St Petersburg: Saturday, October 6, 2018:

I got ready for our flight and checked out of the hotel. The morning started with bright sunshine but by lunchtime it was raining heavily as I walked to the nearby Spar for a sandwich for lunch.

I sat around in the hotel lobby until 2.30pm when we were picked up and transferred to the airport. When we got there we tipped the driver and our guide.

Anya cracked a joke about our immigration cards being kept by the KGB. Having said that we got through several layers of security and immigration before facing a three hour wait before boarding our flight.

Once on the aircraft I thought I was being very efficient and got to my seat early but there was much embarrassment when I found out I was in the wrong seat!

Before we landed in Frankfurt we enjoyed a chicken and pasta meal and, once we were back on the ground, a lot of the passengers gave a round of applause for the crew.

The flight into Dublin landed quarter of an hour earlier than expected so I quickly got my case and caught a taxi to the ferry port.

Holyhead: Sunday, October 7, 2018:

I managed to get some sleep at the terminal because I had a couple of hours to kill before I caught the 2.15am ferry.

I have a total of 2310 photos to edit. A few of them will be duplicated but I expect it will take a while to get them sorted. I am hoping to combine them with my shots from 2012.

Ahead off the trip I suppose I was apprehensive about the whole political situation but on a street level it doesn’t matter.

We arrived in Holyhead around 5.45am and I caught the first train out at 8.45am. However, it was delayed due to points failure near Conwy. At least the train is a bit more up to date than the rickerty ones I caught heading towards Holyhead last month.

The ticket inspector gave me the next train to catch from Crewe but when I got off the train there was an earlier one so I was back on track and got back to Carlisle around 2pm.