Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A wet and morose-looking forest stretched away on either side. The fresh bright
greens of spring had well and truly matured, leaving a much less inviting canopy of
dense dark green rising above the white, brown and grey of birch, pine, spruce and
aspen. Grey clouds filtered all brightness and joy from the day, leaving a stifling
and energy-sapping heat. The occasional crow flapped slowly and grimly through
the dampness. Resolutely, I hauled my tool kit from my bike and sat down to try
and work out a way of turning our bikes into pedal-powered rail-riding machines.
We armed ourselves with an axe, a saw and a handful of cheap Russian hose-
clamps and tottered off into the wet forest. Half an hour later, we added a small
stack of fresh three-metre birch poles to our equipment. As we paused for a quick
lunch of bread chunks with slices of salami and tomato, it started to rain again.
We were trying to set up our bikes so that they could sit side by side on the rails.
Our plan was to join them together using several horizontal poles and diagonal bra-
cing poles to add stiffness. It took us several hours, but eventually we had connec-
ted three poles to the seat supports of each of our bikes. We were running out of
hose-clamps. There were only enough left to add some crude wooden runners to
our front wheels.
We heard another distant peal of thunder. It continued rumbling, growing
strangely louder, until we realised that it was a train. We waited some tense mo-
ments until the train came around the corner 500 metres away. It was on our side of
the tracks! We did some quick scrambling and exchanged a few unsavoury words
as the whistling train approached. We struggled to co-ordinate our movements and
lift the suddenly awkward and bulky four-wheel contraption over the rails. With
less than ten seconds to spare, we sent it hurtling down the steep embankment. We
looked up as the train thundered past and saw the amazed face of the driver pok-
ing out of the window, gaping at us. The roar of the engine receded into the dis-
tance to be replaced by a seemingly endless progression of racing, rumbling wag-
ons loaded high with pine logs. As it rounded the far corner, a tiny hand extend
from the driver's window in what was unmistakably a friendly wave.
A few more hours, one more train, a lot of rain and the reserves of our patience
later, we were finally ready to test our design. A couple of hasty exits from the
tracks had weakened the structure and bent our flimsy hose-clamps slightly, but
short of trying to lash on extra poles with the guy ropes from our tent, there was
nothing much we could do about it. We made some final adjustments, perched our
bikes on the rails, then took some photos and did a little filming as testimony to our
efforts.
