Kicking up some dust as we hit some off-road in Russia.  Pete was chuffed to have found somewhere where the roads ran out, like a kid with a new toy!

The guard post at the 30km exclusion zone around Chernobyl

A typical tea break in Ukraine.  It appeared to be a vast, flat country which really does mirror it’s flag! 

A Ukrainian man looking far too happy considering we’d just ripped his bumper off!  But then we did tow him to his garage…

The verdant surrounds of the game reserve that nearly got us shot!

A tranquil (and mosquito-ridden, naturally) place in Ukraine where we set up camp and used our funky AST sat comms equipment!

We always have some cracking tunes playing

We’ve just arrived in Volgograd after taking a little detour south to have a break from driving and spend a day relaxing on a beach by the Black Sea.  We had a glorious stretch of long white sand completely to ourselves (apart from seagulls, and mosquitos which came in swarms as big as any of us had ever seen!).  Completely to ourselves that is until mid-afternoon, when a couple of Russians drove the full length of the deserted spit of sand and parked up within 5 metres of us.  They stripped down to their underwear, drank beer and had a couple of swims, then an hour or two later came over to talk to us.  The conversation was hardly flowing when another two men made the mile-long drive down the beach and parked up just as close before hopping in the water to fish.  Clearly the lure of the crazy foreigners was just too strong!

It was a beautiful spot though, with spectacular sunsets, clear night sky, and it was lovely to have a swim.  We found an equally nice place to camp last night before making the last hop into the city, which has also made a very good first impression on us.  We didn’t even get stopped by the police this morning, Russia seems pretty good right now!

David 

Our tally of police stops has now reached five, including the friendly chap who just wanted to help us out, three in Ukraine and two so far in Russia.  One of them was a very straight-forward, “Hello, I’ll have that wine thanks”, others have made attempts at official procedure, but the best so far was definitely as we drove the last few kilometers of Ukraine.

Pete was driving, and learning from previous experience we were sticking rigidly to the speed limit, but still we got waved down by a very grumpy fellow.  We quickly established a complete communications black hole, and Pete took the phrasebook with him to meet his superior.

These police didn’t even have speed guns, and to their credit they didn’t pretend we had been speeding, but aided by Lonely Planet’s choice of phrases, they managed to accuse Pete (to his considerable bewilderment) of disturbing the peace (good starter for ten), parking illegally (erm…) and being dizzy!  His sophisticated defence to all this was “me, nothing”, but it did the job and we were on our way without a ‘fine’.  Splendid.

David

During our visit to Hele’s School in Plymouth, someone asked us what we were most worried about, and with unanimity of a well-oiled machine we all said ‘Russian border crossings’.  We particularly thought the crossing from Ukraine into Russia would be an ordeal.  So with this in mind we approached the border yesterday with a little trepidation.

We stopped a couple of kilometers short to rearrange the packing in the boot so that a few shoes (and even one of Pete’s socks - a particulrly evil touch I thought) would fall out upon opening.  Then passports in hand, we trundled past the huge line of waiting HGVs to the crossing…

…and left less than 3 hours later having had no problems at all, and even several smiles!

Our first impressions of Russia have been pretty good all-in-all, we even got stopped by a policeman just because we looked lost and he wanted to help us.  Let’s hope it continues!

David