I was quite surprised to find them polite and friendly. They told me they were waiting for the 63 bus to Farringdon, to go and 'hang out' with their mates.

Thinking I was some kind of investigative journalist, I proceeded to quiz them about their lives growing up in Peckham, and they were most forthcoming with their opinions.

Peckham is not so bad they said. Keep your head down on the estates and no-one bothers you. You know the kids with knives and you stay away from them. It helps to know the right people - people with older brothers who are hard. They know people who are rumoured to have guns, but they've never seen one. They've had a few near misses, but it's no worse than anywhere else. They like Peckham.

I walked away feeling that teenagers nowadays are not so bad after all. I must have been drunk...

It was sighted twice in the garden of Neil and Lesley Beaton, and we bring to you exclusive documentary evidence of the Baked Alaska's presence.

Baked Alaska hovers dangerously near Mrs. Beaton

Mr. Beaton is worried about the Baked Alaska

Stage: 4
Route: Hayes - Hamsey Green
Date: August 13th 2005
Walkers: Myself and Tom and Fred
Weather: started overcast and turned to drizzle, then heavier rain. wet!
Walk Departure Time: 1.15pm
Walk Finishing Time: 5.15pm
Walk Distance: 9 miles

Part four of the Loop was rather heavy on its amounts of suburbia and scrubby fields. There were some nice forest areas though, and by the end of the stage we were in farmland and fields. Highlights included the meridian line marker, trams, Heathfield Gardens, and the view from Addington Hills.

Read the Photojournal

Action shot of Tom speeding past a Polish tractor
I suggest you check it out...

Part of the remains of the Berlin Wall

See the pictures...

Ordinarily, this might be enough - but in the Beaton household things are done rather differently. The spot where the tree was to be planted just happened to be under a giant pile of rubble and bricks. Not only that, but it was in the area where the goats lived. Goats like to eat trees.

Not only was a there a tree to plant, but a strange gazebo like construction needed to be erected in the garden.

The solution? Simple - remove the bricks, and build a goat-proof fence around the tree. The problem? Only 36 hours until tree-planting day. It was an impossible task - an alternative was required.

Somebody had left a pile of bricks in the tree planting area.

The alternative was an OFFICIAL tree planting, without actually planting the tree. To mark this occasion, it was decided that a plaque would be needed. The tree would be ceremonially placed in the right area, and the plaque unveiled - just like in the great tradition of the royal family opening shopping centres.

The tree planting area was meticulously prepared.

As the time came to unveil the great plaque, a curious crowd had gathered - eager to see the great event live as it happened. Lesley Beaton stepped up to the plaque, and with a triumphant flourish pulled away the official pink pillow case ceremonial plaque cover.

'I declare this tree officially planted,' she shouted joyously. The plaque was unveiled, and the grounds of the Beaton estate shook with thunderous applause from the masses gathered to watch this great ceremony.

History in the making as Lesley Beaton unveils the great plaque.

Then we went and had some tea.

The plaque was so nice and shiny you could see reflections in it.

Note to press: Official plaque text reads as follows -

Morus Nigra

This tree was planted on July 17th 2005 to commemorate the 60th birthday of Barbara Lesley Beaton.

My last day in Lviv was upon me, and it started badly with the hot water in the hotel disappearing. This was soon followed by the cold water disappearing. I narrowly missed being stuck covered in shampoo with no water to wash it off. This is a terrible fate, and I am grateful for my escape.

I decided I had better go up to the train station, to check on what kind of time I could get out of Lviv. As I entered the station, I was struck with horror at the sight before me of an absolutely rammed ticket hall - with lines stretching for miles in all directions. Some obscene swear words left my lips, and I prepared myself for a marathon ticket-buying task.

I studied the 16 or so ticket windows, which had queues wildly varying in length, and different writing on the top. This lead me to believe that different windows were for different tickets. I chose the shortest queue, and waited patiently with my pre-written in cyrllic Lvov-Budapest piece of paper.

