It was at Regensburg that we met Robert again. He had caught us up but now we won't see him again. It's here that he turns north to reach Poland and then ride on through the north-eastern states beyond.

Curiously, the one other cyclo on the site also planned to go that way. But Luc was much less happy. Luc is in his early 20s, I'd guess, having a gap between university and getting a job. He had left Lucerne in Switzerland a few days earlier and gone straight into the hills of the Black Forest. And there his knee had given out. Somehow he had limped to Regensburg and there he had been grounded for three days.

'I think I should have done some training,' he said, depressed at so exciting a venture coming close to ending only days after it started. 'I have been resting my knee as best as I can and I think I will have another day off and then try perhaps 30km to see how it goes.'

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He said the pain had gone when he walked and when he rode just short distances, and this morning he rode off to the supermarket to buy bread and returned with a smile and a high-pitched squeak from the yellow duck toy that he keeps strapped to his handlebars.

I told him a true Swiss would have not a duck for warning but a cuckoo clock, but his face suggested it's other people who associate Switzerland with cuckoo clocks and not the Swiss.

Luc plans to ride much the same way as Robert but to turn off when he gets to Finland rather than go all the way to the North Cape. Like Robert, he had hoped to ride in Russia - 'but the problems they put in your way make it impossible.'

'Problems?'

'They say you have to give them a precise itinerary of all the towns you're going to stay in and all the places you're going to pass through, and the exact dates. And on a bike that's impossible. And they want to make all the hotel reservations, which means they put you only in the most expensive places.

'I applied but I made a mistake by not listing my profession. I haven't got a profession because I'm on holiday, so the consul phoned me and said "What's someone like you planning to do in St-Petersburg if you haven't got a job?'

Meaning, I suppose, that Russia is among countless countries that see themselves as irresistibly inviting to illegal workers. This was hardly likely for a young man from Switzerland, per head one of the richest countries in the world. But then all nations think they are gazed at with watering eyes by the rest of the world.

This morning we left both him and Robert, Luc to yet another day of reading at the camp site, Robert to look round Regesburg before heading north. We all exchanged e-mail addresses and with luck I'll be able to keep you up to date with their progress as well as our own.

AFTERNOTE 1: At the end of June, Robert wrote: "Je suis en Norvege à Tromso, avec la pluie et le froid ( 10 degrés ) J'ai passé le Cap Nord le 19 juin avec 12 jours d'avance sur mes previsions. J'avais 5450km au cap et 67 jours de route. Je me dirige maintenant sur les Lofoten et apres toute la côte de Norvège,puis le Dannemark, l'Allemagne nord,le pays Bas et la Belgique , je pense le retour debut septembre."

AFTERNOTE 2: Robert wrote again a week later to say that he had heard from Luc, that the knee had mended and that he was heading north.

ENDNOTE: Robert finished his trip and arrived home to a big welcome from his village. "My dream has turned into my memories," he said. The one sour note was that coming back south from the North Cape, someone stole his camera and therefore most of the pictures of the first half of the ride.