FRIDAY 12th JUNE 2009 (KORSUN)

FRIDAY 12th JUNE 2009



We were picked up at 7.00am by Roman & Volodya, we then got Svetlana (our lovely translator) and driven an hour west to Korsun to see the 'Korsun-SHEVCHENKIVSKYI State Historical & Cultural Reserve'. This is an old palace full of WW2 memorabilia, focusing on the battle that took place in this region in 1944 when the Ruski's defeated the Germans. Tens of thousands of men were lost in this battle. The displays were quite explicit about the loss of life. Hard to imagine we were standing on the site of such a battle. In the gardens were many tanks, a mig jet fighter, many guns and military trucks.


En-route to Korsun we passed two outfits, one being a Jupiter (or Ish) with a sidecar full of rakes and the other outfit was a Dnepr. Both were traveling at the mandatory 50-60 kph...!!! This is a rural area and they were perhaps on their way home for morning tea.





Back in Cherkassy by lunch time where we visited Igor to check progress on the bike. We were told it would be ready by 5.00pm tomorrow.


All Paul wants to do now is get on the bike and get going as we have a huge distance to cover, considering we can only travel at 60kph.


Roman has been very good to us ensuring that we have all necessary (and compulsory) spare parts for our journey.


We were driven back to our apartment at 4.30pm and we were grateful for some rest time and fell asleep. Woke for tea (muesli and beer). We didn't want to go down the street so used up what we had. Beer here is cheap, for example, a Stella Artois costs 90 cents for 500mls. Red wine on the other hand is very expensive.


Petrol is 90 cents a litre. We have been advised to use a maximum octane rating of 80 and if it's not available thin it down with diesel...!!!