Hike along the path of the troops of Ivan the Terrible
There is an opinion that something overseas is considered a trip. However, the “far-away kingdom” can sometimes be very close. Our village of Surskoy is spread over a huge white-headed outlier. This chalk mountain was formed long ago, during the last glaciation. In every way this remnant was called: both the White Mountain and Nikolskaya. The places are beautiful, once impassable.
A thousand years ago the border of the Bulgarian kingdom ran along the forest edge, violating the measured life of the Finno-Ugric and Slavic tribes. The Bulgars liked the Volga Upland, its dark dense forests that filled the floodplains of the rivers, and the wide steppes, covered with feather grass and fescue. Bulgars did not live apart, they established trade with their neighbors, sent caravans to distant states. They say that sometimes their caravans passed by St. Nicholas Mountain and merchants left gifts at its top, venerating this mountain sacred.
Bulgars adopted the religion of the Baghdad Caliphate, built mosques, schools and baths. They either traded with Russia, or fought with it, breaking the gloomy silence of the Prisur and Volga forests with the clang of swords. After the defeat of the Bulgarian kingdom, the whole region went to the Kazan Khanate, and for a long time languages, customs and traditions were mixed here, interwoven into a single formless monolith. Four and a half centuries ago, the troops of Ivan the Terrible approached the Sura River, who marched from Moscow to Kazan, and at Barancheev’s hillforts - where the village of Baryshskaya Sloboda is now located, 15 km from our village - they crossed the river.
Crossed for a long time, not one day. And for the protection of the crossing, two prison houses were laid: downstream of the river where the Alatyr river flows into the Sura, and upstream at the mouth of the Promza, at the very base of the Nikolskaya Mountain. The first prison was called Alatyr, by the name of the river, and the second - Promzino, slightly distorting the Mordovian name of the river. So, with the light hand of the king-father, my village appeared, later renamed Surskoye. Not long Promzino was a prison, after the capture of Kazan this village lost its military significance.
Apparently, from that time on, every resident or guest of our village strives to climb to the top of the Nikolskaya Mountain by all means: look around, listen to the sound of the wind, admire the Zasur forests and the huge bend of the Sura River, approaching the very foot of the mountain, feel like a warrior for a moment archer of the sovereign troops. The village turned from a military fortification into a merchant town, a long time former district center for bread trade and fishing, and then into the very Surskoye, which it now is - an ordinary district village, which, across mother Russia, is apparently invisible.
From the numerous churches there is not a trace left, but there are a lot of houses of old construction on the streets. It was in honor of the events of bygone years that we - I and the cyclists of the Istoki Club - undertook in the summer. bike trip from Moscow to Sursky (Promzino) along the route of the Russian troops during that momentous campaign. The length of the route is not very large - 1200 km. All the way passes through densely populated places, here you will not squeeze out the difficulty category of a trip above the 2nd. We were not in a hurry, so we spent 18 days on the entire trip (of which 2 days were spent on the road to Moscow and 1 day for the day), the net time on the route was 15 days.
We tried to recreate this path using historical literature and materials from the museums of the region. It is known that troops marched in various convoys from Moscow and Sergiev Posad. Murom’s units were divided. Part of the army passed through Temnikov, which is in modern Mordovia, the other part went straight through Arzamas. Preparing for the campaign for a long time. All winter and spring they trained in the gym. Engaged in gymnastics, primarily horizontal. Walked marches. Whatever you say, but getting schoolchildren to run regularly is not an easy task. Well, they don’t see the point in this! All the words about the benefits of running pass the ears. He’s boring for the guys.
And it’s also hard work. But walking - please! A lot of pluses. Here you and communication - go and talk with friends, and load - try to walk 20 kilometers at a pace of 7 km per hour! And there is interest - you will have time on the go a lot and see and hear. No matter what - that's it! All around! Snow and snowdrifts are fluffy in winter, forests with leaves burning with yellow fire in autumn, the smell of thawed snow in March ... In the spring, we got on our bicycles and went around the whole district. We started at 10 km per workout, a month later we skated at 50, and in two months we reached 100. The boys love such great workouts.
