Last night's stopover proved peaceful but also - first thing this morning - delivered an unexpected visitor. I opened the cab door at about 7.00am as part of my morning regime whereupon something immediately fell from the top of the door aperture and flumped on to the cab step in front of me.
What do you know! It was a bat (a pipistrelle, we think) that had seemingly roosted in the tiny crevice above the door and then been taken rather by surprise not long after it had gone to bed there.
I gently ushered the chap off the step and, after a bit of a grumpy coming to, it disappeared into the undergrowth.
Given our plan to leave Moldova today, Emma wanted to 'make the most of it' and ran (yet again) straight after breakfast. I was left behind on shower-room cleaning duty. We have a very modern relationship.
Today's drive took us right to the north western tip of Moldova, which turned out to be perhaps the least populated and quietest part of the country we'd witnessed. It was all rather agreeable.
Just before lunchtime we'd run out of Moldovan soil and made a bid to cross the border into Romania. By lunchtime itself, we remained firmly in Moldova... having been turned around. We were told by staff that the crossing in question could only process private vehicles up to a maximum of five tonnes. This caper has happened to us twice before, once in Slovakia, once in Hungary. I don't understand the logic, as all three crossings could / can / do process commercial freight lorries, too.
Anyway, the border control staff were not open to negotiation and the language barrier meant no explanation was forthcoming. We were instead (genuinely) politely advised to retrace to the crossing we'd arrived through, which was about an hour and a half's drive away.
Well, we didn't really want to do that so - over a brief lunch - hatched a plan. We decided to try to cut a big chunk of what would have been a simple retrace of the original outward journey mileage via Moldova and Romania, and instead cut back to north central Romania via Ukraine.
Bottom line: we're now in Ukraine and being minded by border control staff.
Crossing the Moldova-Ukraine border was a fascinating experience. It started by being interrogated by military police and then being let through a barrier having been handed a small piece of paper with the truck's number hand-written on it.
From here we joined a healthy queue of (nearly all Moldovan and Ukranian) cars and lorries, and promptly had our passports and truck V5C taken from us. It was all a bit chaotic and there were police, customs, immigration and military staff milling between, climbing in and otherwise thoroughly searching, all of the various vehicles in line.
We initially had no clue at all what was going on but were fairly soon attended by a chap who seemed to be something of a roaming fixer. He had a smattering of English and half explained that there were five stages to the customs / immigration process involving five different booths positioned at five points along the line of (largely stationary) cars and trucks.
Our magnetic UK country identifiers (temporarily covering our Irish ones) seemed to help enormously (for once); as did our declaration that we were simple tourists. We were, thereafter, given five-star treatment and hand-held through the chaotic process. We were allowed to leave the truck to one side while it was searched and photographed and simply walk to each individual booth, producing various documents and answering various questions as we went. At each booth, having satisfied its occupants, we were then rewarded with a stamp on the small bit of paper we'd initially been handed with the truck's number hand-written on it.
For some of the technical questions about the trucks laden and unladen mass our 'fixer' communicated with us using the highly official medium of Google translate on his smartphone. It seemed that throughout the whole process, this was the only slight stumble that processing staff encountered. It's fair to say that everyone we dealt with throughout the process was patient and welcoming. Ukraine is currently doing it's best to encourage (appropriate) tourism, and staff seemed genuinely pleased to see us.
Of the documents we had to produce were: passports, V5C, proof of Moldovan vignette and green card insurance. We were not asked for proof of what we'd earlier researched was compulsory in the form of war insurance. We'd bought it anyway (at a cost of €3.20 per day) so maybe that was sitting on a database in one of the booths. We'd certainly had to supply our full personal details and passport numbers when purchasing it online.
So, after collecting the coveted five stamps (pic) we were allowed through a final barrier manned by heavily armed Ukrainian military personnel and found ourselves on Ukrainian soil.
We were last in Ukraine in the truck in 2013 and - in spite of current world events - it all immediately felt pretty familiar.
Most familiar of all were the roads. Once off the main border-serving road we were immediately into a world of heavily rutted / pot-holed / otherwise damaged combination of sealed and unsealed surfaces. Slow-going doesn't do the resultant pace justice.
Of the new / unfamiliar from our last visit here were the sheer proliferation of formal checkpoints, patrolling border control forces, and omnipresent well crafted depictions of soldiers killed in action at formal memorial sites in just about every community we passed through.
We drove for a couple of hours just taking things in before deciding to stop for the day, in full public view on the outskirts of a small village. This isn't, of course, our normal MO in terms of overnighting spots, but in the circumstances it seemed a sensible thing to do. We didn't want to seem shifty or threatening to whosoever might be interested in anything out of the ordinary. Or what currently passes for ordinary, anyway.
We had a couple of polite and friendly waves here from passing farmers working the land, and were also (very politely) checked twice in an hour by border control staff. On the second occasion, said staff made a decision on our behalf and had us follow them about a mile to the coordinates shown in order that they could both better watch us / watch over us. The staff that dealt with us were more than affable and had no issue with our presence but, of course, we were more than happy to do whatever was requested / directed to make their day as unproblematic as possible.
Tomorrow morning, all being well, we'll be back in Romania.
Post composed at 23:15 on Saturday 9th August from our imposed overnighting spot N 48.07782°, E 26.16780° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:48.07782%2C26.16780