Some time later, I reached the front, and the woman scowled and stuck two fingers up at me. 'Kassa dwa' she shouted. I took this along with the two fingers to mean 'Please go to window number two for your ticket.' Off I went to window number 2, which I found closed for lunch.

The intervening period, I spent talking to a woman from Singapore. 'It is so difficult. They are not nice. They are very rude,' was her assessment of the situation. Finally after about 3 hours, I had an overnight ticket for Budapest. I danced with joy, and drank coke to celebrate.

Just as I was leaving, I noticed a bloke at the front of the queue trying to talk to the witch (erm, I mean woman) behind the counter. He had a large map of Europe that he was pointing at, and she was shaking her head and trying to get him out of the way. The bloke left the window, and went over to the corner of the station. He spread his map in front of him, and looked over it with sheer misery on his face. I decided to go over and investigate.

He turned out to be a 20 year old painter from France. He wanted to go to Romania, but the woman wouldn't let him. He had arrived last night, spent the night in the station, had a quick look around and was trying to leave. He looked up at the board. 'Where can I go? I don't understand. I can't get a ticket...' He was not very happy.

He was even less prepared than me, and had no cyrillic writing anywhere about his person. I told him that he could go to Budapest, and that there was a train tonight. He started to look less miserable. I handed him my Budapest piece of paper like a secret ancient scroll. 'With this, young man, you can defeat the power of the witch, and she will sell you a train ticket...' He was very pleased. I wished him luck against the witch, and took my leave of the station.

I was starting to get hungry now, and the novelty of hot dogs and cabbage filled pastries was wearing thin. I had tried a couple of restaurants, but they lacked English speakers or English menus. I took drastic action and headed for the Hotel Grand, poshest hotel in town. They came up with the goods, and I had Ukrainian salad (eggs, meat and some other unknown things) and Borsch. It rocked.

Several hours later, I was on the Moscow - Belgrade overnighter, which usefully stopped in Lviv to pick me up, and Budapest to drop me off. My French friend Alex was on the train, so he had managed to defeat the evil ticket witch.

It was a pleasant journey except that the border crossing takes three hours and is in the middle of the night from 2am till 5am. Two sets of passport officers and two sets of customs come through - not to mention all the shunting backwards and forwards while they change the wheels on the train. (Russian train tracks are a diffrent width to the rest of Europe) The Ukranian customs man had only three questions -

1) Do you have any weapons, drugs, or munitions? (NO)
2) Do you have any cultural artifacts? (NO)
3) How much currency do you have? (150 euros)

(My answers in brackets...)

My compartment buddy was an old man of about 70 or so, called Ivan. He lived in Hungary, but was Ukrainian (I think - there was a lot of hand gestures going on.) He gave me a cake, and I carried his bag for him when he got off the train. He was cool, and I taught him English for 'nine o' clock' (the time that the train was arriving). He seemed very pleased with this new knowledge. He must have made this journey a lot because the woman in control of the carriage (each sleeper wagon has a woman in charge. She gives you bedding, makes tea, and scowls and frowns at you) seemed to know him. By the end of the journey the carriage woman was even smiling, although maybe that was because I gave her a big tip for her tea-making.

The train arrived on time in Budapest, I waved goodbye to Ivan and Alex, and the days of the Ukraine Blog were over.

It was a cloudy overcast morning in Lviv, and I took to the streets with a rubbish map that had no cyrillic writing on it. Needless to say I was soon absolutely totally and completely lost, and obviously very far from the centre of town as there were no grandiose buildings anywhere to be seen.

The town was pretty bustling, but had a strange kind of atmosphere different from other European cities. It's quite a pleasant place, but has a kind of old, forgotten feel about it. Most of the streets are cobbled, and the people have a strange kind of fashion about them. There are lots of old petrol-smelling cars about, and every street seems to have at least three money-changing places on it.

