Steve's Cycling Blog

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When I first emerged from my tent shortly before 0445 to leave a small deposit in the bushes the sky was lightening and it looked like it was going to be a sunny day. Half an hour later once I’d got into riding gear and packed everything up when I emerged again the fog had arrived – and it was thick!

One of the drawbacks of camping in long grass is the amount of condensation which collects on the underside of ones tent fly – although we didn’t get any rain overnight my fly was sopping wet this morning. Thankfully the bag it goes into is made form the same fabric as the tent floor so tends to keep the water in the tent bag, rather than it going all through my day bag – previous TDA riders have taken the added precaution that they have a dry bag into which their tent goes, reversing the usual use for a dry bag, but ensuring that their daily-bag contents stay dry.

In extremely bad news the lunch van has run out of peanut butter – and it gets worse – peanut butter doesn’t exist as a concept in Russia (Christina our Russian translator was extremely taken with it and wanted to know what was in there when she first tried it) so for the foreseeable future there won’t be any more! I’ve suggested that TDA buys a mincer and a large bag of peanuts and we make our own, but I don’t think they took me seriously – I might have to see if I can buy one on the next rest day and prove my point.

On the good news front – porridge and bananas at breakfast this morning (usually bananas go with eggs)

As well as learning to nap I’m also learning to eat bananas which in the real world I would have considered beyond redemption, but when you’ve got 128km to ride with several hills in the way you can’t be too fussy.

Out into the fog and on my way at 0545, briefly with Ivan before heading off on my own. I passed Jackie and Grant as we made the right turn at the green grocer – quite how we were supposed to know it was a green grocer at 0600 is beyond me given that they were firmly closed!

I caught up with Erwin and Paul as they began climbing on the gravel. In the end this was the worst gravel of the day, but compared to Mongolia was quite rideable and it was possible to find a line that wasn’t too uncomfortable.

The fog hung around until about 25km, then cleared for about 15km before returning shortly after I got back onto tarmac.

The roads in this part of Russia were obviously built in more prosperous times. There are places where the tarmac has been patched and filled so many times that it looks more like a quilt than a road, and then other places where it’s obviously got so bad that they’ve given up patching it and simply graded the tarmac away to leave stretches of gravel which can last from as little as 50m to as much as 5km.

A banana at 40km, the buttered fruit bread I’d taken from breakfast at 55km and the climb up to lunch proved to be shorter and less steep than I’d expected, so the lunch stop arrived somewhat unexpectedly at 65km. From that point the fog finally vanished for the day and within the next 10km I went from four layers, leg warmers and full finger gloves to two layers and fingerless gloves.

The first 20km from lunch was ‘gravel’ but in fact it was hard-packed dirt which proved to be some of the best surface of the day with a smooth and quick descent through to the bridge at 80km.

From there the road undulated over rolling hills as I continued on towards camp. I stopped for a Sprite at the 99km Coke stop, and an ice-cream and beer-to-go at the 120km stop before discovering that camp had been moved from the anticipated location because it was too muddy. Where we’ve ended up is however a great spot beside another river.

This afternoon I’ve pitched my tent snuggled up to about the only tree which will provide afternoon and evening shade – I’m in the long grass to do so, but I’d prefer the shade and a wet fly in the morning to a spot on the short grass which would put me in direct sun till it sets.

Tomorrow’s the first of two long days to get us over the Russian border and into Kazakhstan. I’m still confused by the schedule this week, even today we could have gone a further 20ish km to shorten the last day of the run into rest day.

I’m siting behind my tent in the shade as I type this, but I feel a little like I’m in Australia because I have a small cloud of flies which are intent on buzzing round my head and being generally annoying (obviously if I was in Australia it would be a large cloud, and they;’d be even more annoying). In fact they’ve got too annoying so I’m going to go for a wander along the river and see what I can see.

Later: I continue to be amazed at the flow rate of the rivers in Russia, particularly when you consider how wide the river is and how low (in altitude) we are currently – we’re at only 275m above sea level, yet look at the rate at which the driftwood passes through:

I had a nice walk up onto a promontory above camp where I could see the two rivers which converge here as well as the campsite itself:

By the time I was back to camp my tent was completely in the shade so a wee snooze took care of an hour by which time it was almost time for rider’s meeting and dinner.

Cuckoos seem to be all across this part of Russia – we often hear them when riding on the quieter roads, and there’s always at least one in camp.

I had hoped that tomorrow I wouldn’t need to carry my wet-weather gear, but the forecast is for thundery showers in the early afternoon – if the ride was a little shorter I’d risk that I’d be in camp before the shower arrived, but with the longer distance tomorrow that’s not so certain so I guess it’ll be in my camelback again tomorrow.

Riding data

View from my tent