Lviv a little!
21 JulI awoke from my tarpaulin bed early, and we were one of the first teams to leave Klenova Castle. We drove past Prague. It would have been great to visit, but we would have had to battle peak hour traffic, and who wants to visit Prague in the morning anyway! Stephen has been before, and Tim and I relied on his description, and the Lonely Planet’s.
Our first vehicle problem occurred about 60 miles past Prague, on the way to Poland. We developed a very alarming buzzing noise, which was quickly traced to a loose rubber seal at the top of the windscreen. Later Tim was stopped by the Police for not driving with his lights on, which in hindsight is compulsory. They were nice enough.
We stopped in the Czech town of Olomouc for what was a fantastic pub lunch at the local university. Tim and I had a tasty beer, and Stephen continued behind the wheel. Olomouc has a lovely main square…I’m told it rivals Prague’s. We met Team Thuunderbirds who told us they’d just talked their way out of a 5000Zl fine for not having a motorway permit. You have to buy a 7 day pass which cost more than lunch!
Picture of Olomouc Square, and close up of impressive town clock
With a full belly for the first time in what seems like weeks, we pushed on past Krakow and all of the way across Poland to the Ukraine border at...
The polish border
We arrived at about 1am, which we later discovered was 2am due to a timezone change, expecting it to be closed. The plan was to sleep in the queue. However when we got to the border the queue of trucks was so long (maybe 3 or 4 miles) that we couldn’t see the entrance. We drove down the side of the queue to take a look. It was still open, and there was a queue of 100 cars which joined. However a man looked at our car and waved us on, and within 10 minutes we were at passport control. Getting through the border is about a six stage process, where you get given meaningless bits of paper, which then must be handed in further on in the process. They inspected the VIN number on the car, and I showed them where it was stamped on the compliance plate. They weren’t happy and wanted to see it on the chassis, but I couldn’t find it! As we started tearing up the carpet they took pity on us and let us go. By 3am we were out the other side. I’m not sure if it’s that easy for other teams, but we were counting our lucky stars.
Entering the Ukraine was like someone flicked a switch. The queues of strange cars at the border, motorbikes with sidecars carrying working class Ukrainians to the other side was a good indicator. The road on the other side was woeful. This is a main road, and it’s got speed humps on it and massive potholes. I really don’t know how to describe it. On top of that there was fog, and no one else around. We hadn’t thought so much about what to do when we got into the Ukraine, and now we found ourselves with no accommodation and a road that was risking damaging our suspension at night. We found a sign to a hotel on a side road, and followed it through some dark spooky farming land. It was 3:30am by now, and not surpisingly the hotel was shut. No matter, a bit further down the road we found a flat grassy area next to the road. Tents were up and we were asleep by 4am.
A hard but good day. 590 miles today and 1217 from Hyde Park. Still a long way to go!
