“Quick”, says the First Mate. “That German boat is leaving. Let’s see if we can get out before it.”

But we still haven’t completed everything on our departure checklist, and the German boat, Compromise, manages to slip out in front of us.

“I was talking to the wife there yesterday”, the First Mate continues. “Apparently her husband gets angry with her when there is no wind. He hates using the engine, and because she does the route planning, he thinks it is all her fault if she plans a trip with no wind.”

“Well, he must be livid now”, I say. “There’s hardly any wind at the moment.”

We are just leaving Visby to sail to Bxyelkrok on Öland. Yesterday, we had bid farewell to Simon and Louise at Fårösund, as they were sailing directly across to the Swedish mainland where they plan to spend a few days chilling out anchoring in the archipelago before sailing to Kalmar where they are going to leave their boat over the winter. We are heading more southwards as we want to overwinter in southern Sweden. We had sailed from Fårösund to Visby to spend a night there to shorten the trip across to Öland.

We motor out of Visby harbour behind Compromise. The wind is forecast to come from the southeast, but the headland to the south of Visby is making sure there is not much of it.

“I bet they are having a right old ding-dong over her taking them that way where there’s still not much wind”, says the First Mate. “If I was her, I’d tell him to do his own route planning, so he would only have himself to blame.”

But the wind picks up as we clear the headland, and before long we are unfurling the sails and are sailing along on a comfortable broad reach. We see Compromise to the south still motoring.

“Here’s a cup of tea”, says the First Mate. “Now, I am going downstairs to catch up on my emails.”

It is sunny and warm, and the sea is smooth. I sit back and relax, keeping a watchful eye on the instruments and the route ahead.

I think back to the newspaper article I had read this morning. Written by philosopher Mark Rowlands on his new book The Happiness of Dogs, he discusses what dogs can teach us about the meaning of life. Dogs experience unbridled joy from the simple things in life, he says, regardless of whether they are repetitive or not. They will always be ecstatic when they are about to be taken for a walk, even though it might be along a path they have been hundreds of times before. For dogs, happiness comes effortlessly.

Us humans on the other hand torture ourselves with trying to find meaning in our lives. What makes our existence worth the bother? We construct elaborate myths and narratives to convince ourselves that we are here for a purpose, that we are part of a grand plan. We must make progress – doing the same thing day after day appears to us to be meaningless, like Sisyphus’s task of pushing a rock uphill only to have it roll to the bottom again at night.

Rowlands puts all this down to our ability to reflect – we are always thinking about ourselves, scrutinising and evaluating what we do, and why we do it. Dogs, on the other hand, rather than think about the answers to the meaning of life, just live it to the full.

Not far behind us, I spot Compromise following us, her sails up now. I trim our sails and manage another half a knot. Wherever there are two boats there will be a race, whether we admit it or not.

Rowlands’ ideas remind me of John Gray’s book Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, which I had read a couple of years ago. In it, he draws similar conclusions from cats. Cats live for the sensation of life, he says, not for something they might achieve or not achieve. Humans, however, tell themselves stories that might provide the illusion of calm in a chaotic and frightening world, that everything is under control. Even though most of the things that happen to us are pure chance, we still struggle with the idea that there is no hidden meaning to find. He advises us to leave our ideologies and religions to one side and just enjoy the sensation of life.

I notice that we are slowly pulling ahead of Compromise. She is at least half a mile behind us now. I tweak the sails a little bit more.

But would we just want to live for the moment like dogs and cats?, I wonder. Even if consciousness, self-awareness, and the ability to reflect make us anxious, troubled creatures, would we want it any other way? Would we want to give up the appreciation of the beauty of art, science, music, and all that we have achieved as a species? Isn’t it part of what being human means?

“Can you see Öland yet?”, calls the First Mate, bringing out a mug of hot tea and a digestive biscuit.

“We’re getting close”, I say. “I can see the lighthouse at the northernmost point. By the way, I looked up what Byxelkrok means. It translates as ‘The Village Forests Bend’. Apparently the Vikings called it that as they had to turn south at the point to get to their port at Tokenäs, a few miles from Byxelkrok.”

The marker buoy showing the entrance to Byxelkrok harbour appears, so we furl the sails and motor in. Soon we are tied up safely next to a Danish family who are travelling north to Stockholm. Out of the corner of my eye, I spy Compromise following us into the harbour. Ha, we beat you, I think to myself.

The next morning dawns bright and sunny, but windy.

“Let’s get the bikes out and cycle up to the lighthouse at the top of Öland that we passed on the way here”, says the First Mate. “I’ve heard that it is a nice ride.”

We cycle along a tarmac cycle track parallel to the shore line.

In the distance, we can see Blå Jungfrun, the fabled island in Swedish folklore where witches are supposed to meet every year on Maundy Tuesday and swap spells.

Along the way, I feel the need for a pinkelpause. We stop at an overgrown track leading into the woods.

“Didn’t you see the sign?”, asks the First Mate. “Look there’s a house over there through the trees. You’re probably on someone’s webcam now. We might have the police knocking on the boat tonight.”

“I am amazed someone has gone to the trouble of putting up a sign”, I say. “They must get a lot of people with the same intention.”

We eventually reach the lighthouse.

“Långe Erik lighthouse was built in 1845 out of local limestone”, the nearby panel tells us. “At first the lamp used mirrors and burned rapeseed oil. But this required constant attention, they were later replaced by mirrored lenses and a paraffin lamp. The lamp was changed to electricity in 1946, and in 1976 was fully automated.”

How many lives has it saved, I wonder. This is a treacherous piece of coastline.

“Come and have a look at these piles of stones on the beach”, calls the First Mate from behind the lighthouse. “They look like an army of invaders from the sea. I wonder how long they will stay up in this wind?”

In the morning, we leave Byzelkrok and sail down to a small harbour by the name of Stora Rör, still on Öland. The harbour is almost full, but luckily there is one berth remaining for us. We squeeze in, helped by the German couple next to us.

“I’ll go and pay the harbourmaster and bring an ice-cream back”, says the First Mate. “You finish tying the boat up.”

It’s a picturesque little place, with a bakery and a restaurant right next to the marina. And a popular weekend haunt judging from the number of people milling about, talking, eating, drinking and generally enjoying the warm sunshine. It is sometimes surprising to remember that places that we imagine to be remote when arriving from the sea are well connected by road and readily accessible to the rest of civilisation.

——-

I watch as the bucket disappears into the depths of the well and splashes into the water far below. A cock crows – it is early in the morning, and the village is still asleep. I wait for a few moments for the bucket to fill, then pull as hard as I can to lift it out. Some water sloshes out and back into the well as I lift it over the stone wall, but there is enough to keep my mother happy, and I carry it back through the deserted streets to our hut near the east gate of the wall surrounding the village. She is already up and has started the fire, its smoke filling the hut and making my eyes water.

She hands me a clay bowl of oat porridge boiled in milk. As I gulp down the last drops, there is a shrill call from outside our hut.

“Erik, Erik, come and play with us!”

It’s Frida, the young girl from next door, her flaxen pigtails bobbing with excitement.

“Off you go”, says my mother. “But don’t forget that your father wants to take you up to the walls today.”

We run through the narrow passageways between the houses, sometimes playing hide-and-seek, other times playing soldiers, guarding the gates against invaders with our little wooden swords and bloodcurdling battle cries. Later I climb the walls of the fortress with my father, and look out at the fields and forests on the outside. Even though it has been peaceful for some time, I know that the wall was built to protect us from our enemies, and that our warriors need to be on the constant lookout for danger. I will be one of them one day.

