Days 42-43 – Freezing my Arse Off!: Bălți to Chișinău

Days 42-43 – Freezing my Arse Off!: Bălți to Chișinău

Sunday February 15, 2015, 136 km (84 miles) – Total so far: 3,301 km (2,051 miles)

Day 42: Bălți to Woods near Ghetlova – 77.8km

I was in no rush at all to get up in the morning, with the heater on all night the room was even more cosy now and stepping out into the cold streets of Bălți wasn’t too appealing. But I had a hostel and a rest day to aim for Chisinau so this motivation got me going.

Looking at the map there was a shortcut I could take south out of town which linked back up to the main Chisinau road via a small backroad. With how tough Moldova was proving to be, any kilometres I could shave off the journey would be huge so I aimed for this route. As I was leaving the town of Bălți I realised how truly depressing the place was. The depressing grey and mold covered tower blocks of the city centre were replaced by depressing battered shacks on the outskirts and piles and piles of depressing rubbish lining the side of the road! So I was pretty glad to reach the edge of the city.

The edge of the city was marked by a huge stone sculpture of a woman. I always love these kind of sculptures which seem to be so popular around Ukraine and Moldova. It reminds me of the Gates of Argonath from Lord of the Rings (I probably shouldn’t admit to knowing what those are!)

Once out of town I found myself on a perfect wide road with a hard shoulder and perfectly smooth tarmac. I didn’t believe roads like this existed in Moldova, it was some change from the usual battered roads. It all made sense when I saw the sign stating that it was all funded by the EU. I hoped the EU had funded a few more roads further down the country as well.

Another very cold night meant the entire countryside was frozen. Things had changed quite a bit from the beautiful yellow countryside and the sunlight of my first two days in the country.

I followed this road for a few kilometres until I reached the turn off for my back road. This road was a shock to the system. The perfectly smooth EU funded road was replaced by a crater filled strip of worn asphalt covered in cracks. I spent the next half an hour getting completely shaken and battered as I made my way over the hill that the back road led over.

To give you an idea of how bad these Ukrainian and Moldovan roads had been I had opened a spare pair of glasses that lay in the bottom of my bag at some stage over the past few days to find the legs of the glasses had sheared off from all of the shaking and the case was full of powder from where the metal was deteriorating.

Just before I reached the main road, the road I was on turned downhill to ensure I was dropped at the bottom of a hill on the main road. The back road had effectively descended the same hill I had to climb again on the main road. These Moldovan road builders were starting to piss me off, it’s like they were trying to mess with cyclists. God help anyone involved in Moldovan road planning if I met them!

After a lot of up and down climbing I finally arrived at a flat section of road. This was new territory for me in Moldova so I made the most of it and started making some good ground on my mileage for the day.

The only bad thing about this road was the surface. The road was made up of slabs of asphalt around 10 metres long. In between each of these slabs there was a noticeable crack in the join. SO every 10 metres you would go over one of these cracks and the bike would jolt. This repeated for every crack for the entire road for the entire today. It was enough to drive anyone mad!

I was starting to reach my target for the day, a set of woods over halfway between Bălți and Chișinău. What I hadn’t realised was that these woods only started over half way up a pretty big pass. This meant that the forest I was hoping to camp in was completely frozen. With the temperature hovering around 0 degrees, the road showing no signs of reaching the top of the pass and also darkness starting to set in I had to pull in off the road to find a camping spot.

I wandered through the frozen forest in search of a good spot and set up camp among the frozen trees preparing for yet another freezing night in the tent.

Day 43: Woods near Ghetlova to Chișinău – 58.1km

The night was probably the coldest so far, I didn’t get an exact temperature but from checking Accuweather afterwards it seemed to have gotten to below -5 degrees. I remained in the tent until a few hours after sunrise to wait for things to warm up.

When I stepped out of the tent I was met by an amazing scene. Snow had fallen overnight and meant that I now emerged into a pure white snowy landscape around me. My bike and tent were covered in the stuff. It was definitely one of the coolest sights on the trip so far.

Packing up the tent was even more of an ordeal than usual and my hands were ice cold as I emerged out of the woods onto the main road again. At least I was proving to myself though that if necessary I could camp in these temperatures and put up with the pain every morning. This made me feel a good bit better about myself than I had in Germany when I was hostelling it every night.