Firstly, you can climb quite far from home; secondly, a halt is required. And this is a bonfire, and communication, and suddenly the food has become extremely tasty. We have 9 boys and one girl in the team, a beautiful 16-year-old Olga. A slender figure and long luxurious hair make her look like an Amazon. The boys are about the same age — they graduated from grades 8–9. Only Lesha Potekhin is a 1st year student at the Polytechnic. They are all seasoned campers. Sasha Solovyov was with me in Europe, Lyosha Potekhin traveled half the world, the rest went around the region. Everyone has thousands of kilometers.
They planned to start the route from Sergiev Posad, but some technical obstacles did not allow this. We drove bicycles directly from Moscow, having previously visited Red Square. We drove through Yuryev-Polsky, Suzdal, Vladimir, went to Murom, crossed the Meshchersky Territory, passed Arzamas and Big Boldino, crossed the Alatyr River and went to Sursky. Two weeks, 10 people of the team pedaled, at first trying to quickly leave behind not very friendly Moscow, then enjoying the communication and the excellent architecture of the old towns, as well as the literally piercing soul of Russian nature.
From Moscow to Yuryev-Polsky the road goes along a good, but very busy road. We have to put up with this, because there are no secondary roads in the Moscow region. The flow of cars does not end even after entering the Vladimir region. It is only from Yuryev-Polsky that we go east along a secondary road and sigh freely. In Yuryev-Polsky we iron the remains of stone carvings of St. George Cathedral, miraculously preserved to this day from the 12th century, in Suzdal we climb the old unreconstructed tower of the monastery for half an hour, looking into slit-like loopholes, trying to catch a reflection of the tower in the clear water of the Kamenka river.
Sleeping places are easy to find. Forests in the Moscow and Vladimir regions are still preserved, and we easily manage to hide our two tents from prying eyes. This is safety rule number 1 - hide the tent away. We’ll wind over more than 300 km to Vladimir. We pass 75 km per day (visiting the monuments takes a lot of time), then 110 - when the wind helps, and from the sights there are only meadows, coppices and tiny churches in dilapidated villages. Each of us made a cherished desire, swimming in the lake at the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl in Bogolyubovo.
The water of the lake is considered holy and, bathing in front of the most ancient church of the Russian Land, one must certainly make a wish with the hope of its obligatory fulfillment. A simple, but unusually majestic, striking in ideal proportions temple looks at us from the height of a small hill when we splash in front of it. After swimming, we slowly go inside, quietly and carefully stepping, forgetting about time, era, injustice, evil and misfortune. The head throws itself back, and the gaze slides upward - under the dome itself.
The walls of the temple are not crushed by grandeur, they seem to help the gaze rise higher and higher, and thoughts - to carry far, far away: maybe to the clouds, and maybe even further and higher. There is no desire to talk here, but you just want to stand and be silent. Leaving behind the Golden Gate of ancient Vladimir, like a gate to the Meshchersky Territory, we rush forward along the Murom Road. The cave was praised by Konstantin Paustovsky with such love and thoroughness that it seems that everything is familiar here, every bush and every tree.
In this wonderful land we see old shaggy spruce trees, which you no longer find in our forests, hung with long scaly cones and as if trying to hug each of us with their furry paws. The wind sways their peaks, and they seem to nod after us with their pointed heads, either wishing a good journey, or regretting the transience of the meeting. From Vladimir to Murom there is a road with a fairly fresh coating; although the distance between cities is only 130 km, we pass them in two days. You do not often find yourself in a forest that has miraculously preserved in Central Russia.
Struck by the crowded Moore, and with it the wide, calm Oka were left behind, we were met by the pine forests of western Nizhny Novgorod and the broken roads. This is good for us - the flow of cars behind the Oka sharply decreases. We stop for the night near the village of Kulebaki at the overgrown lake, surrounded on all sides by perennial pine trees. The air, intoxicating with its freshness, and the unusually high night sky, dotted on all sides with bright stars like embers of extinct bonfires, do not let us go for a long time. We sit around the campfire, we have an interesting conversation, sometimes we are silent, watching the sparks of the fire rush upward, and only after midnight we leave for the tents.
