanks in anticipation

Sounds interesting, can I come

Hi mje, that sounds like a fantastic trip. I would sure like to come along on that one. My brother might be interested too, I'll ask him.

nip across the top of germany crossing Harwich to Hamburg to save time and all that boring driving Polish beach resorts like Kolberg are a real laugh, loads of emptiness right up to Hel near Gdansk I'll see if I can clip my road movie on.

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I also did a thread where I went which was kinda funny, when I got stopped by Polish police.

Bloody good fun you'll love it.

Split your cash into two and have a pocket with low denomination notes for "coffee money"

I wore a 5.11 shirt it's got 2 secret pockets inside for all the good stuff you don't want to loose.

(shameless plug 5.11 clothing available on my website, buy some it's great and I need the money for my own selfish needs)

I carried some $'s ,£'s and euro's did stop in some really small town for petrol and they looked at me like I don't know what when I wanted to pay with plastic.

When you cross the various borders the bigger petrol stations will also have exchange kiosks in them if you need abit of cash.

make a folder with all the forms in it in order make photo copies and leave them at the bottom of luggage in water proof ziplock bag, I also scanned all the doc's and posted them on my ftp. but you could email them to a hotmail account so you could if need be get them again locally.

GPS was abit Hmmmm most of the time it showed me riding across fields and that was v9 then again stupid GPS cable came unplugged at every corner cos I made it too short...

Best bits

Loads of space no people
Hot Chocolate/ coffee with Amerretto ish stuff in it
The weather well when it finally got sunny it was stunning
smashing looking local bits of stuff also came out when the sun popped out...

Bad bits

getting lost near dark
dropping the bike in the woods
watching Hannibal rising before camping in Poland
Nearly getting run over by a really big truck in Lithuania
hitting a strip of potholes at 90ish that woke me up

hope that helps

Thanks

Thanks for the advice, we are pretty much set now. 3 out of 4 have our visas for Russia. Did a trial run to the Peak District last weekend to test out all the new equipment that was necessary I am still a firm believer that you should not sleep in anything that you can't stand up in, therefore I will be in any available hut/guesthouse/barn or whatever I can find. The route is pretty much planned, although it will inevitably change as we progress, it looks like this:
Bristol to Newcastle
Newcastle to Stavanger
Stavanger to Preikestolen
Preikestolen to Olden
Olden to Are
Are to Storuman
Storuman to Aavasaksa
Aavasaksa to Äänekoski
Äänekoskito to Imatra
Imatra to St Petersburg
St Petersburg to Parnu
Parnu to Klaipeda
Klaipeda to Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad to Auschwitz
Auschwitz to Vienna via Poprad
Vienna to Zell Am Zee
Zell Am Zee to Silandro
Silandro to Memmingem
Memmingem to Cochem
Cochem to Calais

We have a blog set-up
www.teekondbaltica.blogspot.com

If there is any no-no's in the above then a head's up would be appreciated.

Thanks
Mike