Lapland to England by any means

130 km of cross country skiing later and we'd done it! The adventure was over. We had sore legs, I was sporting the kinds of bruises I'd be afraid to show even in an S&M setting, but we were still in one piece and proud of what we'd accomplished. So when the little old hut warden told us that a volcano had errupted in Iceland, we found that nothing more than a rather quirky piece of news. After all, we'd hiked in that part of Iceland and seen the heat leak out of it's multi-coloured earth firsthand. Even the fact that a few airports in Northern Sweden had closed didn't worry us unduly. After all, we were flying back from Stockholm, 1000 km further south. Little were we to know that in the following 72 hours the airspace over most of Northern Europe would be closed.

So here we are, once more on a sleeper train from Lapland and at the beginning of an epic train journey that will cover around 2000 miles and as many as 6 European countries. Lapland to England by train, or so we hope. That this is even possible is only down to my husband's impressive knowledge of European railways and our combined ingenuity with the online booking systems of Swedish railways, Deutsche Bahn, SNCF and Eurostar. We spent almost 3 hours on a computer in a local library desperately trying to grab the last available tickets while the overloaded booking systems groaned and crashed under the strain. The town of Lulea may have little to offer to a Metropolitan European otherwise, but it's shiny new cultural centre was an absolute godsent today. I felt that emotional surge of victory when we had eventually done it and put our impossible itinary together. My joy may yet be premature, but here it is:

Lulea in Northern Sweden (Sat, 16.32) to Gothenburg (Sun, 10.52);
Gothenburg (Sun, 11.32) to Copenhagen in Denmark (Sun, 15:00);
Copenhagen (Sun, 15.45) to Hamburg (Sun, 20.16);
Hamburg (Sun, 20.46) to my German home town, where we crash out for the night. We leave there at 12.44 on Monday to get to Brussels at 16.35. That should give us just enough time to collect the Eurostar tickets we were lucky enough to get via SNCF from the Rail Europe booking office. These were pretty much the last and only Eurostar tickets out of Belgium that day. They'll eventually get us to London (via France for country number 5) First Class at 21.33 on Monday night.

This epic adventure is costing us (or hopefully our travel insurance) around 1000 GBP in train fares, so just a little more than the 60 pounds we'd originally paid for the two flights. If this was a wise move only time will tell. Just at the moment it looks as though air travel will still be affected for several days. I swear if this thing clears by Monday night, I'll be glad for people stuck all over Europe but wishing we'd just stayed put in Stockholm. For now all I can do is hope that all our many connections work out, that there are no delays anywhere along the way and that we manage to squeeze onto those couple of trains for whom reservations were no longer available. Up to now we're managing to regard this as a different part of the same adventure - Phileas Fogg style!

However, when the train stopped 10 minutes out of Lulea and the Swedish announcement spoke of difficulties, I didn't find the whole thing so entertaining anymore. But hey, we're moving again and only 15 minutes late so far, something we're hoping to make up over night. So wish us luck! I will keep you posted.