There had been thundery showers off and on all day yesterday, and it rained a lot in the night as well – it was still pretty warm so I had the hotel room window open and I was woken by the rain on several occasions – but by the morning it was only partly cloudy.
It was also a more sensible time to be getting up – the hotel had refused to do breakfast any earlier than 0700 (sensible them) so we didn’t need to have our bags in the lobby til 0645 – another sleep in 🙂
I went back to my room after breakfast to use the loo and when I returned a few minutes later I found only Rhys and Jordan (who was sweep today) remaining at the hotel so was second to last of the riders to leave this morning (rather than 6th which is when I usually end up leaving).
I’d also noticed an interesting looking church on my way into town on Saturday which I was interested in getting a photo of on the way back out (since we’re retracing our route to the main highway).
St. Macarius Temple
On Saturday afternoon Andreas had been out checking route scouting and had found a way to shave 19km off today’s ride. It’s also pretty flat round these parts it seems, so once we’d got over the hill at the town entrance it was going to be a pretty easy day.
Stage 31 rider notes
Even though I’d been late to leave by the time we turned off the highway I’d caught up with everyone except the five faster riders who usually leave before me anyway. The bridge was pretty impressive:
Suspension bridge over the Katun river
Rather than planks running perpendicular to the direction of travel this bridge has steal girders running in the direction of travel with a 30 – 50mm gap between them. When you’re riding a bicycle with 42mm tyres this is a pretty perilous situation since if your tyre drops into the gap your bike will stop, but good old momentum will chuck you over the handlebars onto the steal deck!
It seems that at this point many people opted to walk across, however I employed the Hythe Pier solution and made my way across by riding a zig-zag from side-to-side across the bridge ensuring that I was never travelling in line with the gaps, but always crossing them at a slight angle to ensure that my wheel couldn’t drop in!
Suspension bridge over the Katun river
The countryside today is back to being Canterbury – big wide plains with huge fields planted for cropping – it looks like mostly wheat or barley, but likely other cereal crops as well – it also looks like it’s going to rain!
Crops and rain clouds
There’s been a smaller selection of cool signs
and a collection of interesting vehicles
on the journey today.
I caught up with Grant and Jackie at around 50km – they had me confused for a while because in the normal order of people I would have expected to meet Paul and Erwin next (but it seems they were further ahead) so I couldn’t work out who the riders I was seeing were until I’d almost caught them!
It also seems that rural Russians, like rural Mongolians, have unfriendly dogs and I’ve been chased and barked at several times today.
In a town shortly before lunch I’d stopped to take a couple of photos (the tractor and truck above) so had dropped behind Grant and Jackie – just as I was getting back on the road a large truck overtook me and I was able to draft behind that for several km during which time I passed Grant, Jackie and Ivan who had stopped at a store for a coke.
After lunch (which at 70km, and after the late start was at much more like lunchtime) the road wasn’t so good – initially the tarmac was rougher, then pot-holed, and then for a while the road was concrete which was in very poor condition – that said, it was still vastly better than Mongolian gravel washboard!
The roundabout at 99.5km represented out most northerly point in the trip at 52 23.01′ North. Tonight’s camp is at 52 20.20′. Given that we’re two days off the longest day of the year I’m picking the sun might be quite late setting tonight (though the cloud cover should keep it relatively dark).
I got slightly lost getting into camp this afternoon – I’d made the right turn off the highway, but was so busy looking at the ‘interesting sign’ in front of me that I missed the flagging tape heading into the forest on my left (I’d been expecting camp to be on the right as well), so ended up riding a couple of extra km up the side road before deciding I must have missed something and heading back to the junction to find the camp nestled in the forest.
The mozzies are out in force at this camp – at least they were when I first arrived – since then I’ve had a wee snooze, and though I’m sitting in my tent to be bug-free currently when I went out to get some water between snoozing and writing they didn’t seem to be too bad! The other good news is that my knee has healed enough that I can sit cross-legged again (I still can’t kneel – maybe in a few more days) which does make sitting in my tent to write significantly easier.
I’m not sure I’ve got this napping thing mastered yet, but I didn’t feel too out-of-sorts when I woke up this afternoon (and it does help to fill in the time between getting to camp and dinner 🙂
It sounds and smells like someone’s lit a fire, and I’m out of water again, so I might venture out into the world and see what’s what. Based on some comments from people I’ve also decided that I’m going to add a ‘view from my tent’ photo to each day’s blog post, so here’s todays
View from my tent
Forest view from my tent
Later: Somewhat annoyingly the rain came just as we were trying to have tonight’s rider’s meeting so we were all in our wet weather gear huddled under one of the shelters for the update. Tomorrow’s another relatively short day (103km), with relatively good roads, though it sounds like they’ll be more at the rougher end of today’s scale.
It also sounds like I’m finally going to get to ride across a border crossing – it seems that the crossing from Russia to Kazakhstan can me made by any mode of transport desired including bike. It also seems that we don’t need to take care of our own belongings, they can simply cross in the TDA vans where they are. All of this is good news since we have 158km to cover over the course of the day – about 40km on the Russian side, the other 120km in Kazakhstan. And all of that with a hotel and a shower to look forward to 🙂
The fire was doing a reasonable job of keeping the mozzies away, but then it started to get too hot so was smoking less and the little b*tards starting biting again so I’m back in my tent where I can currently count over 20 of them trying to get in to feed on me!
Which reminds me, the poles which Steve brought were (as expected) exactly right and my tent is pitched properly for the first time in three weeks. Next rest day we’re going to trying and see if we can do a better job of fixing Bernice’s tent poles with some of the spare pole parts I now have, rather than it being held together with string and gaffer tape!
Other than the fact that we’re camped quite near a pretty busy road sleeping conditions seem pretty promising here as it’s nice and cool this evening, so despite the early hour (2000) it’s goodnight from me!
Riding data
