Sam Glover
Sam ponders road trips as he drives a Lada to Moscow
On a trip to Moscow, Sam ruminates on road trips.
I’ve grown out of breaking down on road trips. Blind youthful enthusiasm has given way to timeworn pragmatism, plus a desire to spend time in places other than lay-bys, garages and motor factors. My standards have increased with my mechanical knowledge. I used to relish the challenge of nursing car with significant defects – but I’m now driven to distraction by the slightest of errant clonks and rattles. In short, I’m enjoying getting old, boring and pernickety.
My former approach driving a car home from somewhere distant was to do a bare minimum to make it mobile and safe, then address other issues as they arose en route. My more recent approach is to assign a realistic period of time to addressing as many potential issues as possible before setting off, then hammer the car home carefree. I’ve enjoyed a 100 per cent zero-breakdown record in recent years, a few voluntary roadside adjustments aside.
Starting a road trip from the UK is the ultimate convenience. It allows the vehicle to be fettled to anally-retentive standards from the comfort of one’s own workshop, intensively test-thrashed, then driven forth with as much confidence as it’s possible to have in a piece of archaic machinery. Which is quite a lot of confidence, as it happens. This affords the luxury of planning ferries, places to sleep and things to stop and look at. While this approach lacks rock-and-roll spontaneity, I’m beginning to see the appeal. Nothing has demonstrated this to me better than a recent cruise to Moscow in a Lada, which felt suspiciously like an actual, grown-up holiday.
Coals to Newcastle
I bought my 1980 Lada 1600 in a semi-derelict state and treated it to intensive recommissioning. I flippantly declared it fit to drive to Moscow, then decided to actually do this and discovered that it wasn’t. An engine strip-down, some crankshaft machining, a pair of bespoke thrust washers and a further 400 miles of thrashing later, I redeclared it ready for departure. I departed.
I’m bored of the E30 motorway slog across Germany and Poland, so myself and my co-driver took a fresh approach. We took the decadent (relative to other Channel-crossing methods, at least) overnight ferry from Harwich to Hook, ambled across the Netherlands and spent a night in Bremen – unexpectedly picturesque – via an efficient blat of Autobahn action. The next night saw us in civilised Copenhagen, a 45-minute ferry from Puttgarden conveying us pleasantly from Germany to Denmark. We traversed the fabulous Øresund half-bridge, half-tunnel to Sweden and enjoyed a pretty day slaloming along the Skåne coast, a landscape familiar to fans of the Nordic noir series Wallander.
Next, we took an overnight ferry from Karlshamn to Klaipeda, Lithuania – I’d highly recommend this. The small boat was populated almost entirely by commercial drivers and had a cosy Eighties ambience. After two days of happy fossicking in Lithuania, I abandoned my co-driver in Kaunas and sped across Latvia to the Russian border alone. The crossing was distinctly non-user-friendly and took 11 hours, the temporary import of the Lada allowing big-hatted officials to exceed quotas of scowling, angry muttering and theatrical slamming of booth windows. I retained the will to live by drinking emergency tea from a Thermos flask and enjoying 'The Hits of 1986' from a warped cassette I found in the glovebox. At 10pm, it started snowing.
The Lada felt at home purring past Kamaz trucks on Russia’s featureless single-carriageways. It came into its own on the ten-lane Moscow Ring, weaving lithely between chortling GAZ vans and clumsy, blingy SUVS. I was soon drinking Russian champagne with my friend Vladimir Vozovik, the Lada stashed victoriously in his lock-up. It had covered 1900 miles without a hiccup, mostly at 4500rpm and above. It hadn’t even ordained to use any oil. A year of Russian excitement awaits it. Next stop: Crimea.
‘The Lada covered 1900 miles without a hiccup, mostly at 4500rpm and above’