Uninsured Spy by Roy Locock

WE LEFT Narvik and headed a little way north before turning right and heading for Finland and Rovaniemi, the home of Santa Claus. Obviously MG Benji was very excited but I had warned him that Father Christmas himself would be on holiday and we would just have to be satisfied with a visit to his village.

This was my first visit to Finland, as well as Bridget’s, and I suddenly realised how little I knew about the country. For instance, I did not realise that originally it was an Eastern Province of Sweden, then ruled by Russia before declaring its independence in 1917. This was followed by a civil war and considerable political upheaval until it was stopped by a triple whammy starting in 1939 with The Winter War against Russia, 1940–44 with The War of Continuation and finally The Lapland War. Details of all are on Wikipedia.

We drove from Rovaniemi down through Oulo, and then on to Helsinki, but there was only one thing occupying my mind and that was Russia. Several Fins that I spoke to just laughed when I told them I was heading into Russia with Bridget. Warnings on both the road conditions and the standard of driving were plentiful.

Although we were already into our seventh country I had almost forgotten about all the formalities when crossing into a ‘manned’ border whose job is largely to prevent unwanted people and items from crossing. I had expected entering Russia would be a prolonged affair and was prepared for it, but that was not the way it turned out. I completed two simple forms with details about Bridget and myself and that was it. I was so surprised, we were 130 into Russia before I realised that I had forgotten to buy car insurance. I was in Russia with a car registered as SPY and was illegal!

Fortunately we were only stopped once by the police en route to St Petersburg and they didn’t ask for the insurance, or comment on the registration. We found the road conditions from the border to the city are reasonable and in the city the roads are wide, well signposted and the driving standards better than I had been led to believe. We found our hotel quite easily and they found Bridget’s registration very amusing. They were also very helpful at finding an insurance company over the weekend.

Many people had told me how beautiful St Petersburg is and I have to agree that it has some very beautiful features, but other than its main historic buildings it is becoming quite tired. There are, unsurprisingly, many Soviet era buildings that either need cleaning and maintenance, or to be pulled down and replaced. The Winter Palace, however, would make visiting St Petersburg worthwhile even if there were no other things of interest.

Apart from anything else it was a major location of a very important piece of history which is still very recent, and it was this realisation that made it so interesting for me. Until now Russia under the Czars seemed long ago.

Whilst in St Petersburg I also had a difficult decision to make that I had been avoiding until now. It was, ‘whether or not to go on across Russia, to Vladivostok, and then around the world for a second time, or return into Europe and keep to a budget’. I finally decided to do the latter.

Having spent five days exploring St Petersburg it was good to be back on the road. The crossing back into Europe was quick and easy and we were soon arriving in Tallinn, Estonia. I managed to find a hotel owned by a couple of Englishmen, one a classic Bentley owner and the other a Triumph TR3 man. They told me about Riga Motor Museum in the Latvian capital. I had intended to drive straight through Latvia but this information changed my mind.

Tallinn is a chocolate box cover, medieval, hilltop city. The old city is full of restaurants, museums, churches and bars. Much of the original city wall can still be seen and everything is tourist friendly without being ‘pushy’ or expensive. I really quite liked it.

The Riga Motor Museum has over 200 exhibits, many historically interesting as well as being classic or vintage. For instance, they have a Rolls Royce that was crashed whilst being driven by Leonid Brezhnev reportedly under the influence. I don’t remember that making the ‘nationals’. There is also a Mercedes that was the car of one of Stalin’s private secretaries, and of course a varied selection of Soviet era Zils.

From Riga we continued across Lithuania to Warsaw. My impression of Warsaw was that it must be one of the smallest and quietest capital cities in Europe, excluding the Baltic States. Its centre is interesting with plenty to see and do, but its recent (1939–89) history I found upsetting.

From Warsaw we made our way to Brno in the Czech Republic. This was a historic event for Bridget as it was her 50th different country with me. There are several countries she has been to multiple times, but they only count once each.

It has been notable since entering Estonia that the EU has embarked on a massive road building programme since the old ‘Eastern Bloc’ joined the union. We have covered hundreds of miles on really good, new highways and hardly any are toll roads. I wonder if the UK could get assistance for our third world class roads?

You can keep up to date with Roy’s progress here.