Tuesday 15 July 2014

Day 17 Tuesday 15th July mileage 4200 miles. Location Novosibirsk

Up and away from hotel and we did 50 miles before stopping for breakfast which consisted of fried eggs on a beef burger. These had been prepared earlier and then were warmed up in a microwave. This is the way the hot food is produced at all the cafe's and we haven't worked out why nothing is produced fresh! Also we cannot work out why we cannot get potatoes with any meal!!


Today we did a lot of miles to get ourselves all the way to Novosibirsk where we are picking up our new tyres. When we set off the sat-nav showed 291 miles before a turn off the existing road. David lead and even he managed not to take a wrong turn for 290 miles!!

We saw another beautiful grey hen harrier hovering at the side of the road.

During the journey we saw a wagon on the opposite side of the road and somehow he had managed to puncture a large hole low down in his diesel tank and he was spilling vast quantities of diesel onto the road. We all shuddered to think what it would have been like if it had been on our side of the road.

At one petrol station there was a full size cardboard cut out of a policeman next to his car with a speed camera to act as a deterrent.

We stopped for lunch which Frank and Geoff had something like a bubble and squeak coating around a burger,and Paul and Dave had a chicken leg. Then Dave went a took one of his panniers off his bike and while he as rummaging inside his pannier somehow he managed to knock his bike over. So now Geoff Paul and Dave have all dropped there bikes. Sadly the bike was picked up before anyone thought to take a picture.
At the same place a very friendly Russian man who had been talking to Dave came over and gave him a hi-viz orange jacket with a Gazprom logo. So we gave him a Manchester United cap as a thank you.



Today the weather was beautiful for travelling nice and sunny, but late on in Novosibirsk we were caught in traffic jams and it was very hot.



We stopped for fuel at a service station and there were large hornets buzzing around us as we filled up.

Paul's Garmin took us to what we thought was the place where our tyres would be waiting for us, but unfortunately although it was a motorcycle dealership it was not the address we needed. There were lots of mosquitoes at this industrial area and we were starting to get bitten. We checked the email address and realised we had made a mistake, so reprogrammed the correct address into Tomtom and it then proceeded to direct us into a dead end that had been blocked off because of a railway line. Anyway we improvised and Tomtom eventually took us to the correct address, but again no obvious motorcycle place. We phoned the contact number and Stanislav Kuptov answered and came to where we were and told us the tyres were at his home waiting for us. When we asked him about local hotels he must have thought we wanted to stay with him and he apologised saying his flat was only small and he lived with his girlfriend. After reassuring him we didn't expect to bunk up at his place he told us of an hotel close by. It's the plushest hotel we have stayed in to date but we were all in need of a bit of luxury.

Sadly not possible to download photos from some cameras onto the iPad because Geoff has lost the adaptor that accepts the SD card! He now has to go to the Apple shop in Novosibirsk as they are not available at normal electronic stores.

More later
RRs


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1 comment:

  1. Had a look on the map, you must be almost right in the middle of the continent, long way. Sounds like a fantastic adventure, keep up the posts, look forward to reading them. Take care chaps.

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