I woke up with a bit of a hangover today, it was very early but the birds were whistling and keeping me awake. So I went out and checked the bike. Every biker will recognize this, I mean the checking of the bike 😉

Before leaving Poltava, we made a stop at the Poltava Battle History Museum. Note to make here was that the road to the museum was really bad. There were a lot of potholes and you better not drive into them as they are sometimes very deep. The museum gives you the history about the decisive victory in 1709 of Peter I of Russia over the Swedish forces under Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld in one of the battles of the Great Northern War. It was a very important battle which changed the history of Ukraine and Europe.

The museum was not very big, so in one hour or so, we were already through it. Note, no English guides anymore as the footbal Euro 2012 is finished. So practice your Russian if you want to visit 😉
It was now time to say goodbye to Marina and head out for the final ride of the first stage to Donetsk.

The ride was another 450km, we followed the E40 direction to Kharkov but left it after 20km direction Dniepropetrovsk. The bike was performing well, I could easily ride 160kph at some stretches, but I had to set ESA to high hills again. The fuel consumption was also quite good so far. The range indicator showed 690 km after fueling it up, but in reality it was about 500km with a consumption of about 6lit/100km.

The road got very bad at some points. You have to slow down to about 50 – 60 kph if you have to stop to overtake one of the many kamaz trucks. The temperature was also rising again. It went up to about 33 degrees this day. If you want to have some action, you can easily start a race here with some local high end SUV and race along the road overtaking all other cars and trucks. This was good now and then too raise the adrenaline but not for too long if you ask me.

At some point I was feeling like I was riding the old route 66 in the USA, because the roads were so desolate. They were also very long and straight, with several highs and lows. There was also some shining layer on the road because of the sun like the roads gets fluent. It was very nice. After a while I saw why, I looked to our left and saw a whole new highway were the other cars were riding… We decided to stay on this smaller, desolate, nostalgic feeling road. As our camelbags were empty and we got very thirsty we made a stop in a town called Novomoscowsk near Dniepropetrovsk.

The last stretch was also very bumpy at moments. The ESA fairing did its work here. There was a nice new stretch also, I was a bit naughty and speed up to 180kph. Just checking how the bike performs under this high load of about 450kg and high temperatures. It performed well!

In the evening we finally arrived in Donetsk. Our family was waiting for us, and we had a nice welcoming evening. It was great to see Erik our son back as well! He was speaking some russian to me already 🙂