As the sun sets in the evening, torches are lit around the fortress, their warm glow giving a golden hue to the stone walls. The whole village gathers in the central courtyard to share food for the evening meal. After eating, I sit by the fire feeling safe and warm, listening to the adults tell stories of the gods and heroes.

I am brought back to the present by a buzzing in my ear as a bee lands on an orchid in front of me. I am in the ruins of Ismantorp Fortress, an Iron Age fortified village near the centre of Öland, and am imagining what it might be like from the perspective of a young boy living there in the fourth century.

I had cycled up to the fortress after we had arrived at Stora Rör, and had marvelled at the massive circular stone wall, the stone foundations of 95 houses arranged inside each separated by a narrow alleyway, and the central public square with a pit.

“The Ismantorp Fortress is an enigma”, says the panel. “The walls suggest that it had a defensive function, but it is a puzzle why there are nine gates. Gates are hard to defend, so it makes more sense to have just one or two. Some experts think that it might have been a fortified religious centre similar to some Slavic castles. Other theories say that it might have been a training centre for warriors.”

Whatever its purpose, archaeological digs so far have unearthed only an arrowhead and a belt buckle, suggesting it wasn’t lived in intensively, or was abandoned deliberately over a period of time. More digs are planned, but for the moment Ismantorp remains an enigma.

On the way back, I get a puncture. I must look a bit forlorn, as a couple of cyclists stop to see if I need any help. Luckily I have the puncture repair kit with me, and I assure them, not entirely convincingly, I will probably manage.

“Well, if you do need any help, our car is just parked over there”, they say, pointing to a small car park. “We’ll be there for a while loading our bikes and having a coffee. Feel free to come over if you can’t fix it.”

It’s good of them. But I manage to get the wheel off and the tube out, find the hole by listening for the whistle of air, apply the rubber solution around it, wait for it to dry, then put on the patch. It works! Waving a cheery thank you to the other cyclists, I continue on my way.

In the evening, we have dinner at the restaurant with Klaus and Claudia, our German neighbours. They are from Mannheim, and have been cruising the Swedish archipelago in their boat, Saari.

“Saari is the Finnish word for ‘island’”, says Claudia. “We’ve been exploring the islands of the Swedish archipelago in her, but we are on our way back home now. We have to be back in Greifswald by the end of the month to meet Klaus’s son.”

“I’ve been sailing most of my life”, Klaus tells me, as the beers arrive. “My father was a great sailor. I learnt to sail on Lake Constance. He taught me everything I know. I’ve passed it on to my son, who is also an excellent sailor.”

I suddenly feel very inexperienced. At least I know the pointy end is the front, and the blunt end is the back.

“They’re called the bow and the stern, aren’t they?”, says the First Mate helpfully. She’s the expert.

When we get back to the boat, I decide to have a post-prandial dram before turning in.

“These ring fortresses are quite interesting”, says Spencer, swinging by a thread from the canopy. “It was during what is called the Migration Period in European history, between AD 300-500. At the time the Western Roman Empire was declining, and its weakness allowed lots of different peoples to migrate across the continent. It was a chaotic time and people built fortified villages to protect themselves from marauders.”

“What sort of peoples do you mean?”, I ask.

“A lot of it was driven by the Huns”, he responds. “They invaded from the steppes of Asia, and their military prowess and brutality allowed them to sweep across Europe. Then there were the Goths who were originally from Scandinavia, but had already migrated from there to present day Poland, and were pushed by the Huns from there to the Black Sea area, from where they attacked and destroyed Rome. One branch, the Visigoths, ended up in Spain, while another, the Ostrogoths, established themselves in Italy. Other tribes were the Slavs and Avars who pushed into Europe from the east. Once all this movement had settled down, the resulting pattern of people formed the basis of the different nations that we see in Europe today. So in a sense, you are all descended from migrant stock.”

“But that was all on continental Europe”, I say. “Why would they need to build fortified villages here in Öland? Weren’t they out of all this chaos?”

“Well, Öland was quite well connected during this period,”, he answers. “Not only because of its shared cultural and religious practices with the Germanic world, but also because it was part of a trading network with the rest of Europe. Goods such as amber, furs, and even slaves were traded, and Roman coins have been found on Öland. Even though it wasn’t affected by the mass migrations in other parts, it would nevertheless have been exposed to the influx of new ideas, technologies, and people, and the unrest that they bring.”

“Time to go to bed”, calls the First Mate from the cabin. “That’s enough talking to that spider. You’re stopping me from sleeping. We need to get going in the morning.”

“Ruby Tuesday, Ruby Tuesday”, crackles the VHF radio. “You are cleared to leave the harbour. Please proceed carefully. Good watch.”

It’s five o’clock in the morning, and still dark. I have just called the Ventspils Harbour Control to request permission to leave the harbour. It all sounds a bit formal, but Ventspils Harbour is a busy commercial harbour, and it wouldn’t do to get run over by a giant container ship leaving at the same time. For a start, the First Mate would never forgive me.

“Harbour Control”, I call back. “Thank you. We’re leaving now. Out.”

Navigation lights on, we edge out from the marina into the main harbour. I can hardly see the dimly-lit instruments in front of me, but I steer for the red and green blinking lights at the harbour entrance. There are a lot of different lights in a harbour, and it’s not always easy to pick out the ones that we need. But somehow we make it, and a few minutes later we are in the open sea and following the line of winking buoys marking the narrow deep-water channel out of the harbour.

“I think that our Danish neighbours are following us”, says the First Mate. “I can see their lights just coming out of the harbour. They are also heading for Fårösund.”

“Ruby Tuesday, this is Agnete”, says the VHF. “We are behind you. We are going to head for the middle of Gotland, then turn north once we get there.”

“OK”, I respond. “We are heading northwards now. We will see you in Fårösund.”

The wind is from the north, but is predicted to back to the northwest, which will force us to turn in a more southerly direction, so I want to have some north up my sleeve so that we can make it into Fårösund without beating against the wind. I am puzzled as to why Agnete wants to go south and beat against the wind near Gotland. They must know something we don’t.

“I hope your readers will understand all that”, says the First Mate.

The sun sets the clouds on fire over the receding land, and before long, it is a new day. The sea is calm, and with her sails trimmed, Ruby Tuesday settles into a comfortable close reach. We are on our way to Gotland, 90 nautical miles away. Agnete disappears over the horizon to the south.

“I was talking to one of our neighbours in the marina yesterday”, says the First Mate. “She was saying that it took her father and her 22 hours to come over in the opposite direction earlier in the week. The wind was more-or-less against them all the way, and it was very rough. Her father is getting on in years, and thinks that he is still up to it, but he isn’t really. She said never again.”

That’ll be me in a few years’ time, I think. I wonder if I will be honest enough to know when I am ‘past it’?

“Here’s your breakfast”, she continues, handing me a bowl of muesli topped with a sliced banana. “I’ll get your cup of tea in a minute.”

What would I do without her?

The miles slide under our keel effortlessly. As forecast, the wind backs to the north-west in the mid-afternoon, and we need to adjust our course southwards. But we are far enough northwards that we should be able to reach Fårösund without tacking.

But as we approach Gotland, the wind gradually dies. We try to keep sailing for as long as we can, but eventually the wind drops to almost nothing and the sails flap uselessly. There is no option but to motor for the last little bit into Fårösund. Miraculously, Agnete appears from over the horizon sailing at an impossible angle and beats us to the harbour.

