I Was a Young Boy Who Had Big Plans...

Now I'm just another shitty old man...

I'm currently in Bryansk, look south-west of Moscow along the M3.  To be honest its been a pretty rough few days since I left Moscow. Long distances, not much to break up the day, shedloads of rain and to top it all off in my attempt to get 'down with the locals' I got food poisining off a dried fish I bought off an old guy by the side of the road. Hilarious.

 Here is a picture of me in the pouring rain, trying very hard not to be violently sick. Just so you guys at home know its not all giggles and rainbows.

On the plus side I've met a few pretty cool people, the first was a Russian guy who actually pulled over on the motorway to check that I was ok and gave me a bottle of ice cold water. This was just outside Moscow where the motorway still resembled a main road you'd find in the UK, 3 lanes and a nice big hard shoulder to cycle on. By the time your about 40kms outside of Moscow the 'motorway' is the size of the A41 but with more traffic.

 Did I mention it was raining?

At about 10 o'clock on tuesday morning I rolled into a truck stop just outside Obninsk to get some food,  I was well surprised when the girl behind the counter spoke fluent English to me, she even came and sat with me while I was eating. She was from Kazakhstan (former Soviet republic) and had come to Russia to work to support her kids, apparently the situation in Kazakh is pretty dire.

 Think I'll let Tony the Tiger tackle this one...

Later I saw a moose munching on some leaves by the side of the road, god damn easy life; just eating leaves and shitting in the woods all day. Bet that moose couldn't cycle 80 miles a day in the rain.

Stopped that night near the village of Sukhinichi, managed to get a room in a cheap motel.

Woke up yesterday to more torrential rain, decided to soldier on. Think its just one of those weeks where its dead hard to get going. This road also has markers every KM to let you know how far you are from Moscow, its a pain in the ass cause it makes it harder to 'switch off' and just spin the milage. Anyway I did 130kms yesterday to Bryansk. Quite a lot of war history around here which is very interesting.

 The battele of Bryansk was a 19 day conflict beginning in September 1941. The German troops of XXXXV11 Armeekorps crossed the Densa river in the region south-west of Moscow. During the attack German troops broke through the Bryansk front on the 30th of September 1941 and were able to capture the town of Karachev. They were then able to advance to the east of Bryansk on the 6th of October, trying to meet up with XXXX111 corps coming from the opposite direction.

The Red Army was forced to withdraw the 50th and 13th armies to avoid being encircled by the Germans. Bryansk was then evacuated without significant fighting although the city did suffer heavy air and artillery bombardment. As part of the Orel-Bryansk defensive operation which ran from the 30th Sept 1941 to 23rd Oct 1941 the Red army lost 80,000 men killed in and around the city and a further 50,000 taken prisoner.

Now for the interesting bit...

A young man called Mikhail Kalashnikov was a tank commander in the Battle of Brynansk. During the battle his T-34 was disabled and he was wounded. He walked to the nearest field hospital to recieve medical treatment. While he was recovering he started experiencing flashbacks of the fighting prompting him to become "obsessed with designing a sub-machine gun that would drive the Germans from his homeland".

Hence the 'Automatic Kalashnikov - 47' was born...

 Lenin square in Bryansk, 

"There was an old Marxist called Lenin,
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in,
A Marxist called Stalin did ten in."

Why are there still statues in this country of a man who is known to have started one of the most brutal regimes in history? Seriously I don't understand it, maybe from a historical perspective but the guy was at least partly responsible for 70 years of misery under the communist regime.

Serious question, if any Russian readers (I know I've got quite a few) want to answer please leave me a comment or e-mail 'ralph.butler13@hotmail.com'. 

Got chatting to a local man aswell yesterday, turned out he had worked in London and Portsmouth as a doctor, small world.

Also found this little gem in Bryansk.

Had a quick look on the net and can't find any history on it . Awesome building though.

 My next blog will be from Kiev, I'm going to spend a day in the city. Had a look at the map last night. I'm committed to be in Holland in 5 weeks to meet up with a few friends who are going there on hoilday. Should be pretty cool ;). 

