Stockholm is fantastic. Pluses are the museums (Nobel, Nordic, Maritime, Vasa), old boats in general, the waterways and the hectares and hectares of green space. Oh and beautiful blond Swedes. Only minus is the Abba Museum - Agnetha stood me up! Really tacky and a rip off. Tomorrow I will do a walking tour of Stieg Larsson's Millennium. Can't wait to catch up with Lisbeth. Then I board the ferry for Helsinki.

Cold. Heading off to look for Agnetha and Lisbeth. Oh and the Vasa Museum.

Orta San Giulio is fantastic. So beautiful, so ancient and so interesting. arrangements have now been made as much as possible at this stage. Reached agreement with my local partner, Stefano, to do the rest on site. Visited Isla San Giulio (the island 400 metres off the coast) today. 15th Century monastery which still has a silent order of nuns resident. I must hold my tongue on my thoughts on religion. I also swam in the lake. Had to, didn't I? I can't really flog the value of my swimtour if I didn't - even though it was raining at the time. Stefano, the sensible one, declined my invitation to join me.

Got over the disappointment of the Dardanelles (sort of). Now I'm in the northern lakes region of Italy to make arrangements for next year's swim tour. Lake Orta is fabulous! Found a good counterpart and I'm sure the swimtour will be a hoot. Sign up for it now! If we get more than 10, we will repeat it the following week. Check out this photo of Lake Orta from my hotel room window.

Due to overwhelming popular demand (well, two of you at least), these blogs will continue, but perhaps not every day.

I arrived in Germany last night (1 Sept) after spending most of the day transiting from Istanbul via Zurich - and most of that at airports.

Still trying to come to grips with what happened in Canakkale. Mixed feelings of failure/disappointment and relief that I am still alive and intact. I should accept that to do the swim in those conditions may well have been disastrous for me and lots of others. Nature and the weather are what they are, nicht?

I am about to book  my flight to Lake Orta in Italy for a few days next week. More determined than ever now to get that swimtour up and running for the next European summer. So tell everyone you know - gentle water conditions guaranteed (sort of).