After 2 hours in the forest, a thunderstorm falls on our camp. Clouds come from the southwest, blazing with lightning. The rumble accompanying the flashes of lightning tears the air to shreds, as if a force unknown to man tears apart century-old trees from top to bottom with one powerful jerk. Thick, dense streams of water are crumbling down, as if the sky itself had broken through, and the clouds rushed into this breakthrough, hurrying to pour out as quickly as possible all the moisture that they had accumulated. I see only those guys who are in my tent. They shudder during each thunderbolt and as if pressed into the floor. “Aegeus,” I tell them, “are you not afraid?” “N-no,” someone answers, banging his teeth, “what have we not seen thunderstorms?”
I jump out. Such a thick and dense stream of water knocks me down, as if 10 people stood and waited for me to appear with a bucket of water each, and now they doused me as soon as I dared to get out of the tent. Rain jets streaming from all sides turn into stormy streams and flow between tents. “Hey, neighbors,” I cry, climbing first on all fours, and then, legs wide apart, running across to the next tent, “are you alive?” “Order,” Lesha is responsible for all. The voice is peppy. - Hey, rest, cast your vote! “It's all right, it's not so easy to scare us!” Olga tells us tales. I dive into my tent, wipe my body with a towel and wrap myself in a sleeping bag.
A cloud rolls after a cloud. As soon as a thunderstorm leaves east, a new one replaces it, threatening to burn the forest around, and then fill the remaining coals with water. The weather rages for three hours, and in the morning, as if satisfied with what was done during the night or tired of work, gives way to the sun and calm, barely noticeable breeze. We, having rolled up our tents and bathed in a lake almost out of the shores, continue our journey to the east. Soon the forests thinned, and the road takes us to the Arzamas light forest. On the way to Arzamas, we go astray.
The main road goes from the village of Gremyachevo to Ardatov and Diveevo, but we, wanting to shorten the path, drive along the old path, which soon turns into a cattle-driving path, and then completely into a track overgrown with burrs and tall grass, running along a thick maple landing. The experienced Lesha leaves the bike at the side of the road and goes forward to check the possibility of travel between the trees, and Rail and Vasyok go to the left. Intelligence does not give a positive result, and we step on the old tractor track. Weeds on the shoulders, bicycles cling to the burdock, but we are making our way forward.
Only in the evening our team gets out to the village of Abramovo. What was our surprise when we learned that the guides of Ivan the Terrible’s troops lost their way in these parts 4.5 centuries ago and decided to establish a village to rest the troops. The residents of Abramovo celebrated the venerable date of the founding of their village two months before our arrival, but such an incredible coincidence took our squad by surprise. Adventures and surprises awaited us until the very last kilometer. Broken asphalt carried away farther from Arzamas with its temples and the museum of the writer Arkady Gaidar.
I do not miss the opportunity to introduce the guys to the places where once good writers, artists, poets lived, I try to keep the thread of the route from passing through these places. Behind Arzamas a hilly plain began. In some places, the asphalt disappeared, giving way to a gravel and a rolled dirt road, where either drunk drivers of rare cars or a compass and topographic map could point in the right direction. The road, repeating all the bumps in the relief, then descended into the valley of some stream, then climbed to the very top of the watershed, offering us to climb as well.
The asphalt ended in Medyntsevo, and we turned the field roads for half a day, and from the village of Bolshie Pecherki we decided to cut the road to Bolshoi Boldino. The field road along which the locals directed us suddenly disappeared - it disappeared by itself, and we, guided by the compass, went out to the village called Kakino. We were again puzzled when it turned out that this village was founded in 1552, that is, 455 years ago during the same significant campaign of Russian troops to the east. It was strange to see in a dilapidated village houses of old construction, similar to those found on the streets of our village.
