Brown girl in the ring...

14th August, Smile Café (Vecolny, Crimea)

We have been staying in a room with the aforementioned Russian punks in a village called Vecolny (which is translated as Merry in english). They are not really punks, just that they have a penchant for facial piercings, wacky hair and tattoos. The room is attached to the Smile Café and owned by a lovely Tartar family. We have spent a couple of very chilled out days on the beach. I stupidly fell asleep in the midday sun and ended up with a slightly pink back and Ants ended up with pink backs of thighs. We were both wearing factor 25, so we probably got off quite lightly. It was so nice to just feel like regular tourists for a short while and just relax e.g. eat lunch in a café on the beach and play backgammon, sunbathe etc.

We also managed to locate the naturist beach just around the bay from our beach. It was a real rock scrambling session and in 30C plus heat this turned into quite an energy sapping experience. The naturist beach was less of a beach and actually some rocks where people either decided to wear clothes (pecker checkers and beaver patrol) or chose not to (naturists). Ants and I found a reasonably flat rock and toasted ourselves. I now look less like a zebra and more like a polecat.

One of our new Russian pals is a girl called Nastia and she speaks fluent English, having spent a year in the states and four years in Holland. Together with her friends from St Petersburg they run a disco on the beach, which we went to last night. It was a laugh and I got far too excited by Boney M tracks.

Nothing much more to report, other than that TT has decided she likes to steer to the right when we apply the brakes. This same problem happened in Kazakshtan and we solved it by changing the front brake caliper. We met a mechanic today who says he can get TT sorted- fingers crossed as we don’t have a spare caliper.