St Petersburg, The Vesskiy 4X4 Competition

18-21st September: St Petersburg is spectacular, and as I said with Moscow, a must see before you leave this planet. The city was built by Tsar Peter the Great in the 18th century as his summer residence and as a showcase city to the word. He achieved this and created perhaps one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Exotic and opulent buildings, canals and fountains. Without creating a tourist log, our highlight was the hermitage; the winter palace that is now a museum. Stocked full of Rubens, Rembrandts and the odd Leonardo da Vinci; thousands of other paintings; then there is the palace fittings; gold leafed roofs; malachite and lapis lazuli 2metre high vases; marble staircases, thousands of square metres of inlayed timber floors using up to 75 different timbers, etc etc. The photos we took only touch on the grandeur.
We spent the next day touring other sights, but being Wednesday many were closed, hence we headed out of town, but not before stopping in at the Piskaryovskoe Cemetery where half a million WWII victims are buried in mass graves. This is as a result of starvation when the Germans surrounded the city and tried to wipe St Petersburg from the face of the earth. Actually one million died in the 900 days of the siege; up to 30,000 died per day. Very moving as you stand overlooking the mass of symmetrically laid out head stones.

On to more exciting things, we had an invitation from Yuri Ovchinnikov, who runs the Ladoga 4x4 Trophy, to see one of the finals of the Russian 4x4 Challenge – The Vesskiy Forrest 4X4 Event. We arrived at the competition site around midnight some 300 kilometres from St Petersburg.

The vehicles were varied and some very impressive chain driven trucks with up to 3 winches weighing only 1300 kilo. The competition is very well run all ‘controlled’ by GPS tracking. Over 400 PS points, 280 Kilometres all to do in 52 hours, through mostly swamps, clay overgrown hills and chest deep rivers. Interesting is that all four levels of trucks, and the quad bikes do the same course. This is all done with only 5 competition managers/marshals.
Now we have a 4 day drive to London from Russia via Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Holland, France, and finally England. 4 days 8 countries.

Camp 86: Last Night in Russia near Latvian Border
Highlights: St Petersburg and its Hermitage Museum, Top Russian 4x4 Comp.

Total Distance to Date: 22,094 Kilometres