So the return trip is looking like Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, France with maybe a dip into Czech and Romania (really want to go to Romania cause it was the only country to violently overthrow its communist goverment, apparently Romanians dont piss about ;)).

So watch out Tamsin and Fabrice, might get a knock on the door in a few weeks haha.

 I'm pretty sad to be leaving Russia, and a return trip is definatly on the cards. Made a lot of new friends and had some fantastic experiences. I'll leave you with a quote from an e-mail I got from one of my friends, Eugene from Saint Petersburg.

"I noticed that you understood the main thing, despite bureaucracy, oligarchy, bad laws and such stuff the most valueable treasure of my country is not oil and gas, but people, always ready to help you and offer their friendship."

Too right.

Edit, a few pictures of me leaving St. Petersburg. Thank you Eugene.

http://vk.com/album200317091_173420141

The road to Kiev...

Time keeps moving on and on and on...

Just a quick update, got wifi here so I might aswell use it.
I like to think I'm a man of extremes, but this is ridiculous...

 

About 40kms outside Moscow I came across this sign. Yup, thats right 774kms to Kiev, roughly 480 miles. 480 miles on the same road. Yawn. At least I won't get lost...

Moscow...

Napoleon tried and failed, Hitler tried and failed. These guys got it all wrong. You don't need the big armys and flashy uniforms. Just a push bike and balls the size of watermelons ;).

 

A truly broken man!

St. Basils cathedral on the red square, built from 1555-61 on orders from Ivan the Terrible, it commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan.

Got up at 9am this morning to pack all my stuff away and head for the city centre. I spent a good hour last night drawing out a map of the route and even booked a hostel online. By 2pm I was in the centre with all my kit in my room, magic! I'd only really got today to spend in the centre so I hit the town to take a few pictures...

 A statue on one of the bridges on the way into the city.

 Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, this thing was leveled by the Soviets in 1931 for the twenty tons of gold in the domes. They planned to replace it with a monument to socialism called the 'Palace of the Soviets' but a lack of money, flooding from the river and the outbreak of war got in the way. The foundation hole remained until it was eventually turned into an open air swimming pool! In 1990 the Soviet goverment gave the orthodox church permission to re-build the cathedral. It was completed and consecrated in 2000.

 Tomb of the unknown soldier, got a bollocking at this one for pushing my bike up the steps. I came back an hour later and they were doing a changing of the guards thing, pretty cool.

Its a war memorial thats dedicated to Soviet soldiers killed in world war two. Some pretty cool history behind this one. Originally the remains of unknown soldiers killed in the battle of Moscow were buried at the 41st km of Leningrad highway at the city of Zelenograd because this was the closest nazi troops got to Moscow during the war. To comemmorate the 25th anniversary in 1966 the remains were moved to the Kremlin wall. 

Its a bronze sculpture of a laurel branch and a soldiers helemt laid on a banner. The eternal flame illuminates the inscription "Имя твоё неизвестно, подвиг твой бессмертен"

Which translates as "Your name is unknown, your deed is immortal"

 On the red square, terrible picture thanks to the scaffolding and tents. Contrary to popular belief its not known as the red square because of the red bricks, or because of the link between the color red and communism. красная can mean either 'beautiful' or 'red' in Russian. The name was originally given to St. Basils Cathedral (in the first pic.) with the meaning beautiful, and subsequently transferred to the square.

Statue of Peter the Great, built to commemorate 300 years of the Russian navy. Voted the 10th ugliest building in the world in 2008! In 2010 Moscow offered to re-locate the statue to St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg refused!

 Fountains in Alexander Gardens.

 

Met Joseph Stalin on my way back to the hostel. Interesting fact: Stalin was born in Georgia, its said he'd turn in his grave if he knew that his homeland was now outside of Russia.

You really can't do a place like this justice with a half-a-day mooch, in all honestly you probably need a week or two at least to see all that Moscow has to offer. I really wanted to see one of the Metro stations and also a park in the south of the city where people go and dance after work on weekdays! Unfortunatly I just havn't got the time :(.

