Having decided that a trip out to the Solovetski Islands would be nice my lot then found themselves with a few days to fill in hanging around Arkangelsk as being the height of summer they couldn’t get a flight out to the islands until Sunday and would come back on Monday. Back in ’98 they had tried to catch the ferry to the islands from Kim but then it was running very sporadicly and some people had been wanting a week for it so they decided not to bother waiting.The attraction on the main island is the large monastery that was founded in the 1500’s and for some years from 1920 onward was used by the Soviets as a ‘gulag’, one of the harshest ones in existence. On a pleasantly warm day we explored the heritage village at Malye Korely. There are over 100 buildings that have been moved here and preserved. Some so much so that they look quite new. Each building had a date on it, Some of the churches were as early as the 1500’s but most seem to date from the mid 19th century. The village is divided into three separate sections, each section representing a style unique to one of the local regions, however my lot really didn’t see much difference in them. They were all built of logs and many were house and farm barns all in one. The living quarters are up top, with workshops and store rooms below that and the animals in an adjoining sections. Two or three were from villages where boatbuilding was a main activity. In one there was a small display of sleds, whilst in another was some small boats. Farm equipment was featured in most, just the usual basic stuff found all over the world before tractors revolutionised how things were done. All the living areas were much the same too. Central to this is the big Russian stoves that seem to be made of some sort of ceramic we think. They are very large and work in a similar way to a slow combustion heater. They have a small fire box where the fire is kept going continuously and once the whole thing heats up then it is relatively easy to keep it going and warm. Not sure if it was ever let go out as even in July. When we were here there was electric heating being used. Perhaps for a few days each summer it would be too hot but it would not be many. There is nearly always a bed on top for the husband and wife while any kids or others would have beds adjacent to it. It also has little niches around the sides that are used for drying clothes and boots. The domes of the churches are really pretty, the wood has turned silver with age and it glows in the sunlight, not that we had much of that. On this trip my lot have noticed that the Russians have finally twigged that there is money to be made selling souvenirs’ to tourists. This may have been around in Moscow and St Petersburg for a few years, we haven’t been there since ’98 but it’s the first time my lot have encounter it in provincial areas. It’s still only catching on and there is no great selection but there are some postcards, magnets, and other knick knacks, even a few t-shirts. One fellow had a small hand minting dye for minting coins. For a few dollars anyone could have a go at minting a coin, brass or aluminium blanks were on offer, with a choice of four or five different dyes. D had a go, he chose a brass coin and a dye with the Russian eagle on it. He then had to hit it hard with the sledge hammer. L had a go at videoing it, but she was less successful having hit the wrong button, she does that all too often.We wandered around Arkangelsk quite a bit and meandered through two large fairly new shopping centres. Both had a huge Spar supermarket and a Mcdonalds along with many top brand shops any big city in the west would be proud to host. Sanctions, if indeed there are any, don’t seem to be having much of a detrimental effect around here.Our flight was from the small Vaskovo airport. As airports go the best way to describe it is basic, but then when my lot had been through Vladivostok airport some years ago it was only a bigger version of this one. The weather obliged and we had quite a nice day for our flight out to Solovetske Island. Our plane was only a small one that can carry 19 passengers, with just a pilot and co-polit. The passengers have a good view of the flight deck. It is a L-410 UVP E if that is meaningful to anyone. It was built in the Czech Republic. the wings are above the cabin and it has twin turbo prop engines. We were just 14 passengers and me, and the intoxicating smell of aviation fuel that permeated the cabin didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence into my lot when the cabin door closed. Never-the-less we got there and back and had great views along the way.D got a really good view of the city of Severodbinsk, a naval port where many submarines could be seen. While L was amazed by the never ending procession of small villages with no visible means of support.If we though the air strip at Vaskovo airport was a bit rough with grass growing up between the concrete blocks it’s got nothing on the one on the island that is made of steel sand ladders with white daisies growing out of the holes. D reckons it would be a bit ******* the tyres. It was a bit like landing on a vibrating machine.We were met by the people from the hotel we had booked and transported back to it. It proved to be very ‘rustic’; that’s the best way L can describe it. The people were friendly, spoke some English and gave us a lovely cabin. It was rustic too, but nice and warm and very comfortable. It was much colder here than in Arkangelsk.then we set off to look around the place. It’s all typically Russian, not much in the way of signs, even less in organisation, and what roads there were were very rough and dusty, until it rains that is, then they are just very boggy.The monastery dominated the scene and was very near. However, there isn’t a lot to see in it as a great deal of restoration work is going on and scaffolding is everywhere. It was founded in the 16th century though nearly all the buildings date from the 18th and 19th century. In 1920 the Soviets set up a gulag here, one of the most notorious in the country, then in 1939 the gulag was closed and the place handed to the Navy.We wondered around, tried to look at some archaeological finds but were