Leaving Kiev
It’s easy to be lulled into a comfortable niche, even if that niche is a bottom bunk in a shared dorm room in a hostel!
After waiting for car parts, visiting Lvov, and then returning to Kyiv I finally decided to tear myself away from the comfy cocoon of the Hostel and resume my travels.
I have mentioned in earlier posts how much better, in general, the condition of Ukrainian roads are when compared with Russian roads….There are exceptions of course…….
At about 9pm as I was driving on a very smooth tarmac road, doing about 75kph…
….the SatNav directed me onwards….
….the road signs directed me forward….
….but apparently no one had told the road construction crews though
I’ve been airborne with all 4 wheels of the ground in the truck before……
But not at 50mph, in the dark….TOWING A TRAILER….
The pics don’t show it well but the road just disappears off a 2ft ledge, there’s nothing but dirt and gravel for about 500 metres and then the smooth tarmac starts again!
Spectacular driving skills dumb blind luck….I don’t care which…I stayed upright and didn’t jacknife the trailer!
Ukrainian roads are usually good……but when they’re bad….!
Driving south towards the Crimea is an agricultural nirvana…and after the seemingly endless white vistas of ice and snow in the northern winter, the flat green expanses and the dark rich fertile soils of the Ukraine comes as a bit of a shock!
It’s easy to see why this place was so valuable, as the ‘breadbasket’ of the Soviet Union, and equally easy to understand why it was coveted by Hitler to facilitate the need for space and food in his utopian vision for the Third Reich.
Though sometimes it felt as though I had been teleported to Dutch lowlands…..?
Farmers have converted military and collective farm buildings to their own personal uses……
…the other constant is the web of gas pipelines across the countryside which causes so much friction between Russia and Ukraine.
…and even here the war is a constant presence and even this small town paid a huge human price…..
There are ruined and abandoned structures dotted all across the landscape….I came across this one and decided to camp for the night with empty views over a huge lake…..
…as I moved on the next day I had a little race with a train driver as I headed south…..
Until I came across this defunct aerodrome full of military helicopters…
