Short note, more to come later. We’ve reached this larger town on lake that feeds into the Volga River (look on the road between St Petersburg & Vologda). Having fun cycling, though roads are quite variable. Plan to rest here for a day and then continue on Saturday.

This first bit, I’ll describe as our “bicycle boot camp”, as we figure out what to eat, where to camp and how to get across this part of Russia. The roads are sometimes rough which slows things down a fair amount. Let me briefly describe our evening “water ritual” at end of the day. As we’ve completed close to 100km in a day, we start looking for a place where we might end the day. We watch for signs along the road for one of the next villages and follow the road into the small village. Here we find people we meet and use various words for “well”, “spring”, “water” as well as some pantomine to indicate that we’re looking for some water. Folks help show us where to find the water and we fill up enough for camping. We then cycle just the last little bit to find a place not far off the road to camp. Two days ago, our water ritual led to an invitation to come inside, have some soup and otherwise meet folks [PEDAL folks note, Robin gave me a few chocolates with PEDAL on the wrapper; we gave one of these to the grandson].

Today in the big city, it is quite industrial outside town, as a steel town and smells it for a while. Fortunately, the wind was blowing away from the town. It took a bit to find a hotel today; the first one we were sent was expensive and small, but we’ve found a better one. Likely plan is to stay here two nights and then continue along our journey. Not sure about internet connections overall.

Posted by mev as European Russia at 4:58 PM EDT

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Today a ride into the big city and first night in a hotel. The roads were becoming busier as we came closer to the big city. Initially it was flat riding through the woods with just a few villages marked along the way. At 15km I was pleased to see a sign for a café in 20km. So, kept riding slowly along to Суда where there was another truck stop type place. A small store provided a yogurt and excuse to stop. The nearby café somehow wasn’t serving things, so continued the last bit to Череповец.

Turnoff to the city was at 52km. From here we headed southbound again. In distance were a large number of factories belching smoke. At least the wind was blowing away. Without too much difficulty we found center of the city. Now time to find a hotel. It took several times of asking, each time would get us a little closer to the destination. We were told about the Leningrad Hotel and hence headed there. We found it not much further than the stadium. However, it was both expensive and small. We were able to ask for another hotel and sent along our way.

We found the second hotel and initially it was even more expensive, but then the price suddenly dropped when they told us it would be cheaper “вез горячий” (or something like that, I couldn’t quite find things in the dictionary). The price seemed right so we took it. Later we figured out from context that hot water had been turned off. This wasn’t a big deal for hot water heat but was a surprise on taking a shower.

We walked back through most of the town looking for a café and then back to our hotel with stop in the supermarket. Along the way, found a “computer club” that was filled with adolescent boys playing computer games, but also had connections to the internet. We are likely to take a rest day here for a short breather from tough parts of riding the road. Plan is to post this on the rest day, though photos may have to wait.

74km today, 3070km across Eurasia. [Photo: 550 554]

Posted by mev as European Russia at 4:44 PM EDT

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