Making up for lost time

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

 

5 minutes ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

Fantastic reading your updates

 

Maybe you could include mileage updates along the way as you must be clocking up some impressive numbers?

I keep meaning to, but forget every time I park up! While my speedo is in km/h, my odo also reads km so I need to actually change it to check rather than just looking down. I briefly switched it back to miles today while in a traffic jam and it's up over the 4k mark though! 

[CarbonWest - Chris Broster - Bristol & Bath AO]

Fantastic blog of a wonderful journey - you are putting us all to shame!  As mentioned before, a Westfield World article is a must!  

 

Keep up the posts and of course, keep smiling!

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

1 hour ago, Chris Broster - Bristol & Bath AO said:

Fantastic blog of a wonderful journey - you are putting us all to shame!  As mentioned before, a Westfield World article is a must!  

 

Keep up the posts and of course, keep smiling!

 

I reckon I'll be able to compile some of these posts into an article at the end!

 

Got ahead of myself with the mileage - only just over 3k so far.  It had to come at some point, but I suffered my first mechanical failure today...

 

...When my washer jet hose blew off. I can deal with that in exchange for 3050 miles! 

[CarbonWest - Chris Broster - Bristol & Bath AO]

That is still amazing, I only did 2500 in my first year and that all UK based! But I suppose if you build it, and know you built it right, then you can have the confidence to drive it wherever...

 

 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

37 minutes ago, Chris Broster - Bristol & Bath AO said:

But I suppose if you build it, and know you built it right, then you can have the confidence to drive it wherever...

 

 

 

Haha, as of yet undecided whether it's that, or way over estimating a combination of the reliability of my car and my ability to repair it if/when something goes wrong! 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Somehow made it to Kiev! Border crossing from Poland ended up taking the best part of 7 hours just to get to the polish checkpoint, then another couple of hours to get to the Ukrainian one. The Ukrainian police thought my car was hilarious - not sure how many times the word "crazy" was said! They let us through eventually though. Chris had to buy some insurance for his car on the far side. With none of the Ukrainians speaking English, and us having no Ukrainian, we have no idea what he actually ended up with but it cost the equivalent of about €11!

 

By the time we got all that sorted, it was nearly midnight, so we found a spot to camp on the far side of the border, cooked some dinner and went to bed.

 

Google said it would be 6 hours to Kiev from where we camped so we got up at 6:30, packed the tents and hit the road as soon as it was light. For all the worries that we had for the road quality, it's really not as bad as people made out. Probably on par with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, with the exception being any bridges. They really seem to be the weak point in the road surfaces. One of them that we crossed, (on the main road to Kiev), you could actually see the river through the holes in the tarmac which was quite concerning! Also, when waze warns you of a pothole on the road ahead in Ukraine, be prepared to take a detour around a crater. It was pouring down with rain for most of the drive. The car was fine for it other than one or two points where there was standing water in the ruts in the road which made it a little twitchy! 

 

Ukrainians have been really polite and friendly any time we've talked to them so far (or tried to!). Everyone has been asking permission before taking any pictures of the car. I really want to get a photo of the westie next to one of the old ladas here but haven't seen an owner around when I've been parked up to ask!

 

Once we got to the city, the driving seemed to change. Its a sort of chaos that everyone here seems to understand. The lane boundaries (and even driving versus pedestrian boundaries) are really not very clear which doesn't make for a fun drive. When we eventually made it to the hotel, reception said we could use the underground car park. After scraping the gearbox hoop on the way in, the security guard told us otherwise. More scraping on the way out, and had to use the outdoor car park around the back of the hotel instead! All OK though - while they all want the photo, nobody here would want a Westfield, it's too low and wet for their tastes! Besides, between the pretty well hidden ignition, the immobiliser, and the lack of a steering wheel, it's pretty well protected!

 

With the weather being pretty horrible, and the amount of distance we had to cover, I didn't get a chance to take any decent photos yesterday, but when we leave on Sunday, I'll try to get something as a little evidence of how far east we've driven! I wonder what's the longest distance from home anyone's ever driven their Westfield? Might have achieved a random record with it! 

[Geoffrey Carter (Buttercup)]

I did look at going to Noway but struggled a bit with that and then looked at going to Hamburg, Peenemunde, Wraclaw and down to Auschwitz.

 

That was going to have been my furthest drive from home. 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Waay too long between updates, but in my defence, it's been a busy few days and any time I've had free, I basically haven't had Internet. Just crossed into Romania again this morning so back to free EU roaming!

 

I'm not sure what I expected of Ukraine, but the experience was certainly different. We spent the weekend in Kyiv (Kiev) other than Saturday when we took the day trip to Chernobyl. Chernobyl is incredible, but for anyone thinking of visiting Ukraine, allow yourself more time than just for that one thing. Kyiv, and the whole country from what I saw, is incredible. The people mostly haven't a word of English, but they're fantastically friendly and perfectly willing to struggle through a broken conversation.

 

The city was beautiful too. Lots of remnants of the soviet era, but there are some incredible bits of architecture around. We did a walking tour of the city too which was really educational. Here are a few random highlights.

 

 

 

The monument and arch below were built as a symbol of friendship between Ukraine and Russia, but since the start of the war in Crimea, someone has stuck a "crack" on it to symbolise damage to that friendship. 

 

 

Gotta love the cars here too! 

 

 

Every Saturday night they close the main street too for a street party and light show. We only took a wander through it as we were pretty wrecked after the day but it seemed good fun! 

