Day 27 … Lviv to Kosice

It's Sunday so it must be Slovakia – as opposed to Slovenia, a lot of people get them confused apparently! A strange day on a number of counts….

The armed guard fire a salute as cars depart

A straight run to the border again on main roads to avoid the damaged minor roads, we pass the locals in their Sunday best on the way to church, walking along the verges or waiting at bust stops to be collected. It was very humid, and it seemed some rain or a storm was likely.

Locals add period colour to early morning car park scene

 

We see distant mountains, which is a change from recent days, indeed we we are driving through them in an hour or so. We think there may be some sort of mid-summer celebration here abouts. The bunches of leaves we saw being sold yesterday are now seen adorning houses, on gateways into properties and even on cars.

 

Newly built church

 

We also notice that climbing beans are now a popular addition to the vegetable plot and even out in the strip fields. Soapwort, Meadowsweet and Knapweed can be added to the list of weeds.

Strip farming

 

We try to rid ourselves of the spare Ukrainian currency, I had it down as the Hyverna, most people however seem to refer to them as what sounds like greema. Petrol is quite cheap here, less than £1 a litre, we fill the tank, we buy sweets, cokes, ice creams, but as 2 coffees only cost just over £1 it's quite difficult to get shot of them. We decide to splash out on a couple of gifts from a roadside stall….but not wanting to be too specific here, nor appear rather mean, suffice to say we still had a fistful after the transaction was completed.

Efficient border crossing

We rolled up to the border and were whisked through quite rapidly with the blue-tea-shirt -clad support crew (who's last task this was) waving us through the bus lane. They are an organisation based is Kasakstan who were used in the 2010 event when the route went through their country. This time they were bought in to assist with the language problems in Russia and Ukraine and liase with the locals. They have done an excellent job.

Said it was a strange day

 

We then had to muster at a time control situated in a Tesco car park, I kid you not, and we hadn't a club card between us. Confusion reigned as we had to clock out, 2 cars to the minute, both vintage and classic classes together, before heading for a closed road hill climb about 30kms away. We realised this was a to try and ensure all the faster cars were at the front of the field. Arriving at the start we realise that there has been a little confusion with the time of day, we are losing another hour tonight, but rally time was in effect an hour ahead of the time on the policemens watches. So we were rather early and had to wait over an hour for the police to close the road.

The five leading cars in the two classic classes await hill climb start

 

The hill climb was just over 7km, with the last 3 downhill, several hairpins on pretty good tarmac, we await results to see if Ludovic in Volvo no. 82 can maintain his claim to being the fastest Volvo driver….(he has got a bigger engine).

Villagers out in force again.

We we offered boiled sweets by the marshals at the end of the hill climb, then realised that it is Alan Smith and Dick Hall newly arrived to bolster the marshalling crews now we are in Europe.

Then we had a quite short run in to the town and to our hotel, we had been advised that there was to be a drive through the pedestrianised centre. Unfortunately the threatened storm broke just as we entered town, sending spectators scurrying for cover in doorways and under awnings.

Our Italian friend in a Lancia Fulvia explains that he only has a
very small engine but it does make an excellent noise.

 

 

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