Update Sunday

Most nights we have slept in hotels they are really quite cheap and we do not feel we want to camp as its not that secure. I am finding it really interesting to see the changes especially now I am in completely new areas, in  Ukraine the roads were shocking kieve was interesting very vibrant lots of street performers and cafe culture. We are about 2 hrs ahead of Uk and that's reflected in the time it gets dark much earlier than uk.

We have barely touched Russia but the roads have been much better in fact very good,

 navigating is going to be our problem we have three maps all of which spell the names of places differently and using the Russian alphabet means there are number and backward letters. The culture is different, people expect you to know Russian and act like the proverbial English by just shouting louder as if that will make you understand.

The scenery has changed immediately we crossed the border Ukraine was flat, dead dead flat with no hills as far as you could see always. This part of Russia is more undulating rolling hills similar to  Salisbury plain currently we are heading toward Kursk on a wide single carriageway road traffic is very light we get overtaken every five minutes normally by things travelling at high speed . There are hills in the distance nothing massive and the occasional Lorry or car.

Having made Kirsk we took a right continuing on our March East, the roads are better single carriageway but with so little traffic overtaking or in our case being overtaken is easy. On either side of the road is a large marginal strip about 25-30 metres wide most of the time it's planted with whatever the main field is growing, separating the main field and the marginal strip are a row of high trees popular and mountain ash, most probably to act as a wind break as its quite windy. The fields on either side of the roads are gigantic sometimes you cannot even see the break to the next field Neil says easily over a hundred acres. Growing in the fields are either cereals barley wheat or sunflowers, the ones that are in bloom are truly beautiful especially if they are facing you, as far as you can see  a carpet of yellow.

Several times today we have passed nearly a million pounds worth of combine harvesters and tractors parked waiting presumably to harvest the crops, they seem to do this collectively yesterday we passed at least 6 combines working side by side in a field.

Roadworks are quite frequent nothing like we would have in England or experienced in France and Belgium, here on a road that some users are travelling at 80 mph + there is not much that 100 yards or warning and then you find a road gang in the middle of the road dodging the traffic. In Europe we often came across miles of near stationary traffic with no rhyme or reason here were there are road works they are working even as now on a Sunday.

It's quite interesting road watching, we have just had arbitrary coffee stop on the side of the road, parked up beside a full sized plastic cut out police car, obviously  a similar but much cheaper version of what Wiltshire police did by parking a real police car at willoughby services on the A303.

Cars are similar to what we have especially the larger ones although Skoda easily out number Mercedes BMW and there are a good number of new lada as well was the really old ones cars appear to be either new and clean or well beaten up and if they are the latter then they are driven as if in a demolition derby even in town and even with the kids on board. 

It's now 16:30 Sunday and we are looking to try and get to Bopohek( although the k should be shown mirrored as if a backward K has been married to a forward one) we must be with pin forty 4 so it's time to put my navigators head, or I'm case glasses on.