Back in the USSR

It’s midsummer’s day and it’s snowing, as I leave Nordkapp behind riding south to Tromsø. There’s a sign pointing east for the E105 to Murmansk - just over the Russian border. It’s a day and half ride away and I wished I had more time to explore.

Three years later and I‘m flying to Munich to meet my bike, which has travelled from Birmingham in the back of a white transit van. After a few months of planning, I’m heading off on a three week tour through Eastern Europe, Moldova, Ukraine and up into Russia.

I set off at 11.30 on a hot Friday morning in June. Travelling through Germany, Austria & Slovenia and arriving in Zagreb the capital of Croatia at 8pm. Apart from some Friday afternoon traffic, it was a good ride down, with some fantastic mountain scenery around Innsbruck & Saltzburg. The great thing about travelling through lots of different countries in a short space of time, is seeing the subtle differences from one country to the next. Austria was different from Germany, with small rolling hills, quaint houses and churches with thin wooden steeples. Slovenia had lots of high wooden barns raised off the floor with open sides.  As well as the scenery, as I entered Slovenia the driving style also changed. Lane two of the Dual Carriageways appears to be used as “The Autobahn lane”, where very good progress is made by all the local shiny Audis & BMW’s. This was a feature of all the Eastern European dual carriageways & motorways, right up until Russia - which had the most heavily policed roads of the trip.

It’s Saturday, the weather is sunny and HOT and I’m leaving Croatia for Novi Sad in Serbia. Keen to get off the main road I head  towards Vukovar, to join a road that travels alongside the River Danube. Just outside Vukovar there is an open air Museum of military planes, tanks & guns. In the town, a tall brick water tower with numerous shell holes in it, dominates the skyline. I find out later that in 1991 there was an 87 day siege here, in the battle for Vukovar.  A sobering reminder of this regions turbulent past and something that is hard to comprehend, on a lazy sunny day in June. Heading towards Novi Sad the landscape is wide & flat, reminiscent of Lincolnshire, and all the churches are topped  with onion shaped domes.

I had a lot of fun at the border, tying to leave Serbia…. After checking my passport, the border guard told me my passport doesn’t have an entry stamp. He goes on to tell me that I’m a criminal & an Illegal immigrant. “It is not possible to enter Serbia without having your passport stamped – This is a big problem!” He goes on to say “For all I know you could of parachuted in, do have any Guns in your bags? Show me your luggage!” I showed him on the map where I had entered Serbia, which was a modern, but rural country lane border crossing. My passport had been checked there, but not stamped. There was lots of toing & froing in and out of his office, phoning his boss, checking my details on his computer.  In the end he said “There are no judges sitting today as it’s a Sunday, just go I haven’t seen you.”  When I got to the Romanian side, I told the border guards what the hold up had been and they just said “It’s not your fault, they should of stamped your passport.”

Travelling from Serbia to Sibiu in Transylvania, there was a real mixture of roads. As I entered Romania there was a five mile section of pot holed rural roads, this lead onto some good twisties, albeit with plenty of patched up repairs. Then after a small town I found myself cruising along a brand new two lane Motorway. As I near Sibiu the air feels fresher and you can see the Carpathian Mountains in the distance, dominating the horizon. 

It’s day two in Transylvania and I’m riding the Transfagarashan Road, which Jeremy Clarkson described on Top Gear as “The world’s best road.” The road surface is not bad for Romania, patchy but good enough that you can ride it well.  As you get towards the top of its 2042m summit & look back at the twists and turns of the road below, it looks like a life size Scalextric track. The last half mile of the road at the top is blocked by snow, which is something that happens every year from October to the end of June - when they get around to clearing the snow. There’s some great scenery on the way up and the views at the top are spectacular.

The following day the temperature rises to 31 degrees as I skirt round Bucharest, heading to Galati on the eastern border of Romania / Moldova. There is a lot of EU funding evident in the new roads & motorways. The Motorways are only ever two lanes wide and are for the most part lightly trafficked. Down to economics I suspect, with car ownership a lot lower than in Western Europe. Every now and again you get a reminder that you’re in Eastern Europe, where health & safety hasn’t quite caught on yet. It’s amazing the things you see on the Motorways; people cycling along the hard shoulder, hitch hiking, walking their dogs, pedestrians jumping over the central barrier, cars “overtaking” on the hard shoulder.

I’m at the Romanian border before crossing into Moldova and the border guard is telling me to be very careful in Moldova, as it’s a poor ex-communist country.  I should be careful where I leave my bike, be careful of where I leave my luggage & only stay at good hotels. It only takes me an hour to cross Moldova and whilst it does look like a poor country and the roads aren’t too good, the Border crossings were modern and the guards were professional & efficient. There was lots of big wide open fields and quite a few vineyards, as the soil is perfect for growing  grape vines. As I was leaving Moldova, I got talking to a local Moldovan guy who was into bikes and had a 07 Honda Fireblade at home – top man! For me travelling through Moldova into Ukraine was a good experience. It seems to be getting more modernised & westernised, and stories I’d heard about it being a “cowboy” border control, seem to be a thing of the past.

People have told me the roads in Ukraine are bad and that’s because the roads in Ukraine are bad! There are some stretches of new tarmac & some reasonable roads, but a lot of roads are very bumpy and have big, BIG potholes. Some pot holes are so deep you could throw a bucket down and draw fresh water off them! Everyone’s playing “Pothole Slalom”, big articulated lorries weaving  all over the road, oncoming traffic weaving from side to side - everyone’s just weaving around the potholes.

