Originally, I called our trip Cape Cold to Cape Warm, although perhaps, bearing in mind that Hurtigruten couldn’t drop us off at Nordkapp, I should consider retitling it: ‘Cape Slightly Chilly to Cape Warm’. Where to begin? Well, firstly one of the stars of my previous epistle turned out to be a fallen star. The enthusiastic fellows who repaired the puncture forgot to check the tyre, with the result that the following morning it was flat again – although only at the bottom…

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Great shame, because they were so obliging. Anyway, rapid wheel change and we were away in 10 minutes or so. Now at this stage, I have to admit to a dreadful faux pas. Geography was always a strong point at school, and I’ve always poured over maps and thought that I generally knew which countries bounded which. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that we had stumbled across Slovakia rather than the expected Czech Republic.

I don’t know who was more surprised, the Slovaks or us! In reality, we were very close indeed and, as I claimed to anyone who would listen, an easy mistake to make. In fact, when consulting her map, Yvonne was convinced that we were so close that our hotel bedroom was in Slovakia, whereas the bathroom was in the Czech Republic.

As we travelled through South Slovakia, approaching Austria, what was that in the distance? Oh my gosh – a hill. We realised that the last time we had seen such a thing was in southern Norway. Our whole journey through Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland had been as flat as unleavened bread. So a slight gradient was greeted with delight – yet another opportunity to...