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Murmansk, Russia

Route: Kirkenes - Nikel - Petsjenga - Murmansk

Kirkenes first: small towns are almost the same everywhere. A couple of skateboarders trying to rebel (one of whom, charmingly, was being chaperoned by his grandmother); four cars full of teenage boys and two cars full of teenage girls playing tag through the streets; a knot of younger girls giggling at the loud (and awful) music one set of boys was playing.

Some differences: Kirkenes has plenty of young conscripts wandering the streets, on days off from the nearby military posts, wondering what they hell they've done to deserve being here; and what with alcohol costing roughly the same as a family-sized saloon car in England, no teens in Kirkenes congregate round a bottle of cider at the local bus stop.

And in the morning, a small market in the square in front of my hotel. Reassuringly, not only are the goods the same as you can buy on Portobello Road in London (my old gaff) but many of the faces are, too. In fact, like all markets everywhere, there is a cluster of Asian stallholders selling all sorts, and a stall of African knicknacks. This did surprise me.

"It shouldn't," the stall holder pointed out. "Not everyone here is a tourist looking for local goods. I'm here to sell to the locals who can't get away and see the rest of the world for themselves."

He knows of what he speaks: Michael comes from Ghana, but has been based in Germany for the last 20 years. "But that country - kaputt! No money any more! So now I spend half the year in Tromso and travel round the north. The cost of diesel is amazing, but the price I get for these things... even more amazing!"

More of Michael later!

Yes.. those prices. Everything you've heard about the price of beer in Norway is true, which is why I had such a clear head this morning.

---

Onwards and upwards. To the Russian border, and through in just an hour-and-a-half, which compares favourably with the time taken at other borders so far:
England - Denmark (2 minutes, off the ferry at Esbjerg)
Denmark - Sweden (0 minutes)
Sweden - Finland (0 minutes)
Finland - Norway (0 minutes - yes, Norway gets null points again)

This was time enough to be processed by four sets of officials, all of whom seemed inordinately interested in the part of my Vehicle Registration document that I need to fill in if I change my name. Or in other words, they hadn't a clue what they were looking for.

If I hadn't intervened, the compulsory vehicle insurance I bought there would show my name as Mr Triumph Bonneville and my bike as a "Notification Of Sale/ Transfer To The Motor Trade" -- 790cc, of course.

On the relevant form, I informed the Russian State that I would be staying at the Hotel Meridien in Murmansk. Moments earlier, at the Norwegian border post, I'd hurriedly cadged the name of a place, any place, from a passing Customs officer, when I remembered I would need to say something. Thank god I didn't have to give my destination as the Hotel Breakfast. I'm not sure how convincing that sounds in Russian.

My prolonged stay in the border post was also time enough to get accustomed to Russian 'fashion' (commas very much inverted.)

In all my old school photos, there's always one boy, usually Peter Heighes, as I recall, wearing a strangely green woollen jumper with shiny patches on the elbows and shoulders. (Nodding in agreement? Then you too grew up in the '70s.) Turns out he was modelling himself on the Russian border guards' uniform. Who knew? I certainly never pegged Peter Heighes for a Soviet wannabe.

That was one thing, but the woman in the bank (within the border post) charged with issuing the vehicle insurance was something else. Hair neatly ironed, her blouse was a cacophony of violet, crimson and cherry swirls, all in a fetching polyester blend that created enough static electricity to light the entire building.

And it took her the best part of an hour to organise my documents, with me standing right in front of her. And her blouse. Now I see a kaleidescope of colours whenever I close my eyes.

---

On the Norwegian side of the border lie family homes: barbeques stand outside, bicycles lean against garage doors, a trampoline in one garden, a woman gardening in another. They just happen to live next to a very peculiar country.

Across the border there is... nothing. No homes, no buildings, no side roads, no nothing. Just nature -- glorious woods, pristine lakes -- for a good ten miles. Norway is four times the size of Britain with a tenth of the population -- but even that seems overcrowded compared with this.

Then, a military checkpoint (very friendly) before the modern world encroaches slightly on the road. Every few minutes, a car, a corroded road-sign or, by a bridge, an old Ural (?) motorbike and sidecar.

It's 150 miles of pot-holes, rutted asphalt and bumpBUMPbumpityybump to Murmansk. Fill up with petrol in Kirkenes before setting off! No signs suggesting this that I could see. Don't expect to fill up on the cheap once you cross over, there's no petrol station for a good 30 miles -- in Nickel, a town so frighteningly ugly it will stay with me for a long, long time.