A link to a few photos from Novgorod:

http://vk.com/album-41867723_174316660

Video of the group in Novgorod:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NqUbeRW2Oo 

Thanks Kate, replying to your e-mail now, sorry its took so long!

Dad and Sam Scrott check your inboxs later. 

Next stop, Kiev! 

"How many darkest moments and traps, still lay ahead of us..."

Soon We'll all be Gone...

But sitting on the verge of tears does not become my twenty-two years!

Hilarious.

Not updated this for a few days, so I thought I'd better knuckle down and get on top of it. At the moment I'm about 40kms from the centre of Moscow, the furthest east I will go (on this trip ;)).

The day after I left климова heading for осташков. The roads were a sandy, rutted mess for the first 20kms. Virtually impossible to ride at speed especially with panniers. Eventually I hit tarmac at a place called свапуша. Now I had a decision to make. On the 'designated route' I was trying to complete it showed a 40km detour, 20km there, 20km back, to the source of the river Volga and a monastry. Somebody had described the road as ridable, and it was ridable, if you were riding in maybe a four wheel drive vehicle or a tank.    

So 20kms of extremely loose dirt roads and two hours later;

I think the face says it all, just the thought of that road sends shivers down my spine. The Volga river is the longest river in Europe. Its very important in Russian culture and is often called Volga-Matushka (Mother Volga).
This is me at the source, c'mon chump crack a smile!

 By this point I'd realised it was going to be a long day.
I turned the bike around and headed back down the same road, I think I'd rather forget the journey back to tarmac. This picture gives you an idea of the road surface.

 Just loose, dry sand.
Half way down the road on the return trip I met a police car sliding sideways down the track! He'd taken a corner a bit too quick!
 When I got back to the main road it was still 50kms to осташков, and it was raining.

Trying to put on a brave face.
It was 8pm by the time I arrived. I decided to have a few beers at the hotel that night, naturally a few turned into six and a sore head in the morning.

I woke up in the morning feeling rough as sin. I think an 80 mile bike ride to торжок was the last thing I wanted to do but like a good boy I soldiered on, stopping halfway for a mammoth portion of chips and four sausage rolls.

I had to kick this little shit to get him to stop chasing me. For some reason dogs around here are obsessed with bicycles, probably because they don't see them very often. торжок was a pretty cool place, an ancient town where there was a big battle between the Mongols and the Russians many years ago.

Some cool old buildings and architecture. I went to a little cafe and had a bowel of Borsch (traditional Russian soup) and a potato meat cake thing for tea, very nice. After that it was time for bed. I don't think I've ever been so relieved to get to bed to be honest.

The next day I'd decided I was going to ride along the main road to тверь to get my bike fixed. I'd heard horror stories about the main road, how it was extremely dangerous for cyclists, tonnes of traffic, etc. etc. Personally I found it OK.

Only 209! As you can see the weather was appalling. 

Hahaha! I got to тверь at about 1'o'clock, found the bike shop thanks to a friendly local. The guy had the cassette changed, rear brake fixed and rear wheel re-trued within the hour. Can't grumble at that. I spent ages looking for a place to stay in тверь, everywhere was either too expensive, or fully booked. Eventually I found somewhere to stay, the only problem was the lady at reception said I didn't have enough paperwork with my passport! Apparently I needed to have it registered every night (Bullshit!).

Thankfully there was a guy in reception who spoke English, so he acted as a translator and helped sort it all out. The guys name was Nicolay and after the little incident at reception he asked me if I would like a tour of the town. Top man!

The banks of the river Volga in тверь. One is named after a writer and one is named after a soldier. There are statues of the men on either side of the river. After a bit of a history lesson we sat down for some food.

Ahh a pack of camels, bought in тверь for the pricey sum of £1.20. Cheers for the food pal and I hope you have many good adventures on your bike and take alot of fantastic photos!

