I was travelling from Simferopol (Crimea) to Lviv (North West) and I had decided to take the scenic route up the Dnipro River to Kiev and then west. The second day of my trip I had only reached Kremenchug and the afternoon was passing....

I was in no hurry and Kiev was distant so I checked my map. The city of Kirovohrad was quite close so I decided to head there and find a hotel for the night. Kirovohrad is a fairly small city and I headed for the centre. As usual in this country there were beautiful ladies everywhere, which was fortunate as I did not find the city that interesting.

The very centre of the city is dominated by various types of government buildings, of typical Soviet design. Soviet architecture is I suspect love it, or hate it. I personally like it. It cannot be described as beautiful, but it is striking, full of character and very bold of design.

I found a pleasant patio cafe and enjoyed watching the world go by over a glass of juice and then retired to my hotel for an early night. The hotel (no names) was I am sure quite splendid in its day, yes, you guessed. It is now a bit sad and neglected and for some reason the whole place smelt of bitumen paint!

I rose early the next morning and it was a glorious day, so I set off back to the Dnipro to pick up where I had left off the previous day. I would reach Kiev by late afternoon I was sure. After about 1 hour of driving, it was a very pleasant route; I stopped at a roadside cafe (Kopje) and enjoyed juice, cafe, salad and eggs.

Refreshed I set off northwards. There was now only one city before Kyiv, Cherkasy; I would take my lunch there. At this point the River dnipro is enormous; it is not even possible to see land on the other side. This is a serious river.

A little like Kirovohrad, Cherkasy was a little non descript, I headed to the centre in search of a cafe, or restaurant and found one. Inside I met two German guys taking a romance trip; they had come to meet ladies that they had met through an agency. They seemed to know quite a lot about the city, I guess through correspondence and told me that ladies outnumbered men 6 to 1. Seems unbelievable I know, but I had heard similar statistics before, like 9 to 1 in Simferopol, not sure I believe that. Anyway these guys were full of anticipation; they had arrived only that morning and were meeting their ladies that evening.

I wished them good luck and set off on the final leg of my day's journey to Kiev. A word of advice, I followed what seemed to be the most direct route from Cherkasy to Kiev and found myself on a road the design of which was clearly taken from the letter S, boy it was slow going and it seemed to take about 2 hours to travel 60 kms!

Luckily I had set off early and had time on my side. Eventually I came across a better road and the road sign told me only I had 70kms to Kyiv, great. Road signs are a little few and far between in the Ukraine and somehow I found myself on the road to Borispol! The town with an airport of the same name, but at least I knew the road to the centre from here.

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