When I emerged onto the main road I was met by surreal colours. The landscape was covered in snow, the trees were frozen white and the sky was an intensely bright blue. The strong sunlight reflecting off the snow made for a fairly dazzling sight.

The day started off quite tough as I had to stop every kilometre or two to warm up my hands. Despite starting the day with a very long climb it wasn’t really helping warm my hands up so I had no choice but to do the usual routine of waving my arms using different methods to get circulation back into them. This meant for some very slow progress as it would take a good 2 minutes to get feeling back into them before I could continue again and have to pull in a kilometre or two down the road in order to do the same again.

After a long climb to the top of the pass the woods ended and the road started turning downhill. My hands got even colder here as a huge headwind/crosswind combined with the speed of the descent chilled them to the bone. It was agony but all I could do was warm them up as best as I could every couple of kilometres in the hope I wouldn’t completely lose feeling in them. The rest day in Chisinau was getting very appealing at this stage.

Along with the cold hands and strong winds the other feature of the day was the lack of food. I only had a small bit of bread left so didn’t have a huge breakfast and with the amount of time it took to pack up it had been hours since I had eaten. I had no other food with me so I was eager to reach a petrol station. I thought luck was on my side when I reached one at the bottom of the descent from the pass. However it only sold petrol. I found a second one further down the road but this one looked like it had recently been abandoned. I kept going in the hope that I would find another. What I should have done here was to check the map and realise I wouldn’t be going through any more villages before there and Chisinau. If I had realised this I could have gone a kilometre or two off the road to a shop…but I didn’t!

I continued on along the main road absolutely starving in the hope of finding somewhere to buy some food. At one stage a car passed me with some loaves of lovely looking baked bread in the rear windscreen. It was torture! The second big climb of the day started soon after this and I slowly wound my way to the top. As I crested the climb I could see a stall in the distance. I was running really low on energy now, expending so many calories without eating anything in hours wasn’t having a good effect. When I reached the stall I was disappointed by what I saw, a giant raw fish dangling in the wind! Instead of the man selling food or apples or anything relatively normal from his stall he was selling raw fish, lovely!

After this climb I found myself on a difficult section of road. It was very open so there was no shelter from the wind. A huge crosswind was blowing across the road making progress very difficult. I was really feeling low on energy now and I had checked my map to see that there were no villages from now until Chisinau which still lay a good 20 kilometres away. It was the kind of situation where I was in a pretty bad way but it wasn’t bad enough to actually ask for help from a passing driver or someone by the side of the road. I had gotten to that state before a few years ago while doing a ridiculously long mountain biking route in Ireland. In that case I had gotten so low on sugar that my vision started going starry and I couldn’t keep the bike going in a straight line anymore. I knew I was still a bit off from that yet so I just kept going and did my best to conserve energy.

The huge crosswinds made this section quite difficult, the fast cars that were speeding by me didn’t help either. At one stage a truck sped by me with not much to spare and I was blown out into the middle of the road behind it due to a combination of the crosswinds and the sucking of wind below the truck. These were the kind of crosswinds which you wouldn’t go for a cycle in back home as it would be a bit too dangerous. But today I didn’t have a choice in the matter and had to just deal with them as best as I could. I ended up pulling in off the road everytime a truck appeared after this though.

I finally arrived on the main highway to Chisinau. Here I expected to find some food but by chance it was all on the other side of the road separated from me by a crash barrier which I wouldn’t be able to get the bike across. I kept going and arrived at a third petrol station which didn’t sell food followed by a fourth one which didn’t sell food either. I was getting desperate at this stage until I finally found a way across to the other side of the road and could get to a shop. Several Kit Kats and Twixes were demolished straight away, probably the best I had ever tasted!

I made slow progress into Chisinau after this due to the strong winds. After yet more effort I made it to the hostel I was hoping to stay in. It was one of the toughest days of the trip so far. Moldova was really putting my mental and physical strength to the test. At least over the last two days it looked like I was finally making some progress down the country.

After checking into the hostel I got a warm shower followed by a steak. I was so wrecked from the day that I couldn’t manage any socialising. Moldova had taken it out of me and the rest day here tomorrow was badly needed.