Hi Paul
The next morning was a 5am start off to the border which was only 45 mins away. There will be very few photos (If at all) as I spent the next few days just making progress. The border was not too bad, about an hour and a half and I had some friendly Russians help me fill out an extra form including one of the customs officials who had many stars on his shoulder. A local guy asked me "did you make a present for this man?" because for such an important official to be helping me through was somewhat rare. The closest I came to giving anyone a present was the guy at the gate who said he collected coins, so he got a new shape £1 from me. I don't know if this was a bribe or a genuine thing, but he seemed nice enough.
This does remind me of the border crossing from Georgia the week prior which is something I forgot to mention at the time. While we spent a couple of hours there waiting to see if they'd let us through (They didn't as you know) we watched people entering Georgia. Two cars in the queue were singled out and told they couldn't enter Georgia and were turned around. Since we were bored and waiting, we went and asked a Georgian border office why this was. He explained that Russian number plates have two small number on the right hand side which indicate the region in which they're registered (Similar to Counties in England) These two were region 82 and Region 82 is Crimea. Since Crimea is seen as Ukrainian by the whole world (Except the Russians) it means that the cars belonged to a region which wasn't legally recognised, so they refused to let them in.
Anyhow there isn't much to be said, I did the 500 incident free miles towards Moscow. As you got closer to the city the roads slowly became bigger, wider and busier. It was all getting a bit too busy for my liking but thankfully my hotel for the night was on the outskirts about 15 miles out and I didn't have to deal with too much traffic. I was tempted to try and shoot into the city, but 4:30pm, rush hour and my trusty Waze app on my phone said it was about 1.5 hours each way I decided against it.
This was the boring log for the day.
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The next day, a Friday, wasn't too different, another 500 mile day up to St Petersburg, but this time up to the north side of the city. Once again I arrived at about 4pm and had to deal with the ring road. Basically it's chaos, a terrifying experience on a motorbike where I tried my best just to keep to the right and out of everyone's way but they're just insane. When I did manage to get off the ring road at my exit, it was a traffic light grand prix at every light, just nuts. But I found my hotel in the end. It was supposedly a swanky hotel (But only £40) but I think that the receptionist took a dislike to me as she shoved me in a west facing room where the aircon had been ripped out of showing just loose pipes, so sweltering hot sun shining in, no air con and I was knackered.
I did manage to find a McD's though for dinner and once again, God bless self service kiosks with English languages
This was my route for the day.
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A couple of snaps from the day. Firstly, one of these every 200 miles as they have free wifi and cold coke!
Hey, who stole my air con?
Outside the hotel. I would have swapped!
..and that's how much a cheeseburger costs on Russia McD's
I went for a walk around this northern suburb of St Petersburg and it was lovely, a couple of big parks etc and once again I contemplated going into the centre, but decided against it just because of the traffic.
The next morning it was a Saturday, and we all know what Saturday means ... parkrun day! I'd chosen this hotel as it was closest to the northernmost parkrun in the world. St Petersburg has three parkrun location but this seemed to be the biggest which means I wouldn't be the slowest. Not that it matters of course, but still.
I found the start line!
and at 9am, off we went, me in the red top smiling (not for long!)
It was a lovely event and I hung around for a while after having a chat to some people in my pidgeon Russian. But then it was time to head back to the hotel, have a shower, pack up and head West!
I'd set my satnav to avoid tolls as I was almost out of rubles and didn't want to draw more. However typically the first motorway I turned onto was a toll, thankfully they took cards! It was carnage on the motorway though, there was an accident and was about 10 miles of very slow filtering. On a wide oil cooled GS it wasn't fun, but got through it eventually buy picking up a local rider and having him make me gaps to filter through.
A couple more fuel stops and the roads started becoming emptier as I headed west towards the Finnish border. I met some Fins at a petrol station and we had a chat. Really nice guys, the reminded me to fill up too before I hit Finland as petrol wouldn't be as cheap as the (equivalent) 40p I was paying now!
Eventually I rolled up at the Russian border and it was empty! I thought I'd gone the wrong way or something. There were two other cars there ... uhm... ok! But it was normal and I was through in 5 mins. Nuts! Then onto the Finnish side and the famous (EU) Sign for me ... so once again, straight through, no queue, and I even had an easy-on-the-eye blonde Finnish lady to let me through. Happy days!
Back in the EU!
I headed over towards Helsinki, the roads were empty and it was very pleasant riding even if it was all motorway. Russia is awesome, however sometimes you just enjoy being back with what you're comfortable with, normal 1st world stuff if you know what I mean.
Paul has a friend on the outskirts of Helsinki and had arrived an hour or two before me. I arrived met up with Paul, his friend , his family and a Brit Ex-Pat and we settled down for a lovely evening of BBQ, dinner and conversation before setting up camp in his garden and calling it a night.
The day's route:
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I'm sure Paul can go into more detail ... if his memory isn't too bad from the alcohol that night