I made a very early start to get to the boarder, I was dreading having to fight off the kid again at the border. I loaded up my bike, then went to check out. The staff seemed a little more friendly than those who checked me in. As I left I said goodbye in Ukrainian which seemed to delight them and they engaged me in a small conversation in English wishing me a safe journey. I headed out of town, thankfully not having to go through the centre again, and made m...

We met up for dinner and was joined by another couple, one of whom had been to England, Ireland and Italy. We flicked through the pictures I had taken during the day on the camera screen, which also had all my pictures from my recent Ireland excursion. Each picture reminded her of a place she had visited, including the Bushmills distillery. This brought us on nicely to the topic of vodka, so we sampled some very nice examples of such quite late into the evening. ...

Setting off my sat nav was having another bad day, not finding any satellites. You would have thought with the amount of hardware sot into space over the former Soviet Union, there would be no problem in locating some.Anyway, once I had some directions, I stopped meandering around the town, and headed out with a purpose. As I passed out of the town limits, I felt a little sad, I had enjoyed my time there, it seemed so very different from England, refreshingly d...

Breakfast at the hotel was, interesting. The menu, in Ukrainian only, didn't really have anything to interest me, so I asked for fresh orange and scrambled egg. The eggs were presented like an omelette, had no taste and were covered in a layer of grease. When the bill came the orange was 3 times more expensive than anything else. Two valuable lessons learned again this morning. My friend, and English teacher in the local University, had to go into work for ...

OH MY GOD! I headed out after escaping the annoying kid, to discover how bad the roads actually are. I had been told they were bad, but nothing, NOTHING, would have prepared me for this. Heading away from the crossing, through a small village of small wooden houses, who all came out to look at my bike, and stare as if I was a UFO. The road sign said humps in the road and 30KPH by each one. Now it was nice to be warned about these smooth regular shaped bumps in t...