“What was the rationale for going south?”, I ask them after we have tied up.

“Normally the wind will curve around the bottom of Gotland and blow northwards parallel to the east coast”, they say. “We were hoping to catch that to take us into Fårösund. But because of that big area of calm, it didn’t work. We just motored for the last couple of hours.”

Our friends, Simon & Louise, whom we had last seen in Kökar in the Åland Islands, arrive in the mid-morning. They have sailed through the night from Saaremaa island in Estonia.

“It was absolutely beautiful”, says Louise. “It was pitch black, and you could see the Milky Way and every star clearly. No other lights anywhere to be seen for most of the time, apart from the occasional ship in the distance. An experience I wouldn’t have missed. But the wind dropped to almost nothing at about four o’clock. We had to motor the rest of the way.”

It was the same lull that we had experienced in the afternoon, just moved north a bit.

“I read that there is a musical performance on tonight in the next village”, says Simon. “Folk music. Would you be interested in going to it?”

In the evening, we cycle up to the next village about five kilometres away. We are a little late, but it hasn’t started yet.

“We waited especially for you”, jokes the man on the door, taking our money and giving us the tickets. “But it’s pretty packed. There are only four seats left.”

We cram into the small wooden barn, and, with all eyes on us, take our places somewhat self-consciously in the front row. The musicians, a group of four girls, introduce themselves straightaway. Two of them are from Canada, the other two are from Sweden.

“We met at a festival in Glasgow”, one of the Canadian girls tells us. “We found out that our repertoires were very similar, so we decided to work together for a season and tour around Sweden first, then Canada. When we are together, we call ourselves ‘Atlantic Crossing’ to indicate that we are collaborating across both sides of the ocean.”

For the next two-and-a-half hours, we are treated to an exquisite performance of familiar and unfamiliar folk songs, sung and played on two fiddles, a cello and a harp. One of the Canadians also entrances us with her step-dancing skills.

Unfortunately, it starts to rain just as we retake our seats after the interval. After the performance finishes, it is pouring down. We consider waiting for a bit to see if it eases, but, if anything, it seems to be intensifying.

“I think we will just have to brave it”, says the First Mate. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

We arrive back at the boats completely drenched.

“They were fantastic, weren’t they?”, says Simon as we lock the bikes. “Well worth getting wet for. The Canadian girl had such a beautiful smile.”

The rain stops overnight, and the next day dawns bright and sunny.

“We were thinking of getting the bikes out and doing a cycle around Fåro island”, I say. “We were going to make some sandwiches and have a picnic. Interested?”

“Definitely”, says Louise.

Fåro is the small island to the north of Gotland, separated by the Fårosund. We take the free ferry across to the small landing on the other side, and start pedalling.

First stop is the so-called English Cemetery where English seamen who had died of cholera during the Crimean War were buried in 1854.

Further on, we pass the church in the village of Fåro in the centre of the island. Ingmar Bergman is buried in the churchyard.

We eventually reach the spectacular sea-stacks at Langhammersgubben at the top of the island.

“Gotland was the bed of a shallow tropical sea during the Silurian period, about 430 million years ago”, the guide book says. “When the creatures in the sea died, their bodies sank to the bottom and were slowly transformed into limestone. Over time, plate tectonics moved the seabed from the tropics to where it is now, and also pushed it up above sea-level, exposing it to the forces of wind and wave erosion. Limestone varies in its hardness depending on what it was formed from, and these amazing shapes, called rauks, were sculpted after the softer limestone was eroded away, leaving the more resistant standing.”

“Let’s have a swim and then have our picnic on the beach”, says Louise.

After lunch, we cycle back along the coastal route. On the way, we pass Helgumannens fishing camp. Apparently it is named after a monk who used to hold services there every morning and evening. Nowadays it is used as a base for sturgeon fishing.

After a quick stop for some coffee and cakes, we are soon back to the ferry.

“Well, I enjoyed that”, says the First Mate. “I wonder how far it was?”

I work out later that it was 44 km. Not too bad for the small folding bikes.

Strong winds are forecast for the next few days, so we decide to stay put in Fårösund and use the opportunity to explore other parts of the island by car and bus. The car hire firm takes pride that all of its cars are pre-loved, and even refers to itself on the website as “Rent-a-Wreck”. But it does us proud.

The sun starts to rise, casting a cold light over the forest. Through the early morning mist, I see the dim shapes of people moving amongst the trees, making their way to the clearing to attend the ceremony. Yesterday, we had prepared the old king’s body, laying it on the oaken bier, dressing it in the finest furs, and placing his sword, bronze shield, and treasured possessions that had served him well during his life alongside it.

The stone ship we had built for him stands in the centre of the clearing, its great stones forming the outline of a vessel that will carry him to the gods. They have been gathered from all over the island, with only the best stones selected as befits a beloved king.

The sun rises higher, and the chants begin, recounting the stories of Tjelvar’s deeds, how he had brought fire to our island and given it life, breaking the ancient curse that once bound Gotland to the sea. We had told and listened to these stories many times, but today there is a finality to them, as we begin to realise that it is the end of an era.

The young men lift the bier and carry it to the stone ship, laying it in the centre. The women approach, their torches lit from the sacred flame, and circle the ship, lighting the pyres as they go. The flames crackle as they take hold, their light illuminating the sombre faces with a ghostly glow. The smoke rises, carrying our prayers to the gods, the scent of burning wood and herbs filling the air. The heat of the fire reaches us, reminding us of the gift that Tjelvar had brought to our cold, dark island.

When the last of the flames has died down, we cover the ashes with stones. The people slowly leave, and the clearing is silent once more, the great stone ship standing as a monument to the man we had revered and followed. The world is different now that he has gone, the future more uncertain, but I know that his spirit will always be with us, guarding Gotland as he had in life, from now until the end of days.

“Are you day dreaming again?”, a familiar voice says. “Hurry up. It’s time for lunch.”

I awake from my reverie. It’s the First Mate. We are at Tjelvar’s Grave, a remarkable stone ship burial in central Gotland. I am imagining what the burial might have been like. The story behind the grave is told in the Gutasaga, a saga of Gotland’s pre-Christian history. Apparently the island of Gotland was once under a powerful curse that made it rise above the water every evening and sink beneath it again every morning. This obviously was a problem for anyone who was wanting to settle on it. One day, a seafarer called Tjelvar, had the brilliant idea of landing on the island during the night and lighting a fire to break the spell so that the island wouldn’t sink back into the depths in the morning. It worked, and Tjelvar is credited not only with ensuring Gotland became permanently dry land for people to live on, but also that they would have fire to cook, keep warm, and smelt metal. He became the first king of Gotland, ruled his people wisely, and lived a long and contented life.

There are other stone ship burials on the island too. Particularly impressive is the line of three in a row all pointing to a Neolithic dolmen.

The next day, we decide to take the bus down to the capital, Visby.

“Visby is another of the cities that were part of the Hanseatic League in the 1200s, and became prosperous on the back of it”, I read on the way down. “In 1361, Gotland was conquered by the Danes, but Visby was taken over not long after by pirates by the name of the Victual Brothers. They also didn’t last long as in 1398 the Teutonic Knights came and chased them off, but in the interests of peace with the Kalmar Union, the Knights sold it to Queen Margaret of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. With the breakup of the Kalmar Union in 1523, it remained in Danish hands, but was returned to Sweden in 1645 and has stayed with them since, apart from a brief three-week occupation by the Russians in 1808.”

As we arrive, we see the city walls, which have been remarkably well preserved.

