I hope that you've read my dad's account of our adventures in the Golden Ring. Well, if you thought that we had some problems, you should hear what happened to my flatmate. This is his story (in my words, because he is Welsh).

Gareth had decided to spend the holiday week way down in the south of Russia, in Sochi, on the Black Sea. That's a day away, at least, on the train.

So Gareth headed down to Sochi on his own. Travelling alone, he didn't want to bring a lot of cash with him, but that was okay because he had his debit card. Arriving in Sochi, he went to withdraw money only to find that he had been locked out of his bank account.

The previous week he had tried to access it on the internet but had got his password wrong three times (did I mention that he is Welsh?). The website had informed him that he was consequently locked out but he assumed that he was locked out only of the internet banking - not the entire account and that they had cancelled all of his cards for good measure!

So Gareth was stuck in Sochi, with ten roubles to his name (about 20 pence), a good twenty-five hours on the train away from Moscow, and a non-transferable ticket home for travel in ten days time! Not only that but his pay-as-you-go Russian phone had run out of credit and of course he had no money to buy any more...

I am mildly impressed that he made it back to Moscow, alive, well and with a tan (and a bottle of home-made Caucasus wine no less).