Mar 2009

We had breakfast in a great cafe nextdoor to our hotel with good food, good music, comfy chairs and georgeous waitresses - perfect!

We set off from Kaliningrad and within the hour we had reached the coast again - the first time in just over a week and quite a relief to have made it across continental Europe without being stopped by weather on the way. The Baltic sea lived up to its name - it was freezing.

We took a road along the Corunian Spit or Korshkaya Kosa today which is a thin strip of land 100 km or so long but only 1000m or so wide and in places even less. It has some of the biggest sand dunes in Europe and lots of trees which sadly obstructed the view for most of the day!

Halfway along, Russia became Lithuania and the Russian border guards had a good chat with us about the Premiership (Chelsea and Pavulychenko popular) and after looking at the map of our route so far called us champions! We liked them!

The difference was immediate - the road surface was much better, the speed limit higher and the small towns more catering to passing hungry bikers! After a late lunch we took a sand track to the Baltic side for a great view and got slightly bogged down (photos to come) before enjoying the final 10 km or so to the tip of the spit. A short ferry across the 100m or so and we rode North.

Stopped in Liepaja for the night, a town famous for its Latvian rock and making a good impression immediately with a hotel called Liva (pronounced Leaver) and a stunning receptionist. I think 2 months on the road is beginning to take its toll!

161 miles today.

Today we tried again to see the GP, but again failed! Oh well, we found the result out on BBC World news slightly later.

Apparently the clocks went forward over Saturday night so we ended up leaving an hour late! Nothing like a bit of forward planning.

We departed Vilinius in a Westerly direction and the roads were single track with the forested landscape surrounding them. It was still cold and there was the odd frozen lake dotted around. The landscape then opened up a touch as we drifted towards Russia.

We tried to stop at a lovely looking spot for lunch, it looked like a massive log cabin and with lots of cars in the carpark we had high hopes. The smell of a wood fire also inticed us in. The restaurant was however closed for a big function and we ended up having a kebab down the road in a car park!

After this there was a hundred miles left or so to the Russian border. We arrived here at around 5pm, we'd heard that it may be tricky getting through and even with our Visas it still took 2 hours. Once again though we managed to charm some of the border staff and in the end they were very helpful and they enjoyed our story!

The first bit of Russia gave us the similar sort of feeling we had had in the Ukraine with flat plains and flaming fields but even more so perhaps was that around the first corner we drove there was a cop standing slightly hidden, aiming a speed gun at us! Luckily we were both on best behaviour and we cruised past without being stopped.

It was around 80 miles to Kalinigrad with took around 2 hours as the roads had a 45 mph limit on them and we were wary of the crafty cops.

We checked into Hotel Kalinigrad at 9.30pm and low and behold found a replay of the GP on TV so ended up watching this before going out for some late food and a lovely relaxing beer.

225 miles ridden today.

Sent from my iPod

We set the alarm earlier than normal (not that we don't set the alarm early normally - Greeno!) so that we could sit up in bed and watch the GP qualifying! Unfortunately the coverage wasn't shown on any of our channels much to our dissappointment.

As we were getting ready to leave, the snow flakes that were falling had to have been some of the biggest both of us had seen! As we relunctantly packed up the bikes, we considered staying in Minsk for another day. The bikes had similar ideas and took a bit of persuading to get going.

We had a quick bite to eat at a service station on the way out of Minsk, the weather continued in Daria's words to be "disgusting!" Outside Minsk we ploughed through snow field upon snow field and even passed a few people fishing on frozen lakes! In some cases they looked dangerously close to running water.

The weather gradually improved and by the time we reached the border it was dry and the sun was threatening to come out.

The Belarussian border staff were a nice surprise and had a bit of a laugh with/at us, which we just played up to.

18 miles down the road was Vilnius, where James had been 2 years previously at the end of February with his cousin's Ka and G and the temperature hadn't got above minus 14 degrees! This time it was 4 degrees and quite pleasant!

We checked into a guest house close to the centre of the city and are now sat underground in a typical Lithuanian restaurant.

125miles knocked out today.

After breakfast we left around 11:30 in a bit of a snow flurry much to the amusement of the onlookers!

The road out of Homyel took us past some nice wide open flat plains interspersed with big forested areas and the roads were all pretty good. Lots of salt/grit on the road should the temperature drop, but it was up to around 5 degrees in the middle of the day and the sun was threatening to appear.

We had lunch at a small Belarussian canteen where the soup was tasty, warming and very cheap too. The sun had come out as we left and it's always much more pleasant riding in the sunshine.

Our hotels and visas for Belarus have been coordinated by the very helpful Daria and co at the Belarus tour service who have made our time in Belarus considerably smoother than it would otherwise have been and we followed her directions into Minsk today as well as her advice ("don't hurry, we have strict police so be good") passing lots of colurfully painted buildings and houses, stopping at the Hotel Orbita arriving just after half five which has got to be a record for us arriving somewhere. It was still light! We were met by the lovely Daria, checked-in quickly and were given the gen on Minsk.

Just having a relaxing beer before tidying up to go and see the town.

236 miles today takes us over the 10k mark to 10012 m total (16019 km).

We had a few things still to do this morning (cleaning/lubeing my bike and printing off a map of tonight's hotel were a couple if them) and after that we loaded up the bikes for the first time in three days. It was a little sad to say goodbye to Kiev and Ksenia especially as she'd made our stay there so enjoyable and productive too, but we had to saddle up and drift on.

Both our bikes were running brilliantly after the services, mine in particular had balanced wheels for the first time since early France! We were soon in familiar mode on the roads, following the Cyrillic signs well and had to remind ourselves that this was Ukraine, so lots of police at the side of the road again and varying speedlimits. One particuarly crafty pair were hidden behind a pothole-repairing truck and crew. More charges, more revving requests!

As we've been riding inland and North it's been getting noticeably colder too. Today it must have only hit 3 degrees in the middle of the day and the roads and borders were flanked with snow again despitie being nearly at sea leavel. We also kept an eye out for Chernobyl but didn't spot it.

The border controls out of Ukraine and into Belarus took a couple of hours to pass and once we had it was dark and I noticed one of my headlight bulbs had blown. A quick bodge-job and we were on our way to Homyel.

We got into the centre of town okay but again struggled to exactly locate our hotel, tonight called the Hotel Tourist! The town itself seemed quite vibrant with lots of colourfully lit buildings and activity. A few helpful passers-by sent us in the right direction (what would we do without them) and one guy on his racing bike even guided us the last 2km or so on his bike at Mach 9!

We decided to just eat in the hotel restaurant this evening as we heard Michael Jackson and saw flashes of colourful activity inside. Turns out there was a singing and dancing routine on which was very good, but the dancing by the rest of the people in the restaurant afterwards was fascinating. Utterly unashamed old-style courting by all ages!

We stuck 100 000 down for the meal and headed up to bed. 171 miles and another border today.