Back at the hotel I hit the sack pretty sharpish, slept like a log again but up for half seven the next morning for what would be an 'interesting' day. The target was Kohakobo and it honestly didn't look too far on the map. 'Reckon I'll be there by 2pm' I thought, wishful thinking. I accidently met the group at this river crossing. When the going gets tough...

For the glory of Great Britain!

“If you're going through hell, keep going.” - Winston Churchill

It rained and rained and rained that day, I was soaked to the bone. Not a nice experience, when I got to the hotel I met with the group again. Someone asked me if I had ever tried Russian vodka, I said no. To be honest it would be plain rude to go to Russia and not try vodka...

 Look at that poor innocent boy, unaware of whats to come. Now I had maybe four shots of vodka and two shots of some Ukranian drink and I was a sniff of liquor away from spending the night rolling about in my own vomit, lethal stuff.

 Haha, look at the eyes! Again I slept incredibly well that night!

Yesterday was a long one, I rode from Kohakobo to the outskirts of Moscow, where I am now. The dirt roads had become mud roads after a night of heavy rain, not great for riding a fully loaded bike on slick tyres.

The worst thing about Russia? Mosquitos. I'd read about them back home but I never thought that it would be as bad as it is. Any patch of skin thats not covered by clothing or sprayed with repellent is fair game for them. When I came out of the river crossing in the video I took my sweater off cause It was soaking and within seconds there were half a dozen Mosquitos on my shoulder, it gets pretty annoying. Thankfully you are safe when you're riding, they don't seem to like moving targets...

This was yesterdays mad stunt. Crossing a bridge that looked like something out of Indiana Jones.

So last night I rode into Moscow. More torrential rain, thunder and lightning. Quite fun actually! Saw a few stray dogs playing by the side of the road. 

Unfortunatly I won't see the group again. I'm staying here today and tonight while the group rides into the centre for 'official business'. Feel a bit gutted to be leaving this lot, although we didn't ride together I met them quite a few times on the road and bumped into them at a few of the hotels. For the first few days I was 'Ralph the English spy' but by the end of the trip I was 'Ivan', just gotta wait for my Russian passport to come through!

There's a real sense of 'lifes to short' with these guys, as there is with most of the Russians I've met, and I like it. I think this comes from experiencing real hardship first hand and I think we Brits could learn a thing or two about our attitude towards others from this lot.

Anyway I'll be staying here today sorting kit out, washing clothes and generally chilling out so feel free to drop us an e-mail and I'll write back. Its cheaper than texting.

So long...

“It’s very difficult to follow our dreams, but it’s even more difficult to forget them.”

 

Sitting in a Russian Bath House...

Punk rock changed our lives....

Warning, this blog contains pictures of a hilarious nature. 

I'm still with the velopiter crew, despite what the Russian press says ;). Rode by myself yesterday a few kms behind the group. Went from Старая Русса to Демянск, pretty good roads, smashing weather, bit of Sublime on the MP3 player. Life dosn't get much better...

 Stopped to check out this fountain in Старая Русса, apparently the waters have healing powers.

Got a cheap hotel in Демянск with the group and crashed out. The highlight of the night was when I accidently left my phone outside the hotel. When I went back to look for it two Russian lads had picked it up. My mate Gaz had rung me and one of the lads had answered it, Gaz thought I'd been kidnapped by the Russians! Anyway nice speaking too you mate and its good to know I've got a job to go back to ;).

Life is to short so love the one you got,
Cause you might get run over or you might get shot...

I was allowed to cycle with the group today cause there was no official business. Pretty happy that I managed to keep the pace despite the fact I've got all my bags, slick tyres and my bikes developed the most annoying fault ever. The rear cassette is so worn it slips in the top three gears, meaning that if you select one of the top three gears the chain dosn't grip and sends your soft fleshy thigh on a collision course with the hard plastic gear shifter. It hurts... alot.

A small rural church built by the local community, loads of log buildings where I am now.

Let's go! The whole group (minus the gaffer, whos taking the picture) The roads were terrible today, so bad they were good! Thankfully there were quite a few hills, I'm a very strong climber, otherwise I may have fallen behind. There's only two of us in the group without front suspension. Me and an old guy who's nickname is 'old school'. Havn't spoken to him much cause my Russian is crap but he has the craic with the rest of the group.