As it turns out, it is Medieval Week, an annual event in which the locals all dress up in medieval clothes, speak Gutnish, and do medievally kinds of things.

We start off in the Market Square dominated by the impressive ruins of St Karins Kyrka. Concerts are held in the ruins in the summer – indeed, we even see a poster showing ‘Atlantic Crossing’ performing here last week.

Through a narrow street off the Market Square is the Sankta Maria Kyrka, with its ornate interior and three towers capped by baroque cupolas.

We wander through the narrow cobbled streets lined with Hanseatic warehouses. It isn’t difficult to picture what it must have been like in medieval times with all the costumes around.

After lunch, we visit the Gotland Museum, itself an old Hanseatic warehouse, and spend an absorbing couple of hours learning about the history of Gotland.

First up is a particularly fine collection of picture stones depicting legends and everyday life in Viking times. Thought to be memorial stones of some kind, they differ from rune stones in that they have no text on them.

We learn of the Battle of Mästerby in 1361 – when the Danes under Valdemar IV invaded Gotland. The Gotland farmers got together to resist them, hoping that the swamps nearby would stop the Danish soldiers, but unfortunately it had been a dry summer and the swamps had dried out. The Gotlanders were massacred by the more professional well-armed soldiers, with 1500 farmers killed.

We see the Spillings Viking silver hoard, so called because it was discovered on Spilling farm in the north of Gotland. The hoard had been buried under the floorboards of a Viking storage building on the farm sometime in the AD 800s. A lot of the hoard consists of coins from the Islamic world.

“That was all really interesting”, says the First Mate in the bus on the way home. “I never really knew much about Gotland before. It’s a fascinating island. But I guess we need to press on.”

“The weather looks good for sailing for the next few days”, I say. “I suggest we sail down from Fårösund to Visby tomorrow, stay overnight, then head across to Byxelkrok on the island of Öland.”

“Byxelkrok”, she says. “What a funny name. I wonder what it means?”

The sun peeps over the horizon, silhouetting the silent dockside cranes that look like giant sleeping triffids dreaming about destroying the human race.

“Aaaargh, I don’t like these early starts”, says the First Mate. “Couldn’t we have left at a more reasonable hour?”

We had cast off from the marina in Riga at 0500, and are motoring down the Daugava River to its mouth on our way to the small island of Ruhnu in the middle of the Gulf of Riga, 60 NM away. The forecast is for the wind to drop off around midday, so by leaving early, we hope to catch some breeze at least before we have to use the engine.

The chart plotter bleeps, warning that we are on a collision course with a large cargo ship coming towards us in the early morning darkness. I adjust the autopilot a couple of degrees so that we safely pass alongside it.

We are now back to following Racundra’s route after having deviated from it when we had left Kuivastu to sail eastwards to Kuhnu and Pärnu.

Ransome had had Racundra built on the shores of Ķīšezers Lake (called the Stint See in the book), the large body of water to the northeast of Riga, and had sailed her down the Mīlgrāvis channel (then the Mühlgraben) connecting the lake to the Daugava River.

As we pass the junction of the Mīlgrāvis and the Daugava, I look out for the small yellow wooden building that was the Customs House in those days, but of course it is long gone. In its place is a concrete building that looks like the Harbour Control. Google tells me that the Customs Office is now further up the river.

I try to imagine Ransome rowing across to the Customs House in his small dinghy, clutching his boat’s papers to gain clearance to leave Riga. And the story told by his companion, the Ancient Mariner, about the German sailor tied up in the Mīlgrāvis being unwittingly sold his own rope by a crafty thief who had climbed on board his boat at night, stolen a newly purchased coil of rope, and had sold it back to him in the morning.

“It’s not often the Germans get taken for a ride!”, says the First Mate.

She should know.

We motor past the Winter Harbour where Ransome threw his clearance papers wrapped around a stone across to the official waiting on the wharf, and reach the lighthouse to port as we leave the river and enter the Gulf of Riga proper. Immediately the wind picks up from the west, the sails fill, and we are on our way. At least we are not becalmed at this stage as Racundra was. Gradually the lighthouse disappears from sight behind us, and we are back on the open sea.

My mind turns to what we had learnt of Ruhnu in the small museum in Haapsalu devoted to the Swedish settlers on the Estonian coast. They had arrived in Ruhnu to hunt seals sometime in the 1200s, had settled there, and over the generations had eked out a living by sealing, fishing and farming. They had developed a unique form of archaic Swedish based on that spoken on the mainland in the 1200s, and. a type of communal self-governent. As on the neighbouring islands, they had been granted a charter by the Swedish king which allowed them to preserve their lifestyle and customs under Swedish law. Even the German Bishop of Courland who had administered the area had written a letter in 1341 confirming that this charter would be respected under his rule.

Since then, different rulers had come and gone – the Swedes, the Russians, the Germans again – but the Ruhnu islanders had remained staunchly individualistic, “… preserving their own life and their own customs in an odd kind of private Middle Ages, centuries removed from the modern competitive struggle of the continent”, as Ransome had written.

But he couldn’t have foreseen that in a mere 22 years later, in 1944, the islanders would desert their island en masse and return to Sweden to avoid rule by the advancing Soviet Union.

“I think I can see Ruhnu in the distance!”, shouts the First Mate, waking me from my reverie.

We enter the small harbour and are motioned by the harbourmaster where to tie up. I imagine him to be the modern equivalent of the Russian ‘Keeper of the Light’ appointed by the Tsar that had come to greet Racundra. The harbour is a bit more now than the single dilapidated pier of Ransome’s day, but the sand dunes and pine forests are still there. And there are people! Lots of them.

Next to us is a small boat with six youngsters on it.

“We’re from Latvia”, they tell us. “We’ve been here a week, but we have to leave at two o’clock tomorrow morning to get back to Riga before the strong winds coming tomorrow afternoon. They are continuing for two days, and we need to be back in Riga by then.”

I do a quick calculation and work out that it will be a close run thing for them. They’ll just make it before the winds are forecast to start.

We go up to the harbour office to pay.

“No, I am Estonian, not Swedish”, says the harbourmaster in answer to my question. “My parents came over here after the Swedes left. At the time of independence in 1991, the government did offer the Swedes and their descendants the opportunity to come back to their homes if they wanted, but hardly any did. A lot of the ones that had left in 1944 had died and their children weren’t interested in moving to a remote island after they had been brought up in Sweden. A few did renovate their old homes and keep them as holiday cottages. I think only a couple of people moved back to live here. So most of the island’s inhabitants are Estonian.”

I wake in the night, and hear the youngsters next door just leaving. It’s three o’clock. They are already one hour late, I think to myself. I hope they make it.

The next morning, we unload the bikes and cycle into the small village in the centre of the island, about 4 km away. On the way, we pass a motorcycle and a pair of gumboots sticking out of the sand.

“It’s supposed to warn motorcyclists not to speed”, says the First Mate. “It’s mentioned in the guide book.”

Reaching the village, we come across a stall in one of the front gardens selling home-made beverages.

“I think that you will like this one”, says the owner. “It’s made from the berries of sea buckthorn. 40% alcohol. I call it Ruhnu Honey so that the ladies won’t feel embarrassed buying it. I only have two bottles left.”

He won’t let us try it first, so we buy it taste unknown. As it turns out later, it has a certain je ne sais quoi.

“It’s too strong for me”, says the First Mate. “It’s like paint stripper. You’ll have to finish it.”

Further on is the road to the lighthouse, described in Racundra as “an ugly structure of red iron tubes“.

