Fig 1 At least the colour of the duct tape matches…

Oh bliss. The car is working properly for the first time on the rally after the 7 hours of work that Mike and the sweeps put in yesterday. The engine purred on its new spark plugs while it gave a huge amount of confidence to discover that the brakes worked. Until now we had ignored the fact that you can pick up penalties for arriving at a time control early. Today we actually picked one up, arriving 20 minutes early at one control point.

 

We are in Siberia. Sending people to Siberia used to be a form of punishment, started under the Tzars and pursued on an industrial scale by Stalin. Siberia in the winter must be ‘interesting’. But Siberia in the summer is jaw breakingly beautiful.

Fig 2 Just some of the wonderful scenery in Siberia

It’s rather like the best of Switzerland except there is just so much of it. We’ve been driving through this for most of three days now and it hasn’t stopped.

 

Mike and I had expected Eastern Russia to be underdeveloped. But no. It is seriously sophisticated. Older people still live in the old ways but the young look just like people in the West, though a bit poorer. They look healthy and to have a decent diet. Most kids have at least a smattering of English. Tomorrow we reach Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia and, after St Petersburg and Moscow, Russia’s third city. Everyone gets their car rebuilt there on the rest day.

 

Russians are touchingly car mad. Everyone waves and when we stop people ask for autographs. Today we reached Novokuznesk, which was (and still is) an industrial town based on steel production and coal mining. Ouch – suspect they are having economic problems….

 

But the rally is clearly something a bit special for them. As I write I can hear the strains of the town band practicing for our send off in a couple of hours time.