Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
From Petrozavodsk we planned a route east through the forest towards Vologda.
By nature it was a northerly, isolated route that posed some uncertainties. We were
well into autumn and there was a thin line between it and fast-approaching winter.
Would the roads be in good enough condition to ride on? What would happen to
the bikes in extreme cold?
Having studied a road atlas, we had a vague idea of our route for the first 100
kilometres east of Petrozavodsk. The atlas had a scale of 1:1500000. 100 kilo-
metres on this scale amounted to about 6.5 centimetres. Beyond that lay about 10
000 kilometres of the unknown.
On a day when the first snow clouds of the season shrouded the city, we put
foot to pedal and turned our backs on the grey apartment blocks of Petrozavodsk. I
wavered all over the road in an attempt to miss frozen puddles and dodge cars and
buses. Beyond the edge of town traffic petered out and we passed into the forest.
With the city behind us, I became aware of the whir of the pedals and the icy wind
that brought with it scattered flakes of snow. My lungs filled with icy air. It was
below zero. The wind left my cheeks parched red and my fingers stung even as a
sweat built up beneath my beanie. It occurred to me that from behind Chris looked
like a little hunchback ambling along the road. The recumbent, leaden with equip-
ment, looked nothing like a bike. I could understand why from a distance people
had mistaken Chris for an invalid in a wheelchair.
At lunch we huddled, shrinking into our Gore-tex jackets on the shores of Lake
Onega. Onega is the third-largest lake in Russia. It is connected to the Ladoga lake
system which, in turn, flows into the Baltic Sea. Swells crashed onto the rocky
beach and a light veil of snow on the horizon made it appear like the sea. Every
sensation was vivid and striking. Life in the city had been like sleepwalking, by
comparison.
I wondered how long it would take before the weather closed in altogether. Once
it became too cold we planned to abandon the bikes and return to them nearer to
spring. We guessed that there would be at least three months when cycling would
be out of the question.
As the light faded, we pulled off the road and came to a halt 100 metres into the
forest. Reaching above the tree line the crowns of ancient pines were catching the
golden glow of the sinking sun.
It was time to introduce Chris to the taiga. Taiga is the Russian word for the
boreal forest that stretches from Finland right across Siberia to the northern Pacif-
ic. To the north it reaches as high as the Arctic and sub-Arctic and peters out at its
