Not content with the 9 hour coach ride and a 14 hour train ride, I tacked on a 5½ hour ferry ride to get to the Åland archipelago that runs between Sweden and Finland.
Such a change, it is flat, relatively speaking and has forests! I also did my bit of remedial learning. I’d always been taught that the Crimean War took place in, as you might think, in Crimea. But I’m camped next to the ruins of a Russian fort that was the scene of a major battle and where the first ever Victoria Cross was awarded – along with two other ones a few months later.
Basically Russians had built the insides of the fort but were rather tardy in putting up the outer defences. Unsportingly the Brits and French bombarded the place and captured it. But the Russians got their own back by bombarding the fort after the French had taken it and scoring a direct hit on the munitions magazine – could be they had some inside knowledge of the place. My teachers at school have some explaining to do.