Blogging our way through Northern Europe

 

Eleven years ago, I began my blog post on the first day of our trip to Southern Europe with words sung by Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings:

The Road goes ever on and on 

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow...

 The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter 1

It seems fitting to begin this blog, when we will travel through parts of Europe new to us, with words from a similar source - Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry as they leave the Shire: 

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though we pass them by today,

Tomorrow we may come this way

 The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter 3

Now, after three years when we spent our summers in the UK it feels like the right time to expand our horizons again. 

I'm reminded of the words of one of my favourite authors, James Baldwin, who said:

I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

So, I'm looking forward to a journey of discovery and encounter as the trip goes on.

Our Route

Our planned route looks something like this:

Google Maps will only allow ten separate locations, hence there being 2 As, Bs, Cs, Ds and Es (location J is then covered by the second A!), but I hope the route is clear.

For those who prefer words to pictures the plan (subject to all the transport links and connections going fine!!) is like this:

A Trip Around Northern Europe

Day	From	To
Friday August 4th	Taffs Well	Brussels
Sunday, August 6th	Brussels	Cologne
Monday, August 7th	Cologne	Berlin
Thursday, August 10th	Berlin	Warsaw
Saturday, August 12th	Warsaw	Vilnius
Monday, August 14th	Vilnius	Riga
Wednesday, August 16th	Riga	Tallinn
Thursday, August 17th	Tallinn	Helsinki
Saturday, August 20th	Helsinki	Stockholm
Tuesday, August 22nd	Stockholm	Hamburg
Thursday, August 24th	Hamburg	Paris
Saturday, August 26th	Paris	Taffs Well

Summary

Overall, it will be 23 days, 10 countries, 13 trains, 2 buses and 2 ferries, I hope this will be a good balance between the places we get to see and enjoy and the travel which is itself so much part of a holiday like this.  

Tomorrow I'll post about the plans which led to this year's holiday. I look forward to seeing you all again then. If you get a chance please leave a comment below, it is nice to know who is along with us.

A gentle request: If you use the anonymous feature to comment please add your name to the message, it will automatically appear if you are logged in to a Google account. In last year's blog I spent over a week replying to someone who was in-fact a completely different person. Thankfully I found out before the end!