We are staying in two log cabins tonight in a place called Клймова (I think). When we got there a few of the lads decided we should go to the баня or Banya. Like a Sauna but with more water. 
I want one.

Not wanting to let team Britain down I decided I could stay in the banya for as long as the Russian lads. Not sure how long I was in there but the thermometer on the wall hit 100 and the Russian lads were still having the banter, like being slowly cooked was a mere inconvienience.

After this they told me we should go and jump in the ice cold lake, not wanting to look like a pussy I agreed. I slipped on the jetty and fell into the lake, much to the delight of my Russian friends.

I've actually got a video of me falling into the lake, but it won't let me upload it on here. I'll try again later in the week.

After this I went back to the banya for the traditional whipping of the limbs with birchbark branches to improve circulation...

Awesome tan lines from a few months wearing cycling shorts.

Heres papa smurf in all his glory...

What, again?!?

Felt quite chilled out afterwards though, sat in a little room next to the banya with a cup of green tea just relaxing and learning a few new Russian words from the guys. I went into the village earlier and actually managed to ask one of the locals where the shop was which I'm pretty chuffed about considering that a week ago I couldn't speak a word of Russian.

Supper was smoked fish caught from the lake.

Very tasty, a lot of bones though!

And to top off a fantastic day when we got back from the banya we discovered that someone had applied a liberal coating of lard to old school's bike seat as a prank. Hilarious.

Edit: Whoops, apparently not a prank! Some kind of leather softner!

Me in the Russian news (thanks Sergey and Katya):

http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/593000

Don't wait up...

I'll make it to the moon if I have to crawl...

Strong in spirit, weak in the brain...

Thats how someone described me the other day. Just proof read my post from last night and made some corrections, to be fair it had been a long day. One hundred miles of cycling through rural Russia in the burning heat must have taken its toll cause last nights effort looks like it was written by a toddler.

Anyway we reached our destination, Novgorod, at around 7pm yesterday. Our little group was joined by about twenty people on the outskirts of the town and we all rode into the centre with a police escort! Classic.

 The Russian police. Stern, stern but fair ;).

 This local guy followed us for the last 30kms, didn't speak a word of English but he seemed pretty stoked about the fact that an Englishman had come to his village.

After another speech we rode about 2kms down the road where there was a crowd waiting. I got interviewed by the local tv station (the novelty has kinda worn off now) with a local girl (kate) acting as a translator.

Kate, me and Arthur!

Then it was off to the hotel, where I sat down to pen last nights entry. About half way through writing it the tour guide came in and said that his boss had been on the phone and I wasn't allowed to cycle with them any more! I thought this might happen as I was getting a fair bit of attention and I think this was detracting from the publicity the group was getting. The guy was very apologetic and said I could follow the group and stay at the same places and that he would give me a map of the route, I'm just not allowed to appear on TV or give any interviews. Suits me down to the ground, I prefer cycling on my own anyway.

This morning I felt dog rough. The weather didn't promise much either with rain coming down by the bucketload but hey, fortune favours the brave right? So I put my waterproofs on and hit the road, about two hours after the group had left the hotel. The rain filled the pot holes in the road making it impossible to gauge the depth of them resulting in two snakebites within the first 15km.

This picture says it all..

Not a happy bunny. Who's idea was it to cycle to Russia?

Decided to do a bit of the old tourist trail today, some great old cathedrals and churches around Novgorod aswell as a massive kremlin in the town itslef

After a few hours on the bike I got into the swing of things and landed at the hotel before the group arrived! I think they had a long lunch and a few of them looked like they were hurting a bit.

The Russian branch of Mcdonanlds needed some work...

"Suffer the pain of discipline, or suffer the pain of regret."

Take it easy kids, and leave me some comments:).

Kick the tyres, light the fires...

'Oh mother dear I'm over here,

And I'm never coming back.

