622208 - Begunitsv to St Petersburg

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Begunitsv to St Petersburg

Sunday, 29 June 2008 02:00 Last Updated on Thursday, 26 March 2009 14:37 Written by Claudine du Plessis

Cycling Day: 21
Distance: 130km

Vladimir left early because he had to go to work (yes, he doesn’t mind cycling a quick 70km in 2 hours before work). He told us about a longer, but more scenic and quiet route we could take to St Petersburg along the coastline. It was raining in the morning and we quickly unpitched the tent, got attacked by the swarm of mosquitoes and left. Very close to our campsite is a big castle and when we arrived there it started raining in full force so we decided to hang around until the rain calmed down. There was some concert or show at the castle and they were selling kebabs so we stayed for brunch.

Not too far from the castle, Billy’s pannier fell off and Lance had a puncture. Our bikes really had enough, it was as if they knew the trip was almost over. Both Lance and Billy only had one working brake left and my rear wheel was so buckled by then, I wobbled the whole way, and because of that my rear brakes also didn’t work.

We cycled through a special military zone along the north coast, where Russia apparantly has a nuclear power station. It rained about 80% of the time we cycled, but at least the roads were in a bit of a better condition. There was a lot of open space with forests and coastline before we reached the outskirts of St Petersburg. If you look at a map with St Petersburg, you will see that it stretches along the northern coastline, with lots of bays and islands connected with bridges. It is a huge city and with a population of about 5 million, it is the norhternmost city with a population of over 1 million people.

From when we entered the outskirts of St Petersburg, it took us another couple of hours to reach Vladimir's place, which is on one of the big islands. Vladmir had gone diving and we chatted with his flatmate Vaddim, who took us to the 24 hour McDonalds for a quick dinner. Vladimir arrived later and we celebrated the end of our trip with some beer and Russian vodka which I unfortunately missed because I fell asleep and nobody or nothing could wake me.