“I wouldn’t call it ugly”, says the First Mate. “It isn’t perhaps the traditional lighthouse made of stone, but it has a certain character of its own.”

We take the track leading out to the beach. It’s superb. Apparently the sand is supposed to ‘sing’ when you walk along it and make the sand-grains rub against each other. But try as we might, we can’t get them to sing. Just a dull crunching sound.

We reach the church, not far from the centre of the village. In fact there are two churches, one wooden, built in 1644, and one of stone, built in 1912. The stone church is having its roof and steeple repaired, and is covered in scaffolding.

“I know it is good that they are repairing it, but it isn’t very photogenic”, complains the First Mate.

We come to Liile’s Farm, where coffee and cake is being served. As we sit on the rustic wooden benches and tables outside enjoying the warm sunshine, the dark rainclouds gather from the west. Before long, the first drops are falling.

“Quickly”, I say. “We need to get going. We have quite a long cycle ride back to the boat. We’ll get soaked.”

Halfway back, the heavens open and the rain pours down. We arrive back at the boat drenched.

“Did you see the sign in the toilets?”, I ask the First Mate, after my shower to warm up. “It seems that some of the sailors they get here aren’t toilet-trained. I hope that that doesn’t apply to us?”

“Speak for yourself”, she retorts.

It starts to blow in the early evening. We have put double lines on each mooring point just to be sure. And snubbers on the windward lines to minimise the snatch. Hopefully we should be OK.

The winds continue for the next two days. Eventually they die down. But the forecast is showing that more are on their way.

“I think that we should try and make it to Ventspils on the Latvian coast”, I say. “We have a three day window to do it in. We can overnight in Möntu, and ride out the winds once we get to Ventspils. It’s not ideal, but the alternative is to stay here in Ruhnu for another week.”

Möntu is a small harbour near the bottom of Saaremaa island, and most used as a stepping-off point to cross the Baltic to Gotland. There’s not much there apart from the harbour.

The crossing to Möntu is rough, as the last three days of strong westerly winds have generated a significant swell. The wind also changes to more head on during the day, making it difficult to calculate the best tacking strategy.

“Phew, I don’t really want to do a passage like that again”, says the First Mate, as we tie up in in the sheltered waters of Möntu harbour. “We were heeling far too much for my liking.”

The wind dies down during the night. In the morning, the sea is like a millpond. We continue in much calmer conditions, and reach Ventspils in the mid-afternoon. We tie up in the old Fishing Harbour.

“It’s quite sheltered in here”, the harbourmaster says. “You shouldn’t have any problems with the winds.”

As with many other cities along the coasts of the Baltic States, Ventspils was founded in the 1200s when the German Livonian Order built a castle on the banks of the Venta River during their crusades to convert the local population to Christianity.

In the 1300s, it became part of the Hanseatic League, and prospered as a shipbuilding city. It was destroyed during the Polish-Swedish War and the Great Northern War in the 1600s and 1700s, with the plague finishing off any remaining inhabitants in 1711. In 1795, it became part of the Russian Empire under which it built up its shipbuilding capacity again. In the 20^th century, it flipped between German and Russian rule a couple of times, but after WW2, fell under Soviet rule for 50 years.

We meet Nigel, the Cruising Association’s Honorary Local Representative for Latvia, who keeps his own boat at Ventspils. Seeing our flag, he leaves a note on our boat when we are out to come and have a chat to him if we like. He’s English, but lives in Ventspils and has a Russian wife.

“Ventspils became very prosperous on the back of oil”, he tells us. “During the Soviet era, they built a pipeline from Russia to carry crude oil to here for export. After Latvian independence, it continued to be a major exporting terminal of Russian crude. That’s why I came here in the first place – as a consultant advising on safety aspects. Now with the sanctions from the Ukraine War, all that has gone. Not a drop passes through here now. The only thing keeping the city going is EU money.”

“It’s partly true”, when we talk to the harbourmaster later. “A lot of businesses have found it difficult with the sanctions. That fish factory over there, for example, has had to work hard to find new markets now that they can’t sell to Russia. They have been quite successful in Germany. But having said that, there is still a lot of trade with Russia. Someone estimated that 27% of stuff passing though the port here is coming from or going there.”

“He didn’t say whether it was legal or not”, says the First Mate later. “And I didn’t like to ask him.”

As it turns out, we have arrived when the annual city festival is in full swing. We walk into the city centre, about a kilometre from the harbour, to see what is happening.

On the way, we pass a sculpture of a cow. It is the first of many.

“In 2002, they had a CowParade here”, a chatty Latvian explains. ”They made these fibreglass sculptures of cows and had local artists paint various themes on them. The idea caught on, and nowadays cows are sort of the city’s symbol. You’ll see them everywhere.”

“It’s a bit like the elephant in my hometown of Hamm in Germany”, the First Mate says. “An architect designed a huge elephant around one of the old mine-head cranes, and now the elephant has become the city symbol. Companies will quite often have a model of an elephant outside their offices. It’s not like elephants had much to do with the city before then.”

Stalls of all shapes and sizes are arranged along the water front. Street performers keep the kids entertained. On the wharves on other side of the river, even the brightly painted derricks join in the festivities.

We reach the Market Square.

“Look here’s the International Writers and Translators’ House”, says the First Mate. “I met a woman in the shop last night who is there. She is half German and half Latvian, and won a summer scholarship from it to write a book on how war and occupation affects individual families. Her father, who was the Latvian, was a KGB informant. When her mother found out, she divorced him and went back to Germany to live. Now she, the daughter, has come back to research her book.”

It’s a theme common to many families in the Baltic States, we are starting to realise.

The First Mate spies some local honey and decides to buy some while I admire the ancient clock in the middle of the square.

“Phew, it’s hot”, says the First Mate. “Look, there’s some kvass. I’d like to try that.”

Kvass is a kind of low-alcohol beer brewed from various cereals, especially rye, originating from the Slav areas of north-eastern Europe and Russia.

“It goes back at least to 988 AD”, says the man behind the counter. “At the time when Vladimir the Great was baptised. It was probably even drunk before then. Here, try it. You won’t get drunk. It’s only 1% alcohol. More of a soft-drink, really.”

He hands us a couple of bottles. It is thirst-quenching and tastes a bit like root beer.

In the evening, we sit in the cockpit sipping our wine and watching the fireworks marking the end of the city festival for another year.

“I am kind of dreading the crossing from here to Gotland”, says the First Mate. “It’s nearly 90 miles in the open sea. I hope it isn’t going to be as rough as the one we had the other day. I hated that.”

“We’ll be fine”, I say, not altogether convincingly. “The winds are favourable, and the sea shouldn’t be too rough.”

“You’d better get your passport out”, says the First Mate. “The Border Control officer is getting on the bus.”

We are on a bus to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. We had decided to leave Ruby Tuesday tied up in Riga, and spend a few days seeing what Vilnius was like. We had booked an AirBnB, cycled down to the Riga bus station, loaded the bikes in the luggage compartment in the bus, and found our seats. Next to the coffee dispenser, as it turned out. Now we are at the border between Latvia and Lithuania.

“I still don’t know why they need to have a border post here”, says the First Mate. “I thought all that was unnecessary now that both countries are in the EU.”

“Perhaps they are looking for Russians trying to get into Lithuania illegally”, I joke.

The Border Control official makes his way along the bus aisle looking at passports. We hand him ours, he has a perfunctory scan, and gives them back again. No issues, it seems. We breathe sighs of relief. The bus restarts and continues on its way to Vilnius.

