Cirencester to Odessa
3200km drive to Odessa from Cirencester...
Unfortunately, I didn't take the G... I took the audi instead because it consume way less fuel :-S
But anyway, the roads in eastern Poland and weatern Ukraine really is not suitable for normal cars. However, the roads in central and southern Ukraine are rather good.
My friend was stopped for speeding twice within 10 minutes on the E50 near Uman, 37ó fine... which means it was slighyly more than £3!
Photos and a more detail description of the journey will come later.
Greetings from sunny Odessa.
Pok
Congratulations.
Having riddeen around the entire Black Sea coast on my Honda Superblackbird I know exactly what you mean about the roads! Isn't the Crimean Peninsula just superb?
..just as stunning as the G-Wagen sized holes in the road in the outskirts to Odessa!
However for really bad roads Moldova is a must.
Sounds like a cool trip. Did you watch Long Way Round a few years back? They went out to Ukraine too and ended up sleeping a night with the local Mafia!
Congratulations.
Having riddeen around the entire Black Sea coast on my Honda Superblackbird I know exactly what you mean about the roads! Isn't the Crimean Peninsula just superb?
..just as stunning as the G-Wagen sized holes in the road in the outskirts to Odessa!
However for really bad roads Moldova is a must.
Crimea is absolutely fabulous! I went there 2 years ago... not by car tho. The only thing I don't really like about Ukraine is the police here are so corrupted. Going to Hungry on Tuesday...
In hungary at the moment. Saw 5 military Gs!!! A few hard tops and a soft top.
and What about the Skoda,s :lol:
and What about the Skoda,s :lol:
Hahahahahahahahahha!! We were in Prague a few days ago... about 30% of the cars there were Skodas! Saw 2 Gs there as well...
Now in Amsterdam, saw a 09 G500 and a pre-09 G320 CDI a few minutes ago... Hopefully I will be able to upload all the photos by tomorrow evening.
Ok... finally back in the UK. So tired.....!!!!! Here is the whole story of our amazing 20 days road trip;
20 days, 4970 miles (8051 km), 10 countries...
We left Cirencester on the 6th, August and made it to Berlin on the same evening. It was extremely tiring really, although I didn't drive the whole way... after finding a place to stay in Berlin, the first thing we did was to look for a shisha place, hahahahahhahahahah!!! It was one in the morning by then! Crazy us! We walked around the city on the second day and started the 1500km drive to Odessa on the 3rd day's afternoon.
Once we got into Poland, the bit of Polish road that connects to Germany was quite bad! That's what we thought at first because we still haven't seen any EXTREMELY BAD roads then. Nothing exciting happened in Poland, we only stopped once for petrol plus a few urination stops.
By midnight of that day, we finally arrived in Krakovets, one of the boarder crossings between Ukraine and Poland. We spent about 4 hours queueing up, there were a lot of Ukrainian and Polish cars trying to push in... basically, it was rather chaotic. We got out of Poland alright, but some the Ukrainian boarder guards at this crossing were completely corrupted. They tried to get €100 off us for a ridiculous reason; they haven't seen a temporary V5C before, but they clearly know what it is... so a board guard said to us we would have to pay €100 if we wanted to enter Ukraine. Eventually more and more people were involved, even a kind English speaking Polish driver as well. The guy didn't get the money, so he sent us back to Poland... and i overheard he told his boss that we had a problem with our passport... seriously annoying!!!
To be continued...
So we had to queue up again in order to re-enter Poland... After getting through the passport control our vehicle had to be inspected in case we were trying to smuggle a large amount of cigarettes back to the EU. However, the stop sign was written in Polish so we didn't bring the car to a halt... the Polish custom person rush out and shouted at us, it was rather embarrassing really... absolutely EVERYBODY was looking at us! He was the first person we met after Germany, whom could speak English. He said 'My name is XXXXXX and I am a Polish custom officer... when you see XXXXXX, you will STOP!' and he banged his hand on the desk. He continued, 'I meant to stand out there and stop you, but I am too lazy and it's too hot outside.' We then explained the frustrating situation to him, he told us that we could try the other border-crossing further up north. Just before we drove off, he said 'Welcome back to Poland!' Such a funny person.
So... we follow the sat nav to the other border crossing which was 30km away. But then, the route which was shown on the sat nav was not on the road map... that's because it wasn't a road but a track! That was the first time of this journey we had to drive the Audi offroad... by offroad I don't mean proper offroading like many of you do... but it was serious enough for the Audi. We finally came to a relatively deep ford with loads of mud, what was even worse was that there were no places to turn the car around in 2km or so! My friend reverse the car for all that way and we finally got back to a slightly better track. In the next few hours, we were just driving round the border area hoping to find the main road leads to Hrebenne (The other crossing). After much frustration and discomfort, we finally got to Hrebenne at about 13.00... the Ukrainian border guards here were much more friendly and helpful. Once again, they didn't know what the temporary V5C is so we were held for a short period of time... but then the big hat guy (he was wearing a massive hat and had 4 stars on his insignia, so he must be somebody important! A captain I guess) looked at all of our documents and eventually he letted us in to Ukraine!!!!!!
Our first impression of Ukrainian roads are not that bad... but we were so very wrong! After about 5 minutes into Ukraine, I would say the road condition was 'unsuitable for road vehicles'!
Normal RON 95 petrol was 6.5ó per litre, which was about 49p... YEAH!!!!!! An of course, we got a LOT of cigarettes, too... each pack costs about the same price as a litre of RON 95. Speaking of petrol... not only 95 was available, they also have 76, 80, 91 or 93! 76!!!!! That's WW2 standard!
We stay on the same road for about 700km, then we turn off at a place called Uman. Those who are interested in the history of the Eastern Front should be familiar with this place: 103,000 Soviet troops were captured and a further 100,000 were wounded/killed in July 1941.
It was around 20.00 or 21.00 when we got to Uman... my friend was speeding and suddenly we saw someone was signalling us to stop with a reflective stick; He, was a member of the famous Ukrainian PoPo. He told my friend that the speed limit was 80km/h and he was doing 90 something, then he asked for a 'penalty' <--- that actually was the word he used. We only had 37ó in cash then so he let us off... Probably less than 5 minutes after we restarted our journey, my friend was stop AGAIN by the PoPo, this time they told my friend to get into their Lada, my other friend and I started to panic... we saw a lot of people were stopped but they simply pay the '50'es off. This time the officer was not very happy with 37ó, later my friend told me that they were going to bring him to a cash point :-S, but he manage to flirt his way out... like 'I really love your country, it's my first day here... you are not going to do thing to a foreign guest, are you??' things like that!! So that officer eventually accepted the 37ó and we were on our way once agian!
I couldn't believe the fact that I still haven't finish writing this up... now I am in Ukraine again, must say it is not as exciting and crazy as the last trip because my mother is travelling wit me this time.
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