At some stage this interest in World Heritage Sites turned from an awareness of major tourist sites into a full blown obsession. This was perhaps best illustrated by the fact I found myself alone in a field a few km off of the Vilnius- Minsk highway on a particularly chilly Saturday morning.

The measuring post I visited was at Beresnäki about 18km from Vilnius. It is essentially a slab of concrete with a small concrete fence around it. Next to this is a small obelisk marking its inscription on the World Heritage List. There was also an information board. Aside from that there was nothing else in the field. I walked about 3km to get to the field from a local bus stop. There were a few houses on this route and two locals stopped me to ask where I was going, unfortunately I hadn’t learnt “I’m going to look at a geodetic measuring post in a field up ahead” in Lithuania by this point, and probably never will. Despite being so close to the capital this area did feel particularly rural. You won’t be surprised to find out that mine were the only set of footprints in the snow that led up to the site.

Altogether it took me about 1h45mins to visit this site including about 5 minutes at the site taking photos and doing a few laps.

I’m now left in a quandary about when to count the Struve Geodetic Arc as a visited site. I have certainly put less effort into seeing other inscribed sites however I have seen only one of the 34 inscribed sites which stretch over a mammoth 2830km. I think I may leave the ‘ticking off’ of this site until I have seen a post in a different country or visited the Observatory at Tartu.

If anyone else is also stupid enough to want to visit this site by public transport then Bus 16 from Vilnius can drop you off at Posukus from where it is a 3 km walk. Alternatively the bus company Romeksas run buses to Rukainiai and this will drop you off a little closer at the turn off to the site which is marked with the words Struves Geodezinis Punktas 1 but I have no idea of any kind schedule for them. There is another inscribed post about 2km north or the geographical centre of Europe about 20km north of Vilnius. It would be very easy to get to these points with your own car and a GPS as for once you really can rely on the co-ordinates that UNESCO provide.

All in all was it worth it? Well for me yes it was, as I have another little story to tell of some esoteric travelling, and I had plenty of time to enjoy the other delights of Vilnius.

Would I recommend it to anyone else? Probably not unless you are equally as obsessed with this little list that UNESCO has.

Will I visit more posts in different parts of Eastern Europe? Sadly I'm pretty certain I will.