If we thought the mossies were bad last night they had nothing on what they were like this morning – the moment you opened the tent door they descended en-mass and began feeding from any exposed skin!
Also somewhat annoyingly having not rained since about 1900 last night just as we were about to get up and take our tents down it decided to piss down again and get everything wet!
Grant was finding the mossies so bad last night that he stayed in his tent from 1500 (and begged Jackie to take him some dinner) through until this morning at which point he got up, packed his tent as quickly as possible, and left without breakfast to avoid being eaten.
Stage 32 rider notes
Breakfast was a pretty quick affair as getting out of camp was top priority. Once on the road all was well from a mozzy perspective, and the tarmac was in pretty good shape so progress was relatively quick.
At lunch Erwin mentioned a cycle touring book he has which says of Russia
“Why would you bother, there are so many interesting countries you could visit.”
I have to say that this part of Russia lives up to that – it’s flat and featureless with very little to see other than crop fields and hay paddocks.
As I passed through one village I was surprised to see people with coloured buckets walking from the road back toward their houses away from a small tanker. My initial thought was collecting water, but then I realised the buckets were empty. Around the corner and the puzzle was solved as I watched the milk being emptied from the bucket into the tanker. Sadly by the time I realised what was happening it had happened, and the truck driven off before I could get a photo.
The lunch stop was down for 65km, however they had a hard time finding anywhere to stop, so in the end it was almost 70km before I found them off on a side road. Ivan was just leaving as I arrived and Grant and Jackie were enjoying lunch.
I caught up with Grant and Jackie at the 82km coke stop when I joined them for a drink and we rode the last 20km together.
So into camp by 1030 – I kinda don’t get why we’ve stopped so soon – the last day of this run is 158km including a border crossing, yet today we’ve stopped after only 102km – granted only 40km of the last day are in Russia, but surely we could get closer to the border before we stop, particularly since we’re bush-camping everywhere anyway?
On the plus side I guess my tent is dry after this morning’s shower, and my solar panels are happily generating plenty of power which will allow me to charge my laptop later.
We passed a couple of shops a few km back so a few of us are going to head back there shortly for a beer, or two.
Later: With storm clouds building I decided that going to the shop was to fetch takeaway beers and an ice-cream and then return to camp so I left it till later in the afternoon so that I had cold beer with my dinner.
Although the clouds gathered and a lot of rain fell around us we only got a few spits in camp which was good.
Later in the evening once the wind dropped the mossies started to arrive so most of us took that as the queue to go to bed though with this being the longest day it was quite a lot later that the sun actually set.
Riding data
View from my tent
Paddock Paddock view with no neighbours