After 40 kilometers, they again found themselves in a difficult situation. There was no bridge over the Ezhat River, which the locals promised us. More recently, temporary wooden bridges were built here every summer. Now the villages and villages located along the coasts are empty, deserted, roads are overgrown, and the remaining residents are somehow without bridges. We camped at the very edge of the water. We sat for a long time around the fire, discussing the ups and downs of this day and tuning in to the raft crossing. Early in the morning we were awakened by the cries of people and the snoring of a horse that galloped along the clearing on which our tents stood.
It turned out that the Scythe crossed the river in a boat. We rejoiced at such a combination of circumstances. The dollyonka was old, with many holes clogged with wooden ingots, and a long crack in the stern, but it kept afloat, and in several passes we transported all our belongings and bicycles to the opposite shore. A good road leads from Boldino to Alatyr. In some places it turns from asphalt to covered with slabs, but it’s still a decent and completely deserted track.
Having traveled another 90 km and crossing the Alatyr river, for a long time we could not decide which route to take the remaining 69 km: through the city of Alatyr or through several tiny villages in the eastern part of Mordovia. They barely made a decision and deviated from the route of the troops of Ivan IV, bicycle breakdowns began, so serious that instead of 3-4 hours they spent the remaining kilometers the next day. Firstly, at Lyosha, at our experienced Lesha Potekhin, 15 spokes flew out of the rear wheel.
Here the needles began to burst, and that's it! Evening, the sun sets, but we can’t move. A village guy helped out by selling a miracle that a bicycle wheel that was not completely rusted around in his barn. We wrapped in a grove and camped there. Repair went on all morning. By 11.30, when we moved forward, the tire of my bike began to tear just before our eyes. Three times we stopped and fixed it. It was as if the spirit of Ivan the Terrible was indignant at our decision and persistently tried to return us to the fork and force us to go to Alatyr!
When only 15 km was left to the house, Yurik Chugunov broke the cup of the rear wheel hub. She did not give us rest for as long as 10 km, forcing us to stop again and again, remove the wheel and try to do at least something. We were stronger. Having removed this last obstacle, we drove out onto a hill, from which a view of our village opened. The route turned out to be interesting, fascinating and informative.
A thousand years ago the border of the Bulgarian kingdom ran along the forest edge, violating the measured life of the Finno-Ugric and Slavic tribes. The Bulgars liked the Volga Upland, its dark dense forests that filled the floodplains of the rivers, and the wide steppes, covered with feather grass and fescue. Bulgars did not live apart, they established trade with their neighbors, sent caravans to distant states. They say that sometimes their caravans passed by St. Nicholas Mountain and merchants left gifts at its top, venerating this mountain sacred.
Bulgars adopted the religion of the Baghdad Caliphate, built mosques, schools and baths. They either traded with Russia, or fought with it, breaking the gloomy silence of the Prisur and Volga forests with the clang of swords. After the defeat of the Bulgarian kingdom, the whole region went to the Kazan Khanate, and for a long time languages, customs and traditions were mixed here, interwoven into a single formless monolith. Four and a half centuries ago, the troops of Ivan the Terrible approached the Sura River, who marched from Moscow to Kazan, and at Barancheev’s hillforts - where the village of Baryshskaya Sloboda is now located, 15 km from our village - they crossed the river.
Crossed for a long time, not one day. And for the protection of the crossing, two prison houses were laid: downstream of the river where the Alatyr river flows into the Sura, and upstream at the mouth of the Promza, at the very base of the Nikolskaya Mountain. The first prison was called Alatyr, by the name of the river, and the second - Promzino, slightly distorting the Mordovian name of the river. So, with the light hand of the king-father, my village appeared, later renamed Surskoye. Not long Promzino was a prison, after the capture of Kazan this village lost its military significance.
