Two Brits revived a broken Lada for an epic UK-to-Chernobyl road trip to commemorate the disaster’s anniversary

These two British guys revived a broken Lada to take it on an epic road trip to Chernobyl, Ukraine, to commemorate the anniversary of the nuclear plant disaster.

Back in 2006, Keith Adams and Mike Duff took a $132 (£100) Lada Riva from the UK all the way out to Ukraine.

There was some uncertainty over whether this car would make it to the English Coast, let alone to Chernobyl.

But what followed was a memorable – and eventful – road trip across a continent.

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Driving from the UK to Chernobyl in a Lada Riva – why not?

Motor journalists Keith Adams and Mike Duff embarked on the trip back in 2006.

Their Lada of choice was a 1988 model with 24,000 miles on the clock.

Before embarking, several jobs needed seeing to – the cooling system being filled with anti-freeze was just one.

While unscrewing the drain plug on the radiator, the plug broke off, needing a visit to the autoshop.

There, the hole got covered up just in time for the road trip to begin.

As they drove down towards the coast to catch the ferry, the Lada’s rarity became a point of attention for other drivers.

“As we traveled towards Dover, other road-users would crane their necks for a closer look. By the time we arrived in Dover, we felt like C-list celebrities,” Adams wrote in a 2019 article on the trip.

Getting through Britain and France was the easy part, but trouble was on the horizon.

Thanks to a fuse popping somewhere near the UK coast, they had no instrument illumination, which meant no lights to read the instrument panels, like gas.

That was bad enough, but things got worse in Belgium.

“It started as a part-throttle misfire, but this soon developed to a serious judder that had us furiously hunting for a sweet spot on the accelerator,” Adams recalled.

One night on the Autobahn later, they settled down in a hotel, concluding they’d need to visit a Lada dealership at some point.

The only problem was that their car wouldn’t start the following morning.

Fortunately, an employee at the German equivalent of AAA, the ADAC, managed to work their magic and sent the pair on their way.

There’s nothing quite like a road trip

As they made their way through Germany, a black VW Golf began following them closely.

This confused them at first – until they saw ‘POLIZEI’ in the window.

Preparing for a telling off, they pulled into a gas station.

Fortunately, they’d only stopped them for curiosity’s sake.

Once in Berlin, they picked up the third member of the team and went to the only Lada service center in the city.

“When we rolled up, the guys looked genuinely pleased to see us – and piled into the job,” Adams wrote.

“A complete rebuild of the distributor, reset of the carburetor, and we were done – three hours labor: $52…”

Eventually, they made it to Chernobyl, where the atmosphere was understandably solemn.

While there, they visited a massive vehicle graveyard filled with abandoned fire engines, cars, and even helicopters.

Describing it as a ‘spooky place’, Adams reflected further on the time they spent there.

“The day spent at Chernobyl will stay with me forever,” he wrote.

“The empty villages, the biting wind, the desolate nature of the place – but, most of all, the sheer lack of colour made visiting Chernobyl a depressingly drab and thought-provoking experience.”

Traveling can really open our minds to the world around us.

And road trips are a perfect way to do that.

For these two guys in their Reliant Robin, the whole of Africa was the setting for their trip.

And if you live in the US, you don’t need to leave the country for a long road trip – as demonstrated by this man in his Tesla Model 3.

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