A Night in the Forest

Skipping back a few days we had a particularly interesting time in Russia, not from encounters with locals which normally provide us with more entertainment, confusion and rapid searches through a dictionary as one can in 5 minutes, but this time with a dark, spooky night deep inside an dense Russian Forest.

We had started out our journey from Vladimir, 180km east of Moscow with a bit of rather pleasent sightseeing and picture taking in the bright sunshine and mid afternoon we left heading east with the aim of getting a few miles under our belt and camping wild onroute. The journey started badly with some dodgy navigation thanks to our trusty Russian road atlas such that we ended up on some backroads driving through dense forest. By backroads, these aren't the type you expect from experiences in the UK, no these resemble more like off road moutain bike tracks with potholes large enough to swallow the car and still have room for a few large lorries for dessert. After an hour it started raining hard, then harder still until visibility of said potholes was lost and we were appropriately playing Russian Roulette with the steering wheel, hoping not to fall down any. Then the lightening started, no thunder, just lightening all around us. Several times it hit a field just to our right creating fireballs rising from the earth and making our hair stand on end. We were now also swerving fallen trees as well as potholes in the middle of the road.

Eascaping the lightening in one piece, we tried to find a hotel in the nearest town - all oddly booked up for the night so we had no choice to find a camp spot outside the town in the forest. Only by this time it was 9pm and dark. Half an hours driving and we took a tiny dirt track into the dense forest for about half a mile until it was clear, or so we thought, that no one had been there for a long time. Just as we were getting settled into our very dark, forest campspot and were tucking into some hot food, we both froze to the spot when we could suddenly hear faint music not too far away! Now, forgive me if I am weak and feable here, however in London I expect to hear heavy bass music late at night however 50km from the nearest town, deep in the Russian forest on a wet, dark night I don't!

It didn't take long for our fear of partying, drunken Russian mobsters on AK47 training in the woods to get the better of us and we packed up and speedily drove out and continued onwards in the darkness. We took another dirt track, then another until we were once again in the middle of... well... we had no idea as it was too dark and our tourches revealed nothing but trees and according to Cedric, potentially a Wild Boar nest! So in a moment of courage or more likely madness we decided to camp right there and crawled into our tent trying to ignore any odd or unusual rumblings in the dark forest for a well needed peaceful nights sleep.