The obligatory dress for women seems to be extremely tight stripey trousers, preferably in a garish, bright colour, along with very very long pointy shoes. Older men seem to like nice shirts, and trousers with black shiny shoes, and the younger ones, dirty jeans and a t-shirt with trainers.

Having arrrived with no kind of guide-book, language book, map or anything resembling helpful information, I had an enjoyable day in the midst of absolute confusion, not knowing where I was going, what I was eating, what I was looking at, or even what street I was on most of the time.

I started the day well, by purchasing an alarm clock from a woman on a stall. It cost 35p, so I don't expect it to last too long. After this transaction I spotted a woman selling pastry type things. I held up one finger and pointed while she babbled away. I gave her some money and tucked into my lovely pastry. I was marginally horrified to discover cabbage inside it. What kind of person puts cabbage inside a pastry? The pastries later redeemed themselves when I later recklessly bought four of them, and only one was cabbage (one was chicken, one was cheesy, one was heaven knows what, but I'm not dead yet)

I spent most of the day snacking on anything that I could point to. There is pretty much zero English spoken here, so if I can't point to it, I don't get to eat it. They do a nice line in hot dogs - I can order these without pointing now, as I discovered Ukrainian for hot dog is 'hot dog'.

After a few transactions, I began to think that the people here hated foreigners, as everyone who served me was an epitamy of rude surliness - service with a scowl. Later on, I noticed that this level of surliness was applied equally to everyone, and it was almost an unwritten bond of rudeness between customer and server. I quite liked this in the end, as it required less use of language - no pleases and thank yous. I soon mastered the art of the hot dog transaction like a native -

Me: Hot Dog. Coca Cola.
Them: Piec (or something like that - meaning five hryvnia (Ukraine currency)
Me: (Give them the money) No words.
Them: (Give me the drink and hot dog) No words.

Despite eating a lot of hot dogs, I was still lost outside the town centre, and took drastic action by walking up a giant hill to a radio mast, so I could see the town, and work out where the centre was. Not only did this plan work seamlessly, but the view from the top of the hill was pretty good too. I came down into town and ordered myself a cappuccino.

You would think that cappuccino means cappuccino even in Ukrainian, but the waitress asked me an awkward question which I didn't understand. A few words later she gave up on the miriad of languages that I couldn't speak, and ventured 'milk?' 'Erm yes', I replied, wondering what kind of cappuccino didn't come with milk. I received a regular coffee with a spot of milk. Not bad though.

Having at last found the centre, I discovered quite a few nice grand historic buildings and churches, and had a very pleasant afternoon wandering amongst them. There were a fair few other tourists around, but they all seemed to be speaking Polish or Russian.

It feels kind of surreal here, like a strange world where Europe meets Russia. Since the visa rules were lifted, it seems like a lot of Poles are coming over for a cheap holiday across the border - much like Western Europeans go to Czech, Poland or Hungary. Apparently Lviv is more westernised than Eastern Ukraine which still retains more Russian influence. It would be an interesting place to visit.

Meanwhile, it's time for another special Ukranian hot dog...

At about 7pm on Sunday night I waved goodbye to Catheryn as she got on the S-train to the airport in Berlin. My destination was Lviv in Ukraine, and the first step was to get to Lichtenburg station on the east side of Berlin.

You would think that this would be one of the easier sections of the journey, but first of all there was engineering on the train line, and I had to find a bus to the station. This I did quite naturally, because being from Britain it is quite a common occurence to have to take a bus because there is engineering on the train line.

Next, I arrived at the train station and found that the ticket office was closed. It closed at 6pm on Sundays! I don't know about Germans, but I quite often want to buy a ticket on a Sunday evening.

It turns out that in Germany you can buy a ticket on the train for the same price anyway, so they feel entitled to close the ticket office whenever they like. With this in mind, I duly waited for the 21:45 Berlin - Kiev sleeper.

My original plan was to take this train, change in Poland a couple of times and thus end up in Lviv. I became very excited when I found out that there was a wagon on the train that split off and went directly to Lviv.

