Though most people had decided to go for cabins, in the end I was really happy to be in my tent! It was cool, it was quite (discounting the river noise which actually helped to drown out anything else) and it was comfortable. I was in bed by 2020, asleep about 10 min later, and stayed that way until 0430 which meant that I actually woke up (rather then being woken by my alarm) and felt like I’d had a really good sleep for the first time in a long time.
There seem to be lots of things to look at this morning:
Stage 28 rider notes
And then a good climb this afternoon:
A big bump in the road
Although it’s still misty and cloudy now it hasn’t rained since about 1930 last night and looks like it’s going to clear into a really nice day (which would be great as I could then get my tent dry and my battery pack charged off my solar panels).
The ‘stone road’ wasn’t quite what I’d expected. I was expecting stone paving, kind of Pompeii style. What we got was something, well, less
Not-really stone road
Further down the road was the confluence of two rivers, the one which we’d been following, plus another much larger one. There was a lookout, but you couldn’t really see the confluence:
Somewhere here there are two rivers….??
The volume of water in the rivers at present, and consequently the speed at which they are travelling continues to be amazing – at one point we were riding alongside the river at just under 30 km/h and the logs in the current were pulling away from us!
I’d been keen to see the petroglyphs, but in the end I missed them completely – I had it in my head that they were at 58km, and I was about 1.5km off from the plan because I’d started my tracking from camp and spent time riding along the stone road etc, so at 58km by my measurement I started keeping an eye out – by 60km when I’d seen nothing I checked the notes and discovered that the real number was 54km. By then it was going to be a 12km ‘detour’ to go back, and I didn’t care that much! Turns out it didn’t miss much – those who had stopped said they couldn’t’ really see anything anyway.
With my breakfast banana at 40km and a Snickers at 60km, I was going well and into ‘lunch’ shortly before 1000 despite all the stoping I’d been doing. From lunch we still had over 60km (including the big hill) to go, so it was definitely a 2 sandwich day!
Thankfully Jordan was on lunch duty today because despite the fact that I’d cleaned and lubed my chain after all of the rain yesterday it was dry and squeaky by the time I got there so I begged some lube off him. I’m going to see if I can buy a large bottle of chain oil in Gorno and gift it to the lunch van so that there’s always lube there as this isn’t the first time I’ve wanted it at lunch time, and I wasn’t the only one who needed it today!
Grant and Jackie came and went while I was at lunch, but I caught up with them again about 10km out from lunch and continued on toward the bottom of the climb.
I really enjoyed the climb – it wasn’t as steep as it looks in the elevation profile and was well graded for most of the way with only one or two really steep sections and in the end I rode the whole climb without stopping.
I stopped at the top for photos back down into the valley I’d just come up from, then carried on to the ‘coke stop’ which was just over the crest of the hill – not so much a coke stop for us as a Russian tourist souvenir market so my plan for ‘ice-cream at the top’ went out the window.
Down the other side was great fun – decent tarmac, a good view ahead, and a decent grade made for a smooth flowing ride. From the bottom it was a further 15km to camp which also went by pretty quickly so I was in to camp shortly before 1300.
Once I’d picked a camping spot all the wet stuff came out – given that the sun was bright, and the temperature pushing 30 it took no time at all to get everything dry during which time I took a wash in the river we’re camped beside.
Another great riverside campsite
If you’d asked me what I expected Siberia to look like I probably wouldn’t have had much of an answer but it certainly wouldn’t have been this
Siberian countryside
50 min till dinner time, so I’m going to take a ride to the nearby mini-market which has been reported to exist and to sell cold beer!
Riding data
And no, not how I imagined Siberia to look either – I imagined something like The Desert Rd (SH1).
The north of Siberia’s certainly like that, down in the south where we’ve been it is, as you can see, much more Waikato like (complete with the cows)
I laughed out loud at your pic of the stone road!
Yeah – not quite what I had in mind 😉
I also use my bicycle hand pump for the car tires from time to time :-).
Bicycle tires need approximately double the pressure of car tires, how surprising that might sound.
I like the picture for your mother. And all the other ones as well.
Your daily blogs would make fabulous bed-time stories!
Have you not yet had a flat tire on the journey so far, or did I miss that part?
Greetz from KOB 🙂
While the pressure in a bike tyre is higher, the volume in a van is much higher so it’s slow work 😉
I’m scared to say it, but no, so far (over 3,000km) I’ve not had a single flat tyre! I’m using two different tread patterns of the Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres for the paved roads and gravel roads and (fingers crossed) so far they’ve been awesome.
Glad you’re liking the picture and the blog. Hello to all at KoB!
It’s so green! And not quite what I would have expected from Siberia either.