Day 25: Sunday 6th September
Our visit to Volgograd has been a good one. People are welcoming to visitors and much more friendly and laid back than those in Moscow – the helpful traffic cop, the waitresses, Igor the grounds manager at the hotel. The further south we go, the less ‘Russian’ the country becomes.
Hundreds of police are on duty along the roadside as we drive through the centre of Volgograd. Must be some event occurring today though we’re unsure what it might be.
Between Volgograd and the River Don the landscape is ‘steppe’ – wide open plains recently harvested and under the plough, with little shelter. This is what the Germans faced when they were marooned here in the winter of 1941/2, especially when their supply lines were cut by Zhukov’s encirclement. He planned the offensive not to attack the encircling troops directly but to give them a wide berth to the west and then gradually pulled the drawstring tighter and tighter until in the end, and against Hitler’s explicit orders, they were forced to surrender.
We fill up with water at a truck stop before the Don where there is another produkty. The young girl behind the window is friendly and we show our appreciation for the water and service by buying some Russian cheese and bottled water. She has every single item in the display cabinets clearly priced – a very impressive and untypical concern for the customer.
Then we dump grey water alongside the road away from habitations and stopping places.
It’s a good road in these parts and we make good progress towards Rostov. Much of the road has been resurfaced recently and is without markings for tens of kilometres. Then we’re flagged down at a DPS checkpoint and shown an image of ourselves on a laptop, caught on speed camera – doing 103 kph in a 40 kph zone! The latter must have been an area of road works where the signage is ambiguous – you are told when you must drop your speed but not when it has cleared so never know when the road work area has ended – and some of these go on for kilometres without any sign of activity.
I feign complete ignorance of the language and just keep repeating ‘no comprendi’ or words to that effect (ya ne panamayo). I return twice to the van to fetch ‘dokumenti’ – they were not satisfied with photocopies of the International Driving Permit. Once handed over this is clipped to some paperwork and thrown on a shelf at the back as if to say, ‘huh, now you have a long wait ahead of you’. I repeat my requests that they explain what is happening ‘pa Angliski’. After ten minutes of beating around the bush and with more victims of the same camera coming through the door he finally sees that progress with us is going to be time-consuming and very difficult so pulls the licence back off the shelf and hands it to me. I hesitate and ask if that is it, all clear, and he again points to the door. Phew. All credit, though, there was no talk of fines, cheques, banks, or thumb and forefinger rubbing, or anything else, so perhaps they were playing it with a straight bat after all.
The better roads seem to have led to an improvement in driving standards as there is no need for mad overtaking or dirt shoulder undertaking.
There was a camping sign at about 1040km from Moscow but no site to be found.
Beyond the Don there are hills in the distance and as we cross it the bridge is undergoing repairs – and possibly strengthening. It’s hundreds of feet above the river and bounces underneath us as we go across – most unnerving!
We make Rostov by 5pm – much earlier than expected and Jill says there’s nothing much to see here so we bypass it and continue on towards Krasnodar but immediately start to look for an overnight spot. Off the road again and after passing a couple of field entrances blocked with logs we soon find a partly concreted entrance track to another field, by some trees. We’re about 20 metres back from the road which seems fairly quiet and we have sunflowers on one side and a ploughed field on the other. No reason for anyone to bother us here.
It’s been another glorious summer’s day, sunny from start to finish, and we watch the sunset over the fields. Beautiful. Perhaps we’re now far enough south to benefit from Mediterranean weather? Only drawback is flies, plenty of them and with very quick reactions!
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