I take the opportunity to read our trusty guide book about Lithuania.

“Humans have lived in the area since at least 9000 BC”, it tells me, “The Balts, whose ancestors had migrated from the region between the Black and Caspian Seas before 2000 BC, became relatively prosperous by trading amber. There were lots of different tribes, but in the 1200s, a local leader called Mindaugas unified them into one and created the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. One of his successors, Gediminas, then extended the borders down to present day Belarus and Ukraine. He also founded Vilnius in the 1320s, supposedly because he heard ‘an iron wolf howling with the voice of a thousand wolves’ which he took as a sign to found a city.”

“As you do”, I think to myself.

“Then in the late 1300s, one of the grandsons of Gediminas, Jogaila, decided to marry a Polish princess called Jadwega as a way of unifying the two countries against the Teutonic Knights”, it continues. “This eventually became known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and was one of the largest countries in Europe at the time. By the 1500s, Vilnius was one of Eastern Europe’s most sophisticated and grandest cities.”

Outside, we are leaving the forest behind and enter extensive cropland with hectares of grain crops stretching into the distance.

“In the 1600s, Russia and its allies defeated the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and broke it up. Russia ended up with most of Lithuania, and clamped down hard on the rebellious Lithuanians. However, they weren’t able to quell the tide of national feeling, and in 1918, Lithuania declared independence. To complicate matters, Poland wanted to restore the commonwealth, and annexed Vilnius in 1920. The Lithuanian government fled to Kaunus, another city, where it stayed until WW2. Its history subsequently has been similar to that of Estonia and Latvia, with Russia invading in 1939, followed by the Nazis in 1941, and by the Russians again in 1944. Finally in 1991, it became independent from the USSR.”

“We’re nearly there”, says the First Mate, tapping me on the knee. “You’d better get ready.”

We arrive in Vilnius, unpack the bikes, and cycle to the AirBnB that we have booked.

“Here we are”, says the First Mate. “Number 11. Apartment 42 will be somewhere inside. Let me just open the gate to the courtyard with the code that the owner gave me.”

It had taken a little bit to find the street address, but we had managed in the end. Just as the First Mate is searching on her phone, a car appears on the other side of the gate. The gate opens noiselessly.

“Come on”, I say. “Quickly. No need for the code. We can go through the gate before it closes again.”

We push the bikes and ourselves through. The gate glides noiselessly shut again.

We climb the stairs in the stairwell to the fourth floor. There is no number 42.

“Perhaps it’s on the next floor?”, says the First Mate, climbing the stairs again.

Suddenly there is a piercing shriek. It’s the First Mate.

“There was a strange looking man behind the door to the landing”, she says, shaking. “I think he was deaf. He didn’t respond when I asked him if he knew where 42 was. He just kept staring into space like a zombie.”

“Perhaps we could ring one of the doors and ask if they know where number 42 is.”, I say.

We ring one of the doorbells. A woman in bra and panties opens the door.

“Sorry, no English”, she says, shutting the door again.

“Are you sure we are in the right block?”, I ask. “Something weird is going on.”

We go downstairs again and try to open the gate with the code. Nothing happens. We try several more times, but still nothing happens. After some time a young girl arriving home opens the gate from the outside.

“We are looking for apartment 42 in Block 11”, we tell her. “Do you know where it is?”

“This is Block 13”, she says. “Block 11 is the one over there.”

I try to give her the impression that I am a fire safety officer and that we are checking all the blocks in the street, but it fails miserably.

“Don’t worry”, says the young girl. “Lots of people make that mistake. Especially the older ones.”

We eventually find apartment 42 in Block 11. The code to the key box doesn’t work. We try several times but it refuses to open.

“I have just remembered that the owner sent another email to say that he just changed the code this morning”, says the First Mate after the seventh attempt. “Let me see if I can find it. Oh no, my phone is almost flat.”

She finds the email just before her phone batteries give one last gasp and give up completely.

The code works.

The next morning, we cycle into the city centre. On the way, we pass the derelict Soviet Palace for Culture and Sport. It’s hideous, so much so it has a strange kind of attraction about it.

We reach the Tourist Information.

“We don’t have free walking tours as such”, says the girl. “But we can give you a guidebook with a suggested route and lots of details of things on the way. That way you can see all the sights of the city.”

We start at the vast Cathedral Square and the Cathedral itself. Ironically (or perhaps not), it is built on an old pagan site that was used for worshipping Perkūnas, the Lithuanian God of Thunder, riding across the sky in his fiery chariot.

Perhaps alluding to Perkūnas is the imposing statue of Gediminas, the founder of Vilnius, and his horse.

In front of Gediminas’s statue a group of people are standing and waving the blue and yellow flags of Ukraine.

“We are Ukrainian refugees here in Lithuania”, explains one woman to us. “We come here once a week to give speeches and protest against the illegal Russian war against our country. Lithuanian people are very supportive of us as they remember what it was like for themselves to be occupied by the Russians. No one wants to go back to that.”

To one side of the Cathedral is the 17^th century baroque Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania.

Exploring some of the narrow winding back streets, we come across Literatu Street with its plaques and writings of various famous writers with connections to Vilnius hanging on its walls.

The street gets its name because the Romantic writer and poet Adam Mickiewicz once lived there.

“The book says that he was the national poet of Poland because he wrote in Polish, but is also claimed by Lithuania because he lived here, and Belarus, where he was born”, says the First Mate.

“A bit inconsiderate of him not to think of the confusion he caused”, I say.

Vilnius is supposed to have more churches per hectare than any other city in Europe, and we can well believe it.

“You can’t show them all”, says the First Mate. “Just show one or two on the blog to give people an idea. Otherwise they will get bored.”

Further on are the University and Presidential Palace. The University was founded by the Jesuits in 1579.

We end up climbing to the castle on the hill dominating the city. The view from the ramparts is superb.

“Phew, all this sightseeing has made me hungry”, says the First Mate. “Let’s see if we can get a bite to eat. I want to try that cold beetroot soup that is so popular here.”

We find an open-air restaurant in the park near the Cathedral Square, and order Šaltibarščiai, the cold beetroot soup she is referring to. It is made from beetroot, gherkins, kefir, spring onions, and hardboiled eggs, all garnished with fresh dill and served with a side plate of warm boiled potatoes, and a slice of dark rye bread.

“Wow, that is so tasty”, I say, scaping the last vestiges of pink from my bowl. “Perfect for a light summer lunch. We must find the recipe and make it when we get home.”

“You’ve got a rye bread crumb on your beard”, says the First Mate. “Here, let me get it off.”

After lunch, we cycle over to Užupis on the other side of the Vilna River. Užupis was declared a separate republic from Lithuania in 1997.

“It all started as a bit of an April Fool’s joke”, explains the long-haired girl in the small boutique and coffee-shop. “Užupis had become somewhere that artists, poets and musicians liked to live, and one day some of them got together and came up with the idea of ceding from Lithuania and becoming an independent republic. So they elected one of them as president, others as the government, and wrote a constitution. Since then, it has captured the imaginations of people throughout the world who like the concept of escaping from the rat-race, and so it has become quite a tourist attraction. Now it is a source of pride to Vilnius city.”

We order two coffees and cinnamon rolls.

“We only have oat milk”, the Long Haired Girl says. ”Is that alright?”

Of course they do. But we are fine with that.