My dreams were shattered when the train arrived, and the supposed wagon was nowhere to be seen whatsoever. The best explanation I could get was 'Zee wagon is not here.'

The train itself was from Ukraine. I could tell by the fact that it had funny writing all over the side, and that my entry to the train was blocked by a woman in a blue uniform with a big list. It seemed that this woman spoke German, Polish , Ukrainian and Russian. You would think that with a choice of four langauges I would have a fighting chance, but not with these four - I had no idea what was going on. This was a recurring theme during my journey to Lviv.

After some protracted negotiation, I ended up with a bed number and 70 euros less in my pocket. I was in a cabin with a bloke and his mum who were Russian but lived in Germany. The bloke was amused that I had tried to get the train without a ticket and reservation, and suggested that the money would now be 'in her pocket.'

Twelve hours later, I got off the train in a town called Lublin in Poland, ready for the next stage of the journey which was to get to some place called Przmysl near the Ukrainian border. This part of the journey didn't quite go to plan, as the first train was late by two hours, leading me to get on a different train, and very quickly get off again, as I discovered that it went to the wrong place entirely.

Blessing my good fortune, I proceeded to get the right train, which for some unknown reason to me, arrived at a station, and then went out again the same way it came. As I looked out the window wondering what was going on, the conductor woman came in, looked at my ticket, and managed to communicate that I was now in fact heading to Warsaw, and should have got off and changed trains.

This rather exciting news had me a bit worried, and I got off at the next stop to endeavour to get a train in the right direction. An hour later spent on the one and only platform of a place called Lancut, I was back going in the right direction, but on the slowest train in Poland which stopped at every random shed in the countryside with a station name above it.

All this exciting train activity gave me a lot of time to take in the sights and sounds of Eastern Poland, which seems to be full of nuns, people smoking, and neo-nazis (judging by the large amounts of dodgy graffitti)

I finally arrived at the Polish border town that starts with 'Prz' in time to just miss my connection. Luckily there was one more train to Ukraine that day, and I found myself once more on a sleeper to Kiev. This train had a special ticket office and a special platform which helpfully was called 'platform 4', for international trains.

This train was staffed by surly Russian blokes who made faces at me, and kept asking to see my ticket. I didn't like them, they scowled all the time, and made me nervous. The train was quite empty except for some Polish border guards drinking beer and being rowdy. They got off the train just before the border, and they were carrying passport checking machines. No harm in a few beers before work I guess...

At the border we spent half a century or so, while various police, soldiers, guys with sniffer dogs, and passport control came on the train. If this was what it took to get out of the EU, I began to worry about how long it would take me to get back in.

My passport was checked by a nice lady. She didn't really speak any English, so she made up for it by looking at my passport and every page in it for about 10 minutes. She looked at the arrival card I had filled in, and said 'Hotel JeeorJee?'

'Yes, Hotel George', I replied.
'Why you write Hotel JeeorJee, is Hotel Jorj', she said.
Not wishing to explain to her the complexities of English spelling, I just said OK.

By now it was approaching 11pm, and I was quite frankly - exhausted. The train arrived at midnight, and I took a taxi straight to the Hotel JeeorJee.

This is the official symbol of the Ukraine Blog, which I will be using (hopefully) next week, when I make a very short visit to Ukraine.

Apparently, nowadays you're not supposed to call it 'The Ukraine' anymore, just plain old 'Ukraine'. I think I like the sound of 'The Ukraine' better, but I will bow to convention.

The blog symbol is the coat of arms of Ukraine, which is in the same colours as the flag. They are quite striking colours for a flag. Nice one, Ukraine.

Learn about Ukraine

Stage: 3
Route: Petts Wood - Hayes
Date: July 9th 2005
Walkers: Myself and Tom and Fred
Weather: started very overcast and muggy, turned warm and sunny
Walk Departure Time: 12.05pm
Walk Finishing Time: 5.05pm
Walk Distance: 10 miles

Part three of the Loop took in a lot of forest, and some beautiful, typically English field countryside and country lanes. Old ancient oak trees, tranquil ponds, and a country park were linked through small patches of suburbia.

