Belarus

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.