Day 11
After a pretty rubbish night’s sleep I got dragged myself out of bed at about 8 and ready to face the day. The hotel was weird as the minute I opened the room door a very stern looking lady was stood there and proceeded to go through the room and make sure I hadn’t nicked anything before she would let me go! Yes darling, I am really after a towel and some 70’s style bedding!
I made it past L’viv in a few hours and towards the border with Poland. I forgot to say earlier that on my inward trip when I rode through the night, there were hundreds and thousands of these huge beetles everywhere. It was like driving through a hailstorm and they made a right mess of the bike and my helmet. Now in daylight you could see millions of them on the roads, squashed. Bizarre!
Anyhow I made it to the border early afternoon and it was a piece of cake to cross out of Ukraine, it took about 20 mins for them to do whatever it is that they needed to do. They have to capture all the info from the bike’s V5 and that’s probably the longest bit. They weren’t interested in looking in the top box or tank bag but did bring the sniffer dog around. Why is it that although I have nothing to worry about, that I still worry! The Polish side was equally as easy, a few questions regarding my Afghanistan visa’s in the passport though but all good.
Exiting the border, back on EU soil I was pretty happy. I knew that from here that I was never too far from help if I needed it. I felt sorry for the chaps entering Ukraine from Poland, the queue was quite long and at this stage it was pretty hot too.
Anyhow I hit the road, I had magically just gained an hour’s worth of daylight as I had passed through a time zone, so there was no great rush to ride too fast. I figured I would make Wroclaw again and stay at the same hotel. So off I headed. At this stage I had 3000 miles’ worth of bugs on my bike screen. Tasty snacks if I needed any food!
The ride was largely uneventful, however about 2 hours before Wroclaw the heavens opened again! I rolled into the hotel at about 8pm and was greeted by the sound of a couple of Scotsmen who couldn’t even walk. There must have been a stag part of something on as there were about 15 chaps, all completely wasted. I did worry about my motorbike a little as I had parked it on the pavement under some shelter against the hotel and hoped they wouldn’t jump on it! I had a shower cap I had nicked from one of the hotels and covered my ignition with it to keep the water out, the ignition was behaving fine since Mariupol.
The hotel receptionist was the same chap as before, he just laughed when I came in looking like a wet dog again. He said that it’s me that brings the rain as it’s been fine since I have been gone. He was also pretty witty, saying that he apologised for giving me a room on the first floor, the view wouldn’t be that great, however I would be 6 floors away from my pissed up countrymen.
I had done just over 700 miles today and wondered if I could make it home tomorrow in one go, I just wanted to be home now as traveling home is always the rubbish part of any holiday. I called it a night at about 10 as I wanted a really early start on the Sunday morning.
