The Baltic Classic organized by the Endurance Rally Association started in Copenhagen on 28 May and passed through Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland before finishing over 4000kms later in Berlin on 10 June after a mixture of grueling regularity sections and speed tests.
Having decided to take a different route to the road book (!) from the start in Copenhagen, Cliff Clifton and I soon settled into the event first crossing the Oresund Bridge into Sweden and onto gravel roads for the first overnight stop in Gothenburg close to the Volvo museum. Day 2 continued north to Trollhatten, Saab’s hometown and superb gravel roads along the edge of Europe’s largest lake, Vanern, to Karlstad, the traditional home of the Swedish round of the World Rally Championship. Day 3 took us over sensational roads to Stockholm. Then it was on the overnight ferry to Turku in Finland and many of the roads used in the Rally of the Thousand Lakes. A visit to rally champion Juha Kankinen’s car museum followed by more sinuous gravel sections en route to Helsinki…. and a sprinkling of snow! A short crossing of the Baltic to Tallinn and the start of some fantastic rally roads through Estonia and Latvia took us to Riga then Liepaja, Latvia’s premier seaside resort. Then to Kaunas in Lithuania and into the Polish lake district and the holiday town of Mikolajki. Day 12 saw us in Gdansk and the next day to Szczecin, a seaport on the mouth of the River Oder that houses a massive former Soviet military base which was the location for a number of special tests. A special speed test took place on the final morning round the closed cobbled streets of Szczecin with most of the town’s population lining the route before the drive down the autobahn to the finish by the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
How did we do? The car never missed a beat. The driver and navigator however suffered from occasional brain-fade but still finished 24th overall from a field of 48 in the Classic category.