First things first, I have just realized how long this is, so apologies in advance!!
So, this is a diary of the longest drive I have ever done door-to-door, and then the next leg of the journey. It starts in Madrid; we arrived here on the 23rd of December, loaded the trucks in on Christmas Eve and then reloaded on the 30th December. The route north was back into France through irun, up to Paris, through Belgium to Germany. We had time on our side but I wanted to get moving to avoid any hold ups round Paris, so I did pretty much a full shift, parking up a couple of hours short of Bordeaux early afternoon new years eve. 9 hours later and I was off, it was nice to have the roads virtually empty and make good progress.
waiting to leave the gig in madrid
spain
I was somewhere around Bordeaux when the new year came in. I stopped at the centre routier at Niort for a couple of hours for a brew and to use the internet coming from the hotel there to send a couple of messages and generally catch up as I hadn’t really been online for a couple of weeks. I pressed on, and hit Paris around 8am new years day, the traffic wasn’t too bad thankfully, and I parked up a little north of Paris, where I met up with my friend who I was going to roughly run with. After speaking to him, he had come round Paris around 3am, and it was a nightmare apparently! A lot of drunken Parisians had taken to the road, which made the driving interesting to say the least apparently! So another 9 hours and I set off, stopping at liege for diesel and adblue. And by the time I was crossing into Germany the holiday ban had lifted, but the traffic was still fairly quiet, but I wanted to get well clear of the whole Koln area before the 2nd. I parked up close to Hannover for the night/day. After a break we pressed onwards east, stopping at an autohof at piene. The plan was to have a break, stock up on some shopping as there’s a couple of supermarkets there, unfortunately my truck had an exhaust warning up on the dash, which I was guessing was a sensor as a couple of the other trucks on this had the same problem, so I had to head on to dafs in Magdeburg, fortunately it was only just off the motorway, and being as the new year had just begun it was nice and quiet, and I was in and out in an hour or so. I pressed on past berlin and stopped for my mate to catch me up, and we headed into Poland, stopping in a services for the night. The next day started at a nice leisurely pace, and once we had drunk enough tea and utilized the Wi-Fi in McDonalds we carried on. The route we had decided was to come off before Warsaw, skirt the city and then pick up the road north towards augustow. Heading up the road, my mate in front got pulled for speeding, so I carried on until the next services. When he caught me up they had claimed they had also clocked me speeding with another speed gun in the car! He had bartered them down to a 20-euro fine, and they had even told him somewhere good to eat close to where we were! So we went into a hotel for some great (and cheap!) polish food. Once we were nice and full we carried on and parked in a small café/exchange just before the border at about midnight. After a couple of beers it was time for bed. We had decided to run a 24-hour break here as it had food, toilets and a shower. Our 24 hours would be up at midnight, and as as I fancied driving during the day, we decided to stay put for the night until the morning before setting off.
parked in poland, with the first hints of snow
A quick stop the other side of the polish border to get Lithuanian vignette and we were off again, stopping to diesel up and top the adblue up. The temperature was now dropping, and the first real signs of snow and cold were about, with one river we crossed looking like it was full of mini icebergs. We pressed on into Latvia and arrived at our rendezvous point in a small town called rezekne. The plan was to have another 24 hour and then head for the Russian border on the 8th, the day after their orthodox Christmas day. What I hadn’t worked out properly was the date though and we were a day earlier than what I had thought!! So we ended up having a 45-hour break. It’s a short walk into the town, and a few of the others had booked themselves into a hotel there we use when we have double drivers, as the parking didn’t really have much if anything in the way of facilities, so we made the most of using their showers and also ate in the hotel there.