What keeps me here; the rake of beer,

The ladies and the craic.' - McAlpines Fusilers, The Dubliners

Had a mad couple of days, thought I'd better get this updated before I start forgeting things. When I left you I was staying in a posh Hotel in central St Petersburg, pretty shattered and a little home sick...

That night I gave Sergey, the guy I met in Estonia, a ring. I think it took me a good half hour to work out how to dial a Russian number and the £5 credit I had on my phone lasted about two minuites. After a quick text we agreed to communicate through e-mail, much easier and cheaper.

Sergey kindly offered me a room at his flat for the next night so we arranged to meet at 4pm the next day at the underground station Prospekt Prosveshcheniya in northern St. Petersburg. My plan for the next day was to cycle through the centre of the city en route to Sergeys, take in some of the sights and generally chill out. I also noted down the address of a local military surplus shop to visit on the way to pick up a genuine red army hat, one of the goals of the trip ;).

So, up early the next morning, out of the hotel by 9 and back on the road. Found the surplus shop easy enough and picked up my hat and a few interesting trinkets;

 Terrible picture, the one on the left is a badge with Lenin's head on it and the hammer and sickle underneath, the one on the right is a Soviet snipers cap badge. Pretty cool, eh? Cost about a fiver each.

I spent two hours the night before drawing out a map of my route through St. Petersburg and I still managed to get lost! Russia uses the cyrillic alphabet and its really hard to get used too if your a complete novice. Thankfully many of the street names in the centre of St Petersburg are written in English aswell but as soon as you move away from the tourist areas and into the 'sleeping quarters' the signs are in Russian only.

 Ahh Ye Olde Chelsea Arms, British pub in St. Petersburg.

The Artillery Museum, there are men in uniform on every street corner in St. Petersburg. The city has a barracks for an artillery regiment and also a training school for army doctors.

 May the 9th was victory in Europe day so there are military memorials like this dotted about the city aswell as banners and posters.

The orange and black banner is the stripe of St. George, the patron saint of England!

By this point I was getting pretty annoyed, I'd got loads of photos of the outsides of beautiful buildings but I hadn't a clue what they were so it seemed kind of pointless, plus it was nearly 3pm. So I made a bee-line for the station and met up with Sergey.

As much as the architecture of St. Petersburg interests me I'm more interested in the life of ordinary Russians and how it compares to life in the UK. Sergey gave me a good insight into this. He believes there are three 'classes' in Russia (kinda like lower, middle and upper class although). The top 1%, the extremely wealthy, the politicians and businessmen. Then there are approximatly 15% of the population who earn enough money to lead a pretty 'western' existance, usually professionals and well educated people. Then there is everybody else, living pay cheque to pay cheque.

The slogan of Russia is and always has been; 'Nothing for the ordinary man' according to Sergay.

The 'sleeping quarters' of St. Petersburg are a mish mash of new builds and flats built in the Soviet era. When the USSR collapsed every Russian citizen was given the right to privatise what he or she had. This could only be done once in a lifetime.

Most of the people living in appartments like this were given them by the state. As these people are usually in the bottom 84% they simply don't have the money to spend on repairing their properties so many of them are in a bad way.

The next day Sergey gave me a guided tour of the best parts of the city, top man!

We travelled on the underground (an experience in itself) to the main street in St. Petersburg, Nevskiy Prospekt.

 The ceiling of 'Saviour on Blood' the orthodox cathedral built to comemorate Alexander the 2nd who was killed by the 'Peoples Will' Movement. The cathedral was built where he was murdered. The artwork is all mosaic, not painted.

You get the idea. I find it kind of unsettling that the church has this amount of wealth in a country where a good percentage of the population still live in glorified garden sheds.

Merchant Yeliseev, a ridiculously overpriced shop that was founded in 1902, before the revolution. Fantastic interior though.

Inside Kazan cathedral, quite a few free mason symbols in this one, very Da Vinci Code...

I also picked up a few essential supplies like maps for the route to Moscow and an English-Russian dictionary. 

