2026 Baltic Loop

After shipping Iggy from Montevideo to England, Hannah and I set out from Bristol on a clockwise loop of northern Europe that took us about 82 days. We crossed from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, drove through the Netherlands and northern Germany into Denmark, and spent time in Copenhagen before crossing the Øresund into Sweden and following the west coast up to Oslo.

From Oslo we worked our way around the south coast of Norway and up the fjords to Bergen, then followed the coastal roads north for weeks, with ferries stitching the route together. We crossed to Lofoten and continued through Tromsø to Nordkapp, the northernmost point of the trip and, at a little over 71 degrees north, a couple of degrees further north than Tuktoyaktuk. From there we ran east across Finnmark before turning south into Finnish Lapland.

Finland took us down through the lakes and boreal forest of the east to the south coast and out around the Archipelago Ring Road. We crossed the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn and drove south through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then along the Baltic coast of Poland and Germany to Hamburg and Amsterdam before taking the ferry back to England. The things we'll remember longest are the wildlife, with moose and reindeer through much of the north, the northern lights, Lofoten, and the forests that run from Finland down through the Baltic states. Iggy's only casualty was a broken windscreen just before Oslo.