Progress

(from 19 July 2009)

Hello Europe, this is Ukraine calling.

And a changing place it is too. Most of our experience has been of the roads, but if they are representative of the population, then they must be half slow, half mad, half old and decrepit, and half very beautiful.

But before I get carried away, an update on Bernard: since the Germans worked their magic, he has been just like the Bernard of old. He still struggles going up steep hills, but he always did, and he was never a laden as he is now. I learned early in Romania, once we started experiencing properly hot weather, that Land Rover fitted fans to their engines for a reason. The fan that I removed while Bernard was living in the UK, was replaced at the top of a particularly big hill and that this was one of the nicest views I have ever been distracted by while working on him. Since then, he’s showing no signs at all of getting too hot.

The roads since Hungary have gradually deteriorated in quality, but we are still making good progress. Now, however, it requires more interesting overtaking manoeuvres, some exhilarating, some terrifying, some both. So far though we have witnessed rather than participated in the most crazy overtakes.

As I said, we are now in Ukraine so you will have realised that we are not going via Turkey. This was a tough decision, but ultimately, we think, the right one having lost over a week with the car trouble. We spent most of our last day in Germany investigating the frequency and reliability of ferries from Turkey to Russia. The clear conclusion was that nothing was clear. And furthermore, being remote while trying to get confirmation of anything just added to the confusion. Given that we need to be out of Russia by 25th July because of our visas, we decided that the risk was too great to go through Turkey and wait for a ferry. We might have been lucky, but we might have had to wait 4 days. Due to other commitments, extending the Russia visa was not possible, so we are going the northern route.

Romania was a great country: we were rescued from a rubbish campsite by a friendly passerby, taken to the best campsite ever, joined in a birthday party, saw the most beautiful lake, experienced some great roads with no traffic (Lewis will not believe this but it’s true). Furthermore, we can say that we have slept in a hilltop forest in Transylvania without getting bitten. How many people can say that?

We left Romania, and tried to enter Moldova (although at the time, we didn’t know which border we were approaching having got lost in the last town in Romania and not knowing which road we were on.) Our plan is to cross Ukraine – and Moldova if necessary just to get to Ukraine.

The Moldovans made it difficult. Unfortunately we don’t have a green card because my insurance company told me I didn’t need one, so I had to buy insurance for Moldova. For some reason, they put the office selling insurance, 1km away from the border, so I had to walk there to buy the insurance to then return to the border before they would let the car in. Strange, but ok. This was a curious experience because they kept my passport at the border, so for 30 minutes I was in Moldova without a passport, car, or anything. Finally, we get everything approved, stamped, stamped again, the right bits of paper were stamped and transported from one office to another, the right number of grumpy people appeased, and we were allowed to enter. This took about 1hr 30mins. We started driving and after 1mile (1.6km), we came to the Ukranian border. At this point, we either had to laugh or cry. They had made us jump through that many hoops just to drive 1 mile to get to Ukraine! Well, good thing I had got that insurance, given that there was 1 other car on that stretch of road...

So far, our impressions of Ukraine are good, but there’s still a long way to go. Certainly they are much better having seen the place during the day. On Friday night we didn’t get into the country until 9pm, and then had to drive 70km to the nearest town, and a large part of this was through a swamp. I have never seen so many mosquitoes in one place in all my life. And never want to again. Naturally they were attracted to the lights, so it became a weird experience driving through the clouds of them – at times it looked like rain, there were so many. I like to think I have done my bit for mankind driving there last night, though. The car the following morning was a veritable mosquito graveyard.

Unfortunately the trip has become a drive with not much time for much else because of having to get to where we need to in time for visas. We hope that we can relax a little once we are in Russia, and that should be by Monday.

I will try to send an update then. In the meantime, a quick reminder that this is a charity project, and we are looking for money to fund SWORDE-Teppa once they receive Bernard. If you haven’t donated, or if you have and want to again, please do so at justgiving.com/bernardsbigtrip.com.


More anon.

G.