I arrived in the Ukrainian sea port of Odessa during the evening rush hour & after a day of pot holes and dusty country roads, I was looking forward to two nights of five star luxury. The M1 Club Hotel is a very cool hotel with great views looking out to the Black Sea.

 After a couple of nights in the chill zone, I’m ready to get back on the road & head north towards the capital of Ukraine, Kiev.

After a very nice stay at a Hostel in Kiev’s  old town, today I’m heading towards the Russian border and onwards to the town of Bryansk. Going out of the suburbs and I’m keeping pace with some of the local cars. Up ahead there is a police car bimbling along, which we all slowly overtake. Five minutes down the road & I decide to stop at a petrol station to put a few layers on. The police car we’d all slowly passed earlier pulls in. Two policemen get out and walk over & gesture to see my passport and vehicle documents. He then points at my speedo and sweeps his forefinger round in a clockwise direction and points back down the road & says something in Ukrainian. I shake my head and point at my speedo and sweep my finger round the other way, saying I was going slowly, following all the other cars. They start talking between themselves and I pull out the map of my route, to show them where I’d come from. This diverts their attention and after a smile and a handshake they leave me to it. I’d heard stories of policemen pulling over foreigners and demanding on the spot fines for spurious traffic offences, on this occasion I’d manged to get away with my wad intact.

As I approached the border my dream of riding to Russia had materialised in front of me. Getting through the Ukrainian Border control was quick and easy, getting through the Russian border control into Russia was a lot slower and took about an hour and a half. But everyone who was crossing that day was in the same boat, it was just a slow day at the border.

Last night I stayed in an excellent and very cheap (£23 per night) Hotel in Bryansk. Off the tourist track in Russia & things are very cheap, a three course meal for £8.50, unleaded petrol is £0.50 per litre and a pint of beer is £1.25. This afternoon it’s a sunny Sunday & I’m riding into Moscow. The approach to Moscow’s historic centre was fantastic. You’re riding along big wide Boulevards six lanes wide, over on the right there is a towering statue of cosmonaut  Yuri Gagarin, looking like a Buzz Lightyear superhero. Then on the left a huge ship monument to Tsar Peter the 1st. Then as you cross over the river you get your first glimpse of the Kremlin, Red square and the Golden domes of Moscow’s Churches and Cathedrals.

After three nights in Moscow, I’ve got Saint Petersburg in my sights and today’s destination is the historic town of Veliky Novgorod. Which is said to be the birthplace of Russia and has a well preserved Kremlin and Russia’s oldest church.

On the way I decide to see how helpful Russian’s are by deliberately running out of petrol……I’d been travelling along an ”A” road for quite a while, going through lots of suburbs and there were lots of petrol stations every few miles. I had gone onto my reserve fuel tank 20 miles ago and I knew I had about another 20 miles left in the tank. I saw another petrol station coming up and thought “Nah, I’ll just carry on for a few more miles, till I get to the next petrol station”. Shortly after that the Sat Nav takes me off to the right, onto this brand new toll road that heads away from main road, into a forest and the middle of nowhere. There’s no sign of any petrol stations, so to conserve fuel, every five miles I reduce my speed by 10 mph. I’m soon down to 30mph having covered 52 miles on reserve, when the inevitable happens & the bikes splutters to a halt on the hard shoulder. I flag down any passing vehicles, and all credit to the local Russian’s most of them stop to help. The fifth vehicle to stop is a minibus and the driver helps me out, by syphoning petrol out of his tank into a water bottle. It turns out that the toll road is 45 miles long with no petrol stations and as I get to the end of the road I’m nearly out of fuel again. One of the guys at the toll road office gets me some fuel from the works depot, which he insists on paying for. Saying he’s going to remember the day he helped out a British guy on a crazy trip.

After one night in Veliky Novgorod it’s onto the grand city of Saint Petersburg where I’ve got three days to relax and see the sights.

It’s a sunny Sunday morning as I leave Saint Petersburg and soon I’m crossing the Russian border into Estonia and the EU. There is a noticeable change in my surroundings.  The roads are newer with smooth tarmac & the roadside verges & hedges are a lot tidier and better maintained. There’s no incomprehensible signs in Cyrillic text & petrol is double the price! I like Russia all the more for these differences, because it’s less familiar, less westernised and more of an adventure!

I’m now two thirds into my trip and there is still lots more to see and do.  I’ll be staying at Tallinn in Estonia, Riga in Latvia, Vilnius in Lithuania, then travelling south along the Curonian Spit and I’m Back in the USSR for one night, staying in the small Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Then it’s Gdansk in Poland & onto Berlin.

Riding past the Brandenburg Gate to my hotel in Berlin is the final part of my journey. From here I’m flying back to the UK & my bikes going overland in the back of Jim’s trusty Transit van. As I roll up outside my hotel, the milometer is showing 71,458miles, which means that I’ve travelled 4,396 miles on this trip.

It’s not been a holiday of smooth tarmacked twisty roads, but I’ve already done lots of those. It has been a really varied holiday, discovering cultures that I haven’t previously explored and changing a lot of my negative pre-conceptions of our Eastern European neighbours. It’s been a real adventure bike trip and one that I would highly recommended.

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