“The river is the border with the rest of Lithuania”, the Long Haired Girl continues, bringing the coffees to where we are sitting outside. “On Užupis Day, our national day on April 1, you can get your passports stamped, and use our national currency. We even have our own flag, the Holy Hand, which has an open hand on it to denote that corruption is not practised in Užupis. We did have an army of ten men, but we retired them a few years ago in the interests of peace. Besides, we have our own guardian angel. She protects us.”

We read that Užupis used to be the Jewish quarter of Vilnius, but the Holocaust obviously brought an end to that. During Soviet times, it became derelict, and only drunks, prostitutes and squatters lived there. But after Lithuania’s independence in 1991, artists and other creative people began moving in. The rest, as they say, is history.

“Did you see Tibet Square?”, the Long Haired Girl asks, as she collects the cups and plates. “The Dalai Lama came here and planted a tree there. The Chinese government weren’t too happy as they saw it as a political statement rather than a cultural one.”

There is a seat fixed in the middle of the river. We take turns sitting on it and taking photos of each other.

“Why are we doing this?”, I ask.

“I don’t know either”, says the First Mate. “But everyone else was doing it, so I thought that we had better too.”

It is our last day in Vilnius. The First Mate and I decide to split up and meet again for lunch. I set off for the National Museum of Latvia, while she heads for the MO Museum of Modern Art.

I spend a fascinating couple of hours learning about how people migrated from the Black Sea-Pontic steppe region at the end of the Neolithic period, bringing with them new languages, culture, farming methods, and tools. They decorated their pottery with cord impressions, used boat-shaped battle-axes, and domesticated livestock. The fusion of their culture with that of the existing inhabitants resulted in the Proto-Indo-Europeans and the emergence of the Balts.

Over time, these Balts evolved into different tribes with the exotically-sounding names of the Aukštaičiai, Selonians, Semigallians, Samogitians, Curonians, Sudovians, Skalvians and several others, each with different customs and rituals. It was only in the 1200s that they were reunified by Mindaugas.

“How was the MO Museum?”, I ask the First Mate over lunch.

“There was an interesting exhibition there called ‘We Don’t do This’”, she tells me. “It was all about how sex and nudity in art was suppressed during the Soviet Union era, and the changes that have happened since independence. Sex was never mentioned in the public sphere under the Soviets, and there were severe penalties for doing so. For example, the artist of a painting of young people on a beach was jailed for six months. Can you imagine? Things are much more relaxed now. Art is more explicit and artists are much readier to explore love and intimacy than before. I found it quite fascinating.”

“We had better make our way to the bus station now”, I say. “It’s not long before the bus goes.”

We pay and jump on our bikes. Mine doesn’t feel quite right. The tyre is flat.

“It was fine when I arrived for lunch”, I say tetchily. “I wonder what caused that?”

“You’ll just have to push it to the bus station”, says the First Mate unsympathetically. “I’ll meet you there. I just have a bit more browsing to do. You can fix the bike when we get back to Riga.”

“Russia is on the up”, says Mike. “Its GDP is growing, it has new markets for its oil and gas in China and India. It will win the war in Ukraine. No doubt. Time is on its side. The West doesn’t have the stamina.”

We have arrived in Riga, the capital of Latvia, and are talking to Mike, an ethnic Russian living here. His parents were sent to Russia during the Soviet period as a part of Stalin’s Russification policy to increase the proportion of ethnic Russians in the Baltic States and the other Soviet republics compared to their indigenous populations. He is an IT teacher at a local school.

“But the only reason the GDP is growing is because the economy is moving towards a war footing”, I say. “Export revenues have decreased by 30%, so most of that growth is due to vast sums of public money being used to fund growth in armaments factories. And much of that money is coming from Russia’s strategic reserve fund. Already half of that has been used. Benefits to ordinary Russians are being sacrificed to support an illegal war. It’s not sustainable.”

I had read all this in the newspaper the day before.

“Latvia made a big mistake when it chose to be independent and turned its back on Russia”, he continues. “It’s only a small country and it would do much better if it was part of a larger country like Russia. There’s a lot of corruption in government here now, and inflation is very high.”

“But it chose to join the EU and NATO”, I say. “In that sense it is both independent and part of a larger grouping. The best of both worlds. It’s interesting that almost all of the former Soviet Socialist Republics opted for independence when the USSR fell apart. That must say something about Russia. People want to make their own decision and determine their own futures. They just didn’t want to be ruled and occupied by Russia.”

I had had similar discussions at the time that various African countries were becoming independent.

“Well, yes”, says Mike. “But what’s the point in being independent if your country is going down the tubes?”

In the morning, we unload the bikes and cycle into town over the Vanšu Bridge that crosses the Daugava River.

On the way, we pass Riga Castle, now the official residence of the President of Latvia.

We decide to take one of the free city walking tours coordinated by the Tourist Information Centre. Our guide is Liga.

“You can remember it by thinking of Riga, the city we are in”, she says by way of introduction. “Then just replace the ‘R’ with an ‘L’.”

We start in front of the House of the Blackheads. Just as in Tallinn, the Blackheads was the name given to unmarried merchants and various other professional men.

“They weren’t allowed to join the Great Guild until they were married”, Liga tells us. “So they had their own Brotherhood. Originally they were a military organisation protecting Christianity, but evolved into a more social organisation doing good works in the city. They were called the Blackheads because their Patron Saint was St Maurice, an Egyptian Christian, and not because they were spotty adolescents.”

There are gentle titters from the group.

“They are credited with starting the custom of decorated trees at Christmas time”, she continues. “The story goes that during one of their drunken parties they decided that it would be a good idea to go to the forest and cut a tree down and stand it up in front of their clubhouse. They then decorated it with all sorts of things. After Xmas, they set fire to it. The custom of decorating trees has continued at Xmas time, but for some reason setting fire to it afterwards hasn’t.”

“I thought decorating Christmas trees was first done in Germany”, whispers the First Mate to me.

We arrive at the Riga Cathedral.

“The Cathedral was built in the 1200s by one of the Bishops of Livonia, which the country was called in those days”, Liga tells us. “It is supposed to be the largest cathedral in the Baltic States. When it was built, it was Catholic, but became a Lutheran cathedral during the Reformation. During the Soviet era, it was prohibited to hold services there, and it was used as a concert hall. However, since independence in 1991, it has been re-consecrated.”

As we walk to the next stop, I ask Liga about current beliefs in Latvia.

“A lot of people are turning back to the old ways”, she says. “A lot of my friends have houses in the countryside, and are more into revering nature rather than going to a church. Many see Christianity as an imposition by foreigners on the native Latvians. In many ways, revering nature makes a lot of sense, as we depend so much on it for our own well-being. And you can see it all around you, rather than imagining some invisible being somewhere up in the sky. Something like 20% of the population identify with their pagan past.”

We arrive at the Three Brothers. The story here is that, not to be outdone by the Three Sisters in Tallinn, Riga decided to have the Three Brothers, a group of residential buildings built next to each other in different centuries, starting in 15^th century. They currently house the Museum of Architecture.

“And here we have the Latvian Parliament Building”, says Liga at the next stop. “We pride ourselves on being the only parliament in Europe without armed guards outside. You can see a couple of policemen in that car over there, that’s all.”

“What about corruption in government?”, someone asks. “Is that a problem in Latvia?”

“Unfortunately, there is a lot of corruption in Latvian politics”, she responds. “We are not the worst in Europe, but we are definitely not the best. The main problem is the relationship between the government and business – many people think that it is too close, and that business people are being offered lucrative government contracts if they have good friends in government.”

Sounds a bit like in Britain during Covid, I think.

A little bit further on, we stop in front of an eerie looking sculpture.