Apparently, from that time on, every resident or guest of our village strives to climb to the top of the Nikolskaya Mountain by all means: look around, listen to the sound of the wind, admire the Zasur forests and the huge bend of the Sura River, approaching the very foot of the mountain, feel like a warrior for a moment archer of the sovereign troops. The village turned from a military fortification into a merchant town, a long time former district center for bread trade and fishing, and then into the very Surskoye, which it now is - an ordinary district village, which, across mother Russia, is apparently invisible.
From the numerous churches there is not a trace left, but there are a lot of houses of old construction on the streets. It was in honor of the events of bygone years that we - I and the cyclists of the Istoki Club - undertook in the summer. bike trip from Moscow to Sursky (Promzino) along the route of the Russian troops during that momentous campaign. The length of the route is not very large - 1200 km. All the way passes through densely populated places, here you will not squeeze out the difficulty category of a trip above the 2nd. We were not in a hurry, so we spent 18 days on the entire trip (of which 2 days were spent on the road to Moscow and 1 day for the day), the net time on the route was 15 days.
We tried to recreate this path using historical literature and materials from the museums of the region. It is known that troops marched in various convoys from Moscow and Sergiev Posad. Murom’s units were divided. Part of the army passed through Temnikov, which is in modern Mordovia, the other part went straight through Arzamas. Preparing for the campaign for a long time. All winter and spring they trained in the gym. Engaged in gymnastics, primarily horizontal. Walked marches. Whatever you say, but getting schoolchildren to run regularly is not an easy task. Well, they don’t see the point in this! All the words about the benefits of running pass the ears. He’s boring for the guys.
And it’s also hard work. But walking - please! A lot of pluses. Here you and communication - go and talk with friends, and load - try to walk 20 kilometers at a pace of 7 km per hour! And there is interest - you will have time on the go a lot and see and hear. No matter what - that's it! All around! Snow and snowdrifts are fluffy in winter, forests with leaves burning with yellow fire in autumn, the smell of thawed snow in March ... In the spring, we got on our bicycles and went around the whole district. We started at 10 km per workout, a month later we skated at 50, and in two months we reached 100. The boys love such great workouts.
Firstly, you can climb quite far from home; secondly, a halt is required. And this is a bonfire, and communication, and suddenly the food has become extremely tasty. We have 9 boys and one girl in the team, a beautiful 16-year-old Olga. A slender figure and long luxurious hair make her look like an Amazon. The boys are about the same age — they graduated from grades 8–9. Only Lesha Potekhin is a 1st year student at the Polytechnic. They are all seasoned campers. Sasha Solovyov was with me in Europe, Lyosha Potekhin traveled half the world, the rest went around the region. Everyone has thousands of kilometers.
They planned to start the route from Sergiev Posad, but some technical obstacles did not allow this. We drove bicycles directly from Moscow, having previously visited Red Square. We drove through Yuryev-Polsky, Suzdal, Vladimir, went to Murom, crossed the Meshchersky Territory, passed Arzamas and Big Boldino, crossed the Alatyr River and went to Sursky. Two weeks, 10 people of the team pedaled, at first trying to quickly leave behind not very friendly Moscow, then enjoying the communication and the excellent architecture of the old towns, as well as the literally piercing soul of Russian nature.
From Moscow to Yuryev-Polsky the road goes along a good, but very busy road. We have to put up with this, because there are no secondary roads in the Moscow region. The flow of cars does not end even after entering the Vladimir region. It is only from Yuryev-Polsky that we go east along a secondary road and sigh freely. In Yuryev-Polsky we iron the remains of stone carvings of St. George Cathedral, miraculously preserved to this day from the 12th century, in Suzdal we climb the old unreconstructed tower of the monastery for half an hour, looking into slit-like loopholes, trying to catch a reflection of the tower in the clear water of the Kamenka river.
Sleeping places are easy to find. Forests in the Moscow and Vladimir regions are still preserved, and we easily manage to hide our two tents from prying eyes. This is safety rule number 1 - hide the tent away. We’ll wind over more than 300 km to Vladimir. We pass 75 km per day (visiting the monuments takes a lot of time), then 110 - when the wind helps, and from the sights there are only meadows, coppices and tiny churches in dilapidated villages. Each of us made a cherished desire, swimming in the lake at the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl in Bogolyubovo.