Sergey had mentioned to me in Estonia that 'communal living' was still commonplace in Russia. If you thought your house share in Britian was bad think again. When the whole Communism thing kicked off over here the rich wern't very popular. Any well to do person who had a large house in a Russian city had it taken away (unless they knew someone on the inside) and local workers were allowed to move in. One room per family.

In Russia today up to twenty people, and families, can share one kitchen, one shower and one toilet. Nice. Sergey asked me if I wanted too see one of these 'kommunalkas', so I grabbed my camera and did some investigative journalism.

One kitchen for 19 people, unreal.

Its basically like living in a hostel. The rent is around £200 a month and kommunalkas can be either privately or state owned.

After we left the kommunalka I jumped in Sergeys car and we headed back to his flat, although it was only after I was actually in the car that he informed me that he had purchaced his driving license and never passed a test!

That night I joined Sergey and some of his cycling friends for dinner. Katya, the host, put on a fantastic spread and it was great to hear some stories about their adventures. Now I know I'm not the only mad one!

The highlight of the night was when Sergey broke out the acoustic guitar and cranked out a few traditional songs. I think my favorite was, "nyet Molotov" or "no Molotov", Molotov was the forigen minister under Stalin. Its a song from the winter war when Molotov told Soviet troops the Finns would be a push over and they'd be eating ice cream in Helsinki by christmas. The song basically says "no Molotov, it won't be that easy!"

Other classics were 'Katyusha', about a Soviet border guard pining for his girlfriend and the theme tune to a Soviet cartoon called Cheburashka.

See that little furry doll I'm holding, thats Cheburashka.
Thanks for a great night Katya!

After a few glasses of wine and a bit of scran someone mentioned that there were a group of cyclists leaving St. Petersburg for Moscow the next morning and would I like to tag along. The occasion was the opening of Russias first official bike route. 'Great' I thought, 'won't get lost, have a bit of banter, where do I sign?' So a few phone calls were made and I was allowed to join the group, magic!

Me and Sergey jumped in his car and headed back to his flat, by this time I think it was nearly 12pm and I had to be in the centre of St. Petersburg for 8:30 the next morning which meant leaving Sergays at 7, and a 6am wake up call. D'oh.

Managed to drag myself out of bed early the next morning, and get all my gear and in the back of Sergeys car. We left at 7 and arrived at the meeting point for around 8:15.

The statue of Catharina the Great and her statesmen.

In my head this trip was going to be a pretty low key affair, apparently it's sponsered by the union of railway workers, so I was a little shocked when I turned up and there were about a hundred people all waving flags and banners.

A local TV crew were also there, they got a few shots of yours truely reading a map so it looks like I'll be on TV in St. Petersburg ;). After a bit of a speech by the head of the union we set off.

About 5 miles down the road my chain snapped. Brilliant. The group left me and I was stuck in a truck stop on the M10 going out of St. Petersburg. I managed to fix the chain, but I hadn't got a clue what the route was or where the group would be stopping so I dropped Sergey a text and he gave me the name of the hotel they would be staying in that night. With a bit of beans I got there by about 5pm.

 Uncle Joe in next doors garden...

I wouldn't say bicycle maintenance is my strong point, usually I just thrash her day in day out till something breaks. Then I'm left with a push to the nearest bike shop, however that night I decided to give the old girl a little tlc and its a good job too. All of the spokes on one side of the rear wheel were loose, as in ready to fall out loose, and the wheel was quite badly buckled (wondered what that rubbing noise was) anyway I broke out the tool kit, re-trued the wheel in the frame and re tensioned all the spokes. Magic. Also gave the chain a good oiling and all the cables the once over.

The next day the group had a long day planned, 160kms or 100 miles, brilliant! I thought I'd be a bit slow for these guys on the tarmac cause I had to carry all my luggage but I kept up OK! Mainly due to many members of the group having knobly tyres. Of course there was a reason for this...

In some places the road was rough, In some places the road was a swamp...

Interesting...
In all fairness only about 3kms of the route was this bad, but is was a bloody hard 3kms!

Me with two of the group members.

A Russian bear, notice the small rural church in the background.

To be continued...