“This the ‘Ghost of Riga’”, says Liga. “It’s a modern sculpture, but it is based on an old story about a young girl who fell in love with a young Swedish soldier. Although such a relationship was forbidden by the authorities, they would meet each other at night near the Swedish Gate back there. Unfortunately, one night they were discovered, and the girl was brought before the town’s leaders. They decided that her punishment was to be bricked up in the city wall. Ever since, her ghost has roamed the streets looking for her lost lover.”

“Another tale of someone being bricked up in a wall”, I say to the First Mate. “It definitely seems to have been a custom in this part of the world.”

“And all because of sex again”, says the First Mate. “LIke you said in the last post.”

Round the corner we come to the Great Guild building and sit on the steps looking at the house on the other side of the street.

“That is the Cat House”, Liga tells us. “Apparently a rich merchant was refused entry to the Grand Guild, so he took his revenge by building a house on the other side of the street of the Guild building. Because he liked cats, he had statues of two cats made and mounted them on top of his house with their bums facing towards the Guild. The members considered this a great insult, so after a great deal of wrangling, they agreed to give him membership if he turned them around. So he got what he wanted in the end.”

We end up at a sculpture of a rooster standing on a cat standing on a dog standing on a donkey.

“It’s the Bremer Musikanten, the Town Musicians of Bremen”, says the First Mate to me.

“Yes, that’s right”, says Liga, overhearing her. “It was a gift from the city of Bremen, which Riga is paired with. The story is that as in the Grimm fairy tale of them looking into the robbers’ house that they are planning to frighten away so they can eat their feast, in the sculpture they are looking through the Iron Curtain at all the wealth of the West that they would like to share.”

It’s the end of the tour. We thank Liga and decide to cycle to the City Market for lunch.

We watch fascinated as a group of Orthodox Jews taste the samples and buy their weekly supply of fish.

On the way back, we swing past the Freedom Monument. This was built in 1935 to celebrate those who died in the battles to gain Latvia’s independence in 1918, and became a focus for the country’s struggle for freedom and national unity. During the Soviet era, there was talk of removing it, but it never happened for fear of provoking too much civic unrest.

Nearby is the Latvian National Opera.

Not far away is the Russian Embassy. As in Tallinn, there are posters condemning the war in Ukraine.

A little bit further on is Alberta Street and its Art Nouveau houses.

“Yes, I have heard of it”, I say. “Tell me more about it.”

“Well, it was founded in the 1920s at the time of the first Independence. It makes no pretence of being the same as the ancient religion, but is a synthesis of Latvian legends, folklore and folk songs, and so provided a focus for Latvian nationalism. It was suppressed during the Soviet era, but there has been a revival since the second independence in 1991.”

“Interesting”, I say. “What do they believe?”

“Well, it depends who you talk to”, he answers. “Some believe there is only one god, Dievs, but he has two aspects, Mara, representing the maternal aspect, and Laima, representing fate and fortune. Others believe that the latter two are separate gods in their own right, and there are also a number of lesser gods. Humans have a physical body, an astral body, and an eternal soul. The purpose of life is to find an individual ‘Path to God’. If you are successful, the eternal soul reunifies with Dievs when you die. The physical body decays, of course, and the astral body also eventually fades away.”

“Not a lot different from many religions”, I say. “But the astral body bit sounds a bit unnecessary. What’s its purpose? Why don’t they just keep it simple?”

“Well, that’s the thing”, he says.” A lot of people don’t really buy all the theology stuff but quite like the idea of reconnecting to the old ways and revering nature. Personally, I quite like the revering nature bit, as us spiders would get a bit more recognition for all the good that we do!”

In the morning, we cycle over to the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust museum located in an old warehouse building not far from the market.

“You can have one of these museum guides in English and German”, the young man at the desk says. “And since you live in Scotland, we even have one in Gaelic. One of my colleagues is a linguist, and he translated it.”

I had to admit that I don’t speak or read Gaelic apart from a few place names on Ordnance Survey maps.

We spend the next couple of hours learning of the history of Jews in Riga, the creation of the ghetto, and the mass murder of Jews. The ghetto was created within a Riga suburb fenced off by barbed wire by the Nazis when they occupied Latvia in 1941. Initially it was for the Latvian Jews, but after more than 25,000 of these were killed in the nearby Rumbula forest within three days, Jews from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe were also sent there. Many of these were also killed by shooting in Rumbula forest.

We learn of the ‘Butcher of Latvia’, a Latvian by the name of Herberts Cukurs, who was the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, a Nazi collaboration unit that was responsible for the largest number of murders of Latvian Jews. Despite supposedly being an ‘all round good chap’ before the war and a noted aviator who flew solo to Gambia and Japan, Cukurs turned out to be particularly brutal, shooting Jewish children and babies in captivity, burning Jews alive, and sexually assaulting Jewish women. After the war, he fled to Brazil, but was tracked down by Israeli agents and assassinated. Amazingly, there have since been efforts in Latvia to rehabilitate his memory.

We enter a railway wagon similar to those used to transport Jewish people to the Riga ghetto. Inside, mirrors line the walls to give infinite reflections of a few tree saplings in the centre, giving an impression of a large forest. Perhaps it was memories of the lands they were leaving knowing that they were heading for certain death, or perhaps it represented the last view they had before they were shot in Rumbula forest. Everyone can interpret it how they want.

On the wall outside is a list of the names of Jewish people killed in Latvia, indicating where they originated from.

Particularly poignant is a room with suspended cubes lit from within with the names and details of many of those killed written on the cubes’ faces. All ordinary people whose only crime was to be born Jewish.

The actual ghetto itself is a few streets away from the museum.

“It’s amazing that the street names are still the same”, says the First Mate. “I would have thought they might have renamed them, to try and forget the terrible things that happened here. Imagine buying a house in Ludzas Street nowadays knowing what happened there.”

“That may be just why they kept them”, I say. “To stop people forgetting what happened.”

Nearby is the Russian Orthodox church. We have a quick look.

On the way back, we pass the remains of the Great Choral Synagogue that was one of the first synagogues to be burnt down by the Nazis and the Arajs Kommando in 1941, reportedly with Jewish people locked in its basement.

Back in the city centre, we peek into the modern-day Jewish synagogue.

“I have never seen inside a synagogue before”, says the First Mate. “It’s certainly a lot more minimalist than the Orthodox church.”

On the way back to the boat, we decide to visit the intriguing-looking National Library of Latvia on the left bank of the Daugava River.

 “You can become temporary members of the library if you want to look around”, says the woman at the front desk. “I’ll give you a card each, which will give you access to most, but not all, of the rooms. I suggest you take the lift to the top, have a look at the view, then make your way down each level by the stairs. Here’s a brochure of what is on each level.”

The view out over the river to the Old City is stunning.

We make our way down each level. It’s quite a different concept to the Oodi library we had seen in Helsinki. Rather than a community library, this one is more of a traditional repository of Latvian art, music, folklore, literature, and history. Earnest scholars pore over old tomes, librarians reverently return books to the shelves, visitors speak to each other in hushed tones.

“I bought some of this Riga Black liqueur today”, says the First Mate that evening, as we unwind in the cockpit. “It’s pretty popular here. We can try some.”

“You know, I can’t quite reconcile in my mind what Mike was saying yesterday”, she continues, taking a sip. “On one hand, he is intelligent, helpful, and thoughtful, but I was quite disturbed by his views on Russia and Latvia. How can a nice person like that hold such views?”

“When you have been brought up with a particular mindset, it’s difficult to see the world in any other way”, I say.