 

 

I'll try to do another post later with Chernobyl photos etc, but I didn't want to bundle them together, as Kyiv really is well worth a visit on its own! 

[Geoffrey Carter (Buttercup)]

Love that first picture.

 

I always like imposing  looking buildings and statues.

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

4 hours ago, Geoffrey (Buttercup) - North Yorkshire AO said:

Love that first picture.

 

I always like imposing  looking buildings and statues.

 

It's Gorodetsky house in Kiev. Built on the side of a hill so the other side is nearly twice as tall. That architect did most of the really impressive buildings in the city, and built that one as his personal house. 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

I need a few days of nothing remarkable happening so I can get caught up in these posts... Of all the problems to have, eh? 

 

Saturday morning in Ukraine we set off for our trip to Chernobyl. We were a little worse for wear after the night before so had planned on catching up on sleep on the 2 hour bus journey. Of course, we forgot about the road quality. No sleep to be had there!

 

I won't try to explain the history behind Chernobyl here, but by all accounts, the HBO series on it is very accurate in what happened. I haven't watched it just yet but I've been meaning to and definitely need to after this visit. 

 

When you arrive at the exclusion zone, you get your passport checked, and then have to queue up for a personal radiation tag to measure how much you absorb during your visit. (generally a negligible amount). Then back on the bus, and we drove to one of the 200 abandoned villages.  I'm only going to post up a really small subset of photos here btw,  but if anyone is interested to see more, let me know and I'll send them across. This is a common sight.

 

 

People were told they only needed to leave for a couple of days, so to take nothing with them, so basically everything was left.  Including some nightmare inducing dolls at the local children's nursery

 

 

After a few villages, we stopped off at the reactor. At the time, they cocooned it in a massive concrete building called the sarcophagus, however they knew this wasn't a permanent solution. More recently, they've built a massive metal structure inside which they're going to essentially dismantle the reactor. 

 

 

Next we went to Pripyat - The city built specifically for power plant workers. Our guide had several photos from before the disaster where you could see key landmarks and buildings, bustling with people, in stark contrast to the abandoned buildings now. 

 

 

You've probably seen photos of the fairground built for the workers' children before, but it's really incredible in the flesh. 

 

 

 

Next up, the school. The floor was littered with books, and in the canteen, there were a pile of children's gas masks on the floor. They had been issued in preparation for an attack by the US during the cold war, but due to the Soviets wanting to play down the severity of the disaster at the time, they were never used when the reactor blew, even though the could have prevented a lot of harm. 

 

 

After the school, we paid a visit to an old Soviet radar designed to detect US missile launches, known as the "Russian Woodpecker". I'd suggest googling that one for a photo. It was so big I couldn't get it into frame from any angle. 

 

I could go on more here to be honest. There are so many photos. I would highly recommend people take the time to visit Kyiv and Chernobyl, but make sure you allow time for both! One weekend definitely wasn't long enough for Kyiv. Fun as it has been, I would also recommend flying, or at least driving something with ground clearance! The roads are awful! 

 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Sunday morning, I spent some time improving the waterproofing situation in my car using some of rubber and foam that Josh and Ben (friends we met up with in Kyiv) had taken with them for me. At about 90km/h, the driver's side door had been riding up the wheel arch and diving in at the top, creating a big gap at the bottom and essentially sucking air in. Also the gaps around the front of the door to the screen uprights weren't great in the rain. A little foam and rubber later and it's a big improvement. Car can now to 130 on the motorway comfortably with no sign of the door wanting to cave in. It doesn't look pretty, and I'll need to fix it properly so I can take the doors off on nice days but for the moment it works.

 

 

We then said our goodbyes to Ben and Josh so they could set off to catch their flight and we started driving again.

 

We had a brief stop off at the "tunnel of love" to get some photos.

 

 

About two miles before the parking spot, we drove through a little village. Two kids there nearly dislocated their jaws when we drove past, and sure enough when we got to the car park they had hopped on their bikes and cycled behind us (did I mention how bad the roads were - cyclists could keep up!). We spent a little time telling them about the cars and what we were doing anyway and they seemed delighted with it! 

 

Then we set off again to get to our camping spot for that night. When we arrived it was dark, so we just pitched the tents, cooked some dinner and went to bed.

 

There had been some mention of a nearby fort on the campsite app we use so we decided to take a walk and check it out in the morning. I'm very glad we allowed the time for that!

 

For Tarakanivskyy is an 18th century Fort, only accessible through tunnels.  The tunnels themselves have loads of rooms, murder holes and everything, but unfortunately my camera would never do them justice. When you get through though, that's where the real treat is. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fort was attacked by Russian forces in the early 1900s and left in ruins. The legend goes that the nazis inhabited it during WW2 and used it as a base where they carried out science experiments on POWs trying to learn how to create super soldiers. Obviously, I couldn't t find any evidence of this in the hour I spent walking around! 

 

 

[Geoffrey Carter (Buttercup)]

Please post more pictures. 

 

Not it sure what I like best though, your pictures or the written history. Fort looks incredible.

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

5 hours ago, Geoffrey (Buttercup) - North Yorkshire AO said:

Please post more pictures. 

 

Not it sure what I like best though, your pictures or the written history. Fort looks incredible.

 

No worries! The forum isn't the easiest to host large numbers of photos on, especially when operating from a phone, so I'll start dropping all of the photos into a Google drive that everyone can access and just post the key bits up here. I'll stick a link up once I've had time to sort it! 

[GuitarmanUK]

Excellent write up and pictures.  I can 100% recommend the HBO series of Chernobyl it is brilliant.