The very earth for many miles around Nickel has been burned, scorched and scrapped away, in the quest for (you guessed it) nickel. It's as if the skin of the earth has been peeled away. Those wounds will never heal. And it's still going on: three huge chimneys bleed and belch acrid black smoke across the town. Perhaps as many as 50 monolithic blocks of flats stand in close formation to the south of the chimneys (guess which way the wind was blowing...); all bleak concrete, no colour or paint or a moment's prettification.

Ten miles on, another town, more smoke, more concrete; presumably factories dropped onto the Arctic landscape here that do something with nickel. Another ten miles, another town, more blight: factories here that do something with things made from nickel. There's nothing like a planned economy for keeping things plain and simple.

The things you think of as you ride: these towns are purpose built: work, food, shelter. No need for anything else. It struck me: there are no sheds. Nowhere the people (OK, the men) of these towns can escape to, to be themselves, to be alone. This depressed me.

That's it for industry. Next come a sprinkling of small garrisons... an accommodation block or two, a parade ground, some tanks parked on one side, perhaps a small monument with a big head of Lenin. Walking alongside the road gaggles of conscripts.. counterparts to those fresh-faced Norwegians in Kirkenes, but al the Russian boys look surprisingly, eerily like Gareth from 'The Office'. I mean, all of them. Down to the haircut. You'd think the Russian military would clone someone a bit less weedy?

I stopped over the hill and round the corner from one army settlement for a breather for me and for my bum. (Have you ridden a motorbike for long stretches at a time?) Switched the engine off and took my helmet off -- every two or three minutes, I heard the crump of artillery shells from the hill behind me. And yet -- thanks to that Triumph engine of mine! -- I'd heard nothing when I was actually riding past the firing guns. A triumph of British engineering!

A confession: I also discovered at that stop that my top box -- containing amongst other things my passport, all the assorted bits and pieces I'd spent 90 minutes collecting at the border, video camera and all my clean underwear -- was wide open, the contents at liberty to fall out whenever they wanted. It could have happened any time in the last 50 miles, since I'd opened the box and, presumably, failed to close it properly. (Either that or I get to sue Metal Mule when I get home!)

Any one of the bumps on the road could have flung the lid open; any of the subsequent bumps could have seen vital documents fly out, to be lost for ever. Unless I fancied a fingertip search of 50 miles of tundra, polluted industrial slagheaps and Army target ranges.

And yet, and yet... it looks like nothing had fallen out. So nobody need ever know how ditzy I'd been. Eh, diary? Just you and me... I mean, who on earth's going to read this?

---

I rode slowly to Murmansk: the dramatic scenery; the wind picking up; the temperature dropping; the condition of the road; stories told of Russian traffic cops; not having to hurry. Yes, a lovely feeling, and an unfamiliar one: no deadlines.

You see the city long before the road takes you there. It's on the east bank of the Kol'skiy River, but the road follows the west bank for several miles down to a bridge at Kola. The river is wide, the banks steep and the road sweeping. Lovely. But Murmansk is, you guessed it, a long, benighted scar torn into the side of the hills -- concrete apartment blocks, smokestacks and dockside cranes, interrupted by dirty scrubland.

On the Murmansk side of the bridge, cutting back north to the centre of town ('centre' is one of the best words for a foreign traveller to learn. In Cyrillic script, it looks funny. But it's pronounced "tzenterr".. luckily.) I found myself moving past acres of... sheds! Yes! Really! Sheds! Twice in one day, and never ever in my life before have sheds even crossed my mind. (Honest.)

--

But actually finding the tzenterr was beyond me. No signs. Nothing obvious. I stopped at a petrol station:

"Pahzho'OOster, yaa nyet gavRITZ pa ROOskie. Uhhhhm. Tzenterr? Hotel Meridien? Errr, Meridienski?"

(Reproduced in full for the sake of anyone coming to Murmansk. Because it worked: one of the station attendants smiled brightly at me and beckoned, ran outside and jumped into a nearby car (one which two men were dozing in at the time) and guided me straight to the Hotel... running every red light along the way, so that's something else I have to confess to.

"SpasSIbah!" -- remember to say Thanks if he ever does the same for you.

Oh, and the Norwegian Customs officer was right - the Meridien is fine. And CHEAP.

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