lithuania
looks chilly…
parked in latvia
So on the 8th we set off for the border, hoping the queue wouldn’t be too big, which thankfully there wasn’t a queue at all. We started customs formalities on the Latvian side and were soon through to the Russian side. Then a small miracle happened; we were cleared and good to go in 6 hours from arriving on the Latvian side, incredible!! As we have ■■■■■■ cars (I wish we didn’t!) and no one was expecting us to get through so quickly, we parked up just through the border in a hotel/truckstop. You could tell you were back in Russia when you turned a tap on and smelt the sulphur! Still, I love coming here and it was good to be back in the wild! The next day we set off in groups. We did 4 hours and parked up in another hotel/truckstop we know of for a 45-minute break. There’s a police checkpoint outside, and they had pulled one of our other trucks and told him he was overweight on the drive axle, so he was sorting that out with his group, after a quick check with them we carried on. The plan was to get to a truckstop a couple of hours short of Moscow which has the best showers east of Poland and good food, and it was in reaching distance. What we didn’t factor in was over 40kms of roadworks, when I say roadwork’s they had torn the road up and that was pretty much it!! This brought progress down to almost a crawl!! We made it to the truckstop but close on our time! By now, it was cold!! But the showers have under floor heating and it was almost like having a sauna! I was debating whether to leave the truck running overnight as it was close to minus 20, but decided none of the locals had so it should be alright.
queueing at the border
these betz were on their way back from afghanistan!! ■■■■■■■■!!
old brian ashby (BAT) MAN
en route
stuffed animal anyone??!!
ah, the roadworks!
a few of the trucks en route:
is this extra long or is it just me?
Sure enough in the morning all was good. We had decided to have a 9-hour break to get round Moscow before the ring road started getting busy, as it can be a nightmare! We got round it just before the traffic was really building up, it certainly was heading into town. We stopped for a 45 in a café for some breakfast and pressed on, parking up just before a town called nitzy Novgorod. Rather than have a short break and start again around midnight we had a long break and set off at 8am the next day, unfortunately the traffic into town was busy, and this was our route! Once we were through the traffic eased, and the scenery was fantastic, all the trees caked in snow, it was -20ish now the whole time, but the sky was clear and even occasional sunshine. After a stop for diesel we stopped in another large café/hotel for a break and shower, and this place had pretty much everything for a truck you could want (except a CB mic clip apparently!), and I treated myself to a map of Russia, so I could practice my Russian reading and to get a real sense of scale of the place, ■■■■ its big!! Once we set off the going was good again, until we got into Kazan, which we hit just as rush hour was starting, ah well, cant win them all! We got to our parking area, and had 4 days before we had to load the trucks in!
diesel stop
dirty bib!
anatolevka…
frozen river, which had a car parked on it
santa on his way home…
bbbrrrrrrrr
This is where the cold really kicked in, and several trucks had problems, mainly the night heaters packing up. Mine did once, but fortunately I woke up to find the cab getting cold but I managed to get it going again almost straight away thankfully! Others needed heaters on pipes and blowing waxed diesel out. As I was one of 2 drivers who had been here before (the other wasn’t here with us) I helped our lead driver with what I knew of the venue, and a possible route in to get round any truck bans, and also to help people with what and where to see in town. The parking area we were in at the weekends was a second hand car sales area, and it was entertaining to watch people testing possible ‘new’ cars for themselves, which seemed to consist of how much you can rev it, how good it does handbrake turns in the snow and how irritating the alarm is! Before we knew it, the 4 show days were over, and we were loading back up and heading for Moscow, hoping the weather would still be on our side as it had warmed up to about -12ish and it had started to snow again.
at the parking
spot the scot!
theres a lada under there somewhere
kazan
joey playing around!!
about to take a short cut…
We get lucky, and had a good run back to nitzy Novgorod, parking up again for a 9 hour break to press on to Moscow and again beat the traffic, esp. as it would be a Monday morning when we arrive. Fortunately we got in without any major issues, and now we had a whole week in Moscow. One noticeable thing was it was warmer but there was a bit of wind so it felt colder than it had in Kazan.
think my trailers got clubfoot!
arena moscow
waiting to load in
and my new present from a special friend of mine in moscow!
The week flew by and before we knew it load out was in full swing and we were heading back to the Russian Latvian border, the temperature finally got above -10 and my adblue, which had been frozen since heading for the border had thawed enough for the truck to start using it again! The total mileage for this trip has been just over 7000kms. I’m currently sat writing this back at the border (its been 8 hours so far and were not cleared out of Russia yet, ah well it gave me time to write all this down!)
Well, I know it’s been a long read, I hope you enjoyed it
