A cycling journey through Baltic history, castles and freedom.


At sunset on an Estonian summer evening, medieval Kuressaare Castle seems to float in its surrounding moats, with mirrored images of its red turrets sharpening as the sun dips.
Reaching Kuressaare, a seaside town on the island of Saaremaa, near the end of an 11-day UTracks Treasures of the Baltic cycling tour, I'm also in reflective mood, thankful for getting to know Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, a little.
Each country has so much history, including periods being ruled by Sweden, Poland, Germany, the Russian Empire and the anti-religious Soviet regime, between 1945-1991. Which makes the survival of this Episcopal castle, founded in the 1380s, extraordinary, as is the resilience of the Baltic people, 2 million of whom formed a human chain across the three countries, in 1989, to demand independence, which arrived to each within two years.
Kuressaare Castle is an apt place to contemplate freedom, which is never a given in Estonia or the other Baltic states we've cycled through.
The year all three Baltic countries joined the European Union and NATO