The water of the lake is considered holy and, bathing in front of the most ancient church of the Russian Land, one must certainly make a wish with the hope of its obligatory fulfillment. A simple, but unusually majestic, striking in ideal proportions temple looks at us from the height of a small hill when we splash in front of it. After swimming, we slowly go inside, quietly and carefully stepping, forgetting about time, era, injustice, evil and misfortune. The head throws itself back, and the gaze slides upward - under the dome itself.
The walls of the temple are not crushed by grandeur, they seem to help the gaze rise higher and higher, and thoughts - to carry far, far away: maybe to the clouds, and maybe even further and higher. There is no desire to talk here, but you just want to stand and be silent. Leaving behind the Golden Gate of ancient Vladimir, like a gate to the Meshchersky Territory, we rush forward along the Murom Road. The cave was praised by Konstantin Paustovsky with such love and thoroughness that it seems that everything is familiar here, every bush and every tree.
In this wonderful land we see old shaggy spruce trees, which you no longer find in our forests, hung with long scaly cones and as if trying to hug each of us with their furry paws. The wind sways their peaks, and they seem to nod after us with their pointed heads, either wishing a good journey, or regretting the transience of the meeting. From Vladimir to Murom there is a road with a fairly fresh coating; although the distance between cities is only 130 km, we pass them in two days. You do not often find yourself in a forest that has miraculously preserved in Central Russia.
Struck by the crowded Moore, and with it the wide, calm Oka were left behind, we were met by the pine forests of western Nizhny Novgorod and the broken roads. This is good for us - the flow of cars behind the Oka sharply decreases. We stop for the night near the village of Kulebaki at the overgrown lake, surrounded on all sides by perennial pine trees. The air, intoxicating with its freshness, and the unusually high night sky, dotted on all sides with bright stars like embers of extinct bonfires, do not let us go for a long time. We sit around the campfire, we have an interesting conversation, sometimes we are silent, watching the sparks of the fire rush upward, and only after midnight we leave for the tents.
After 2 hours in the forest, a thunderstorm falls on our camp. Clouds come from the southwest, blazing with lightning. The rumble accompanying the flashes of lightning tears the air to shreds, as if a force unknown to man tears apart century-old trees from top to bottom with one powerful jerk. Thick, dense streams of water are crumbling down, as if the sky itself had broken through, and the clouds rushed into this breakthrough, hurrying to pour out as quickly as possible all the moisture that they had accumulated. I see only those guys who are in my tent. They shudder during each thunderbolt and as if pressed into the floor. “Aegeus,” I tell them, “are you not afraid?” “N-no,” someone answers, banging his teeth, “what have we not seen thunderstorms?”
I jump out. Such a thick and dense stream of water knocks me down, as if 10 people stood and waited for me to appear with a bucket of water each, and now they doused me as soon as I dared to get out of the tent. Rain jets streaming from all sides turn into stormy streams and flow between tents. “Hey, neighbors,” I cry, climbing first on all fours, and then, legs wide apart, running across to the next tent, “are you alive?” “Order,” Lesha is responsible for all. The voice is peppy. - Hey, rest, cast your vote! “It's all right, it's not so easy to scare us!” Olga tells us tales. I dive into my tent, wipe my body with a towel and wrap myself in a sleeping bag.
A cloud rolls after a cloud. As soon as a thunderstorm leaves east, a new one replaces it, threatening to burn the forest around, and then fill the remaining coals with water. The weather rages for three hours, and in the morning, as if satisfied with what was done during the night or tired of work, gives way to the sun and calm, barely noticeable breeze. We, having rolled up our tents and bathed in a lake almost out of the shores, continue our journey to the east. Soon the forests thinned, and the road takes us to the Arzamas light forest. On the way to Arzamas, we go astray.
