09 Nov 06
As dawn breaks with a watery light we head east along Nevsky Prospect, familiar to any fan of Russian literature. I half expect to see Dostoyevsky's criminals lurking in the shadows or Gogol's timid civil servants scuttling to work. Then, after a single huge roundabout on the city's outskirts, the directions in our route book basically boil down to: 'Straight ahead for 450 miles until you reach Moscow.'
Common sense suggests that if there's to be one decent road in Russia, it will be this one, linking the two largest cities - effectively the Russian M1. I expect the roads to deteriorate the further east we head, but surely this vital piece of economic infrastructure will be well up to standard? It's not. For most of its length, it's a three-lane highway with the central lane alternating between eastward and westbound traffic. We quickly settle into a pattern of sitting behind a truck until the central lane becomes 'ours', surging past and then catching up with the next mini-queue to repeat the process. It becomes slightly tedious, but you know that within a mile there'll always be another overtaking opportunity.
This is not a particularly picturesque route, either. The road blasts through the middle of a succession of featureless villages where noisy, fast-moving traffic cuts one side of the road off from the other as surely as a river or wall. Occasionally little groups of once-pretty wooden cottages struggle to the roadside, but almost all of these seem to be suffering from subsidence so that they list unevenly like sailing boats washed up on a concrete shore. Only roadworks and the frequent police checkpoints that become a permanent feature of the next few days break the uniformity.
After a couple of hours, we pull over at a small cafe skulking behind a petrol station. I order a couple of coffees which come pre-loaded with enough sugar to dissolve most of my skull on contact and two 'cakes' which turn out to be deep-fried potato and onion pasties. I attempt to pay with a 1,000 rouble note (about £20) and am given a look of disgust and much gesticulating. I have to go to the garage next door and buy the largest bottle of water I can in order to get change, which is handed back to me through a literal hole in the wall. Inside, a man sits in semi-darkness taking money from truckers. I pay for the coffee and visit the loo before we hit the road again, where I notice a large bag of spuds next to the urinal. The pasty starts to repeat on me.
