Steve takes the easy route
Given the condition of Steve's leg he made the decision to take the easy route and along with Anne booked himself a sleeper car on the Red Arrow from Moscow to St Petersburg. The train left Moscow just before midnight and rolled into St Petersburg just on 8am the next morning.
Courtesy of Wikipedia: The Red Arrow runs from Leningrad Station in Moscow to Moscow Station in Saint Petersburg. It started its first regular service on July 9, 1931, and has only been interrupted between 1941 and 1943 during the Siege of Leningrad. In 1962, the deep red colour of the train was adopted … The Red Arrow is the most popular train in Russia. In Soviet times the Communist Party elite were carried only by the Red Arrow between Moscow and Leningrad.
As we keep saying – It’s Russia
- The train was down to leave from platform 3 which after much searching Steve and Anne were unable to locate – turns out that the platforms trains arrive on have even numbers for arriving trains and odd numbers for departing trains – that’s right the platform number changes – so their train was sitting on Platform 4 which suddenly became Platform 3 – IT’S RUSSIA
- While searching for their train they were told to find the red one – it turned out that the locomotive was blue and the carriages red – IT’S RUSSIA
- When they arrived at Moscow Station in St Petersburg they had a lot of trouble getting a taxi to take them to the hotel – after ¾’s of an hour they finally managed to get a ride only to have the price almost double – IT’S RUSSIA
- The next morning they realised that the hotel was literally just around the corner from Moscow Station, so less than 5 minutes’ walk but due to St Petersburg’s one way streets and traffic some 1.3kms and 20 minutes by Taxi – IT’S RUSSIA
David rides it
In order to get Steves bike to St Petersburg Anne reached out to one of the local Motorcycle Clubs, Normandos MC Tver, and their president Andrey Filchenko kindly volunteered to take Steve’s bike to St Petersburg for us.
So the next morning Andrey catches the train to Moscow (180kms) and meets Steve and I. In light rain Andrey and I head out into the heavy Moscow traffic on our way to St Petersburg some 700+ kms down the road. (John had already departed as he was heading for Turku in Finland via St Petersburg to meet his shipping deadline).
The ride was pretty uneventful as far as the roads go, very heavy traffic meaning it took us pretty close to an hour to get 35-40kms out of Moscow onto the toll road. We stopped in Tver where we met up with another Normandos member, Victor Smirnov, who actually organised for Andrey to ride the bike for us. A quick visit to the Normandos club rooms for Andrey to pick up a warmer jacket, an exchange of gifts and to load a couple of bottle of the clubs special brew for Anne and we headed for St Petersburg.
The roads were pretty much multi-lane highway with central barrier with minimal places to stop. So much of the trip was done at a good rate of speed that was only curtailed when we passed a service station that had a sign indicating no fuel for 80 odd kms and my range was indicating a very similar number to empty. That 80 kms or so saw me continually checking both my range and fuel usage numbers – needless to say we crept into the service station with the fuel gauge flashing and range showing ---- (i.e. we were close to empty). This service station turned out to be another variant – no cash option, you took a guess and paid with a card and no change was given! – IT’S RUSSIA
The highlight of this leg is that I will forever be able to remind Steve that he came up 742.8kms short on riding across Russia!
This featured blog entry was written by Zamiam from the blog As the Crow Flies Russia 2019.
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