The main road goes from the village of Gremyachevo to Ardatov and Diveevo, but we, wanting to shorten the path, drive along the old path, which soon turns into a cattle-driving path, and then completely into a track overgrown with burrs and tall grass, running along a thick maple landing. The experienced Lesha leaves the bike at the side of the road and goes forward to check the possibility of travel between the trees, and Rail and Vasyok go to the left. Intelligence does not give a positive result, and we step on the old tractor track. Weeds on the shoulders, bicycles cling to the burdock, but we are making our way forward.
Only in the evening our team gets out to the village of Abramovo. What was our surprise when we learned that the guides of Ivan the Terrible’s troops lost their way in these parts 4.5 centuries ago and decided to establish a village to rest the troops. The residents of Abramovo celebrated the venerable date of the founding of their village two months before our arrival, but such an incredible coincidence took our squad by surprise. Adventures and surprises awaited us until the very last kilometer. Broken asphalt carried away farther from Arzamas with its temples and the museum of the writer Arkady Gaidar.
I do not miss the opportunity to introduce the guys to the places where once good writers, artists, poets lived, I try to keep the thread of the route from passing through these places. Behind Arzamas a hilly plain began. In some places, the asphalt disappeared, giving way to a gravel and a rolled dirt road, where either drunk drivers of rare cars or a compass and topographic map could point in the right direction. The road, repeating all the bumps in the relief, then descended into the valley of some stream, then climbed to the very top of the watershed, offering us to climb as well.
The asphalt ended in Medyntsevo, and we turned the field roads for half a day, and from the village of Bolshie Pecherki we decided to cut the road to Bolshoi Boldino. The field road along which the locals directed us suddenly disappeared - it disappeared by itself, and we, guided by the compass, went out to the village called Kakino. We were again puzzled when it turned out that this village was founded in 1552, that is, 455 years ago during the same significant campaign of Russian troops to the east. It was strange to see in a dilapidated village houses of old construction, similar to those found on the streets of our village.
After 40 kilometers, they again found themselves in a difficult situation. There was no bridge over the Ezhat River, which the locals promised us. More recently, temporary wooden bridges were built here every summer. Now the villages and villages located along the coasts are empty, deserted, roads are overgrown, and the remaining residents are somehow without bridges. We camped at the very edge of the water. We sat for a long time around the fire, discussing the ups and downs of this day and tuning in to the raft crossing. Early in the morning we were awakened by the cries of people and the snoring of a horse that galloped along the clearing on which our tents stood.
It turned out that the Scythe crossed the river in a boat. We rejoiced at such a combination of circumstances. The dollyonka was old, with many holes clogged with wooden ingots, and a long crack in the stern, but it kept afloat, and in several passes we transported all our belongings and bicycles to the opposite shore. A good road leads from Boldino to Alatyr. In some places it turns from asphalt to covered with slabs, but it’s still a decent and completely deserted track.
Having traveled another 90 km and crossing the Alatyr river, for a long time we could not decide which route to take the remaining 69 km: through the city of Alatyr or through several tiny villages in the eastern part of Mordovia. They barely made a decision and deviated from the route of the troops of Ivan IV, bicycle breakdowns began, so serious that instead of 3-4 hours they spent the remaining kilometers the next day. Firstly, at Lyosha, at our experienced Lesha Potekhin, 15 spokes flew out of the rear wheel.
Here the needles began to burst, and that's it! Evening, the sun sets, but we can’t move. A village guy helped out by selling a miracle that a bicycle wheel that was not completely rusted around in his barn. We wrapped in a grove and camped there. Repair went on all morning. By 11.30, when we moved forward, the tire of my bike began to tear just before our eyes. Three times we stopped and fixed it. It was as if the spirit of Ivan the Terrible was indignant at our decision and persistently tried to return us to the fork and force us to go to Alatyr!
When only 15 km was left to the house, Yurik Chugunov broke the cup of the rear wheel hub. She did not give us rest for as long as 10 km, forcing us to stop again and again, remove the wheel and try to do at least something. We were stronger. Having removed this last obstacle, we drove out onto a hill, from which a view of our village opened. The route turned out to be interesting, fascinating and informative.
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