Read the Photojournal

Aside from day trips to The Bones and the The Caves, the intrepid explorers spent their time in Brno and in Prague. The main activities undertaken were walking and drinking. As the days went by, the walking activity level decreased, and the drinking activity level increased in almost perfect synchronised harmony like a finely tuned orchestra.

Drinks by the river in Prague.

The other favourite pastime was riding on the trains. This was lucky, because we had several trains to catch. The intrepid traveller motto became 'If the trains were like this in England, I'd get the train all the time'. The shockingly low price of the trains was a point for us all to marvel at (Brno - Prague, 3 hours, 150 miles, only £4)

Scoob drank so much, he was seeing double and Lisa had shrunk

Despite going home with several foot injuries, the intrepid explorer team had conquered the Czech Republic, and returned home triumphantly.

View the Czech photo gallery

THE INTREPID EXPLORER TEAM

Nicola 'I'm just having a quick sleep' Lowry
Paul 'Where's my pint of Leffe?' Wright

Lisa 'Pass the hairdryer' Beaton
Paul 'I'm sure it's not far to go now' Beaton

The bones are in a church, near the outskirts of Kutna Hora.

A big, scary pile of bones.

There are a lot of them, about 40000 skeletons worth. Yes, that's a lot of bones. They are arranged in big piles, and various decorations, such as a chandelier made out of every different bone found in the human body.
You can read more details about the bones here.

A shield of bones.

The official name of the bone church is Sedlec Ossuary, but I prefer 'Bone Church' for reasons of clarity. The intrepid explorers took a day trip to Bone Church, and found it very exciting. There were worries of bone nightmares occuring in the future, but so far there have been no official bone nightmare reports.

Lisa is worried about the bones.

We went to the Bone Church by train, the intrepid explorers favourite way of travel in the Czech republic. The Bone Church was also highly rated by the intrepid explorers, and we returned to Prague full of joy, although mostly asleep.

The Punkva Caves are well cool, in both senses of the word. They are cool, as in about 8 degrees centigrade, and cool to look at as well. They are located not far out of Brno, so a day trip was in order.

The intrepid explorers set off on the 10.30am train to Blansko, where we had the choice of a short bus journey, or a 5 mile walk to the caves. Surprisingly, the intrepid explorer team opted for the walk, as it was a beautiful, sunny day.

The first part of the walk was past polluted factories, and we were unsure if we were going in totally the right direction. I could sense small doubt creeping in to the explorer team about my navigational abilities.

Faith was soon restored when we spotted a signpost, and the scenery became nice and forest-like.

Arriving at the main cave centre, we were greeted by a bewildering choice of combination roadtrain/cable car/cave tickets. The saleswoman refused to stop speaking German to me, insistent in her belief that all foreigners must know German.

The caves of Punkva.

We opted for all the tickets we could buy, but not understanding the complexity of the system, we walked the part we were supposed to get the roadtrain on, and discovered that the cable car part was after the caves.

Waiting for our tour, we consumed a giant array of hot dogs and burgers, and noted that using the toilets required payment.

The guided tour in the cave was in Czech, making it a little difficult to understand - we loitered at the back and took pictures. In the centre of the caves it opens out into a giant hole back up to earth, which is very impressive. The last part of the tour was in a boat, floating down narrow cave passages. This is quite exciting, and we baggsied the front seats.

The intrepid explorers are in a boat.

The intrepid explorer team highly rated the trip to the Punkva Caves, and we returned to Brno full of joy.

We spent a couple of days in Brno, and a couple in Prague, and very nice it was too. The sun was shining, the beer was cheap, and the living was easy.

The intrepid adventurers were ready for anything.

Details of the amazing sights and sounds of Czech will no doubt follow soon...