chased out of there, visited the churches, admired the peel of 8 bells that are sitting down at ground level under cover. I wanted to get hold of one of the clangers and ring the bell, but L restrained me, spoilt my fun she did. We ended up in the well stocked gift shop that was doing a roaring trade.After asking several people for directions we found our way to the ‘gulag museum’A nice man from Moscow was going to explain some of the displays to us but the lady who was on ‘guard’ duty seems to think the place is still a gulag, and wouldn’t let him continue, though he did still tell us a few things. Everything was in Russian only but we saw several people who were in tears from what they were reading. There were photos and stories from some of the survivors.We did learn that there were many hundreds of these camps around the former USSR. this one was one of the large ones with 25000 inmates at its peak. On one day alone 1011 were shot, and well over 100,000 lost their lives here over the years it was open. From the photos we see that several mass graves have been found but our friend also told us that many are probably buried under buildings etc, as they were buried 3.5m deep. One of the projects that prisoners worked on, prisoners from other camps in the region, not this one, was building a canal to link a number of lakes and eventually to lead to the Baltic. They didn’t use concrete for this they used large wooden cages filled with rocks and had wooden sluice gates. The end result was that the canal leaked, it was too narrow and too shallow for the boats it was intended for. To conclude this fellow said that it was like everything the Soviets did, useless! Obviously he wasn’t a fan:Around this museum there was a few other small souvenir shops, a cafeteria, and very well stocked general store, the liquor department was doing a roaring trade. We found a bank but no ATM.We stumbled across a maritime museum by accident. Not a sign giving any clue to its existence. We merely wondered in, as did I think, most others that were here. It had a replica of an old boat in a workshop on the ground floor and a bit of a display of maritime equipment upstairs. Most interesting was a trip to a tiny island off the Kola peninsula where there is a large flat rock that sailors have been carving their names in for hundreds of years. the oldest date is mid 16th century. We walked to the Negotiation Rock, a large flat rock with something carved in it dated 1854, and to the ‘labyrinth’ an imitation of one somewhere else on the Island. There are many of these ‘labyrinths across this part of north west Russia and Scandinavia. they are about 4000 years old.Our return flight to Vaskovo was uneventful and the car just as we’d left it. We stocked up on some supplies and began the long haul south. When we got to the turnoff for Kotlas we took it as an alternative to returning over the same route.This took us on minor roads, just as much traffic, there was one or two long stretches of gravel and some very rough macadam. There was succession of small villages with tumble down houses and very few people about. Gradually the weather warmed and we saw a lot more agriculture, even a couple of herds of dairy cows. A great deal of logging all the way and we passed several sawmill with great stacks of logs. The large town of Veliki Ustyug is where Father Frost lives. Father Frost is the Russian equivalent of Father Christmas. A few k’s outside the town is a Father Frost theme park. I wanted to go but my lot decided that it being July and the middle of the summer school holidays they didn’t fancy visiting such a place amid hoards of Russian kids and harried parents. We did go into the town but apart from a special post office, closed by the time we found it, it’s just like any other Russian town of a similar size, plenty of churches.The mercury kept climbing and before we reached Nizny Novgorod on the Volga it had reached 30C, then storm clouds appeared and although there was little rain it did cool things off somewhat. Kept on heading south and stated to see a few more animals, cattle and some sheep and goats, more agriculture too with the wheat and barely ripening and lots of maize being grown. These fields were large, from about 50acre to several hundred, L would guess, so don’t count on it. Taking mostly minor roads, some quite good some you wouldn’t want to have to return over, all the same category on the map, we arrived in Penza. This is a big city that we can’t even find a mention of in the guide book, it has the usual run of gold dome churches but little else to offer from what we could see. So we made our way southward towards Saratov on the Volga. Now things really started to change, the countryside gradually became much dried and the trees more sparse and stunted, and the cereal crops were either being harvested or had been.We spent a couple of days in Saratov most because my lot, while looking for a place to use the internet found a nice hotel offering half price rates on a weekend. It was in a nice position too, overlooking the river front. with a promenade along the front below it. A statue of Yuri Gargarin just along the street. I posed for a photo with him.We walked quite a lot around the this quite pleasant city. Once of the major cit streets though the little suburban streets seem to be mostly rutted dirt or gravel tracks. Being able to spot the large memorial at the lookout on top of the hill we headed towards it following several of these dirt streets then had a scramble up a steep slope through thick low growing scrub on a sort of trail for midgets. This brought us right to the bottom of the monument dedicated to WW2. After admiring the view we walked along the road leading to it that is lined with military hardware. Rock launchers, migs, and tanks, mostly, enough to start a family major war. Then while we all took a break in a bit of shade those two scoffed an ice-cream each, never offering me even a smell.The proper route back down along the roads was at least 4 times as long as our upward climb had been but at least it was going down. Once back down and only a couple of k’s from our hotel L, not looking where she was putting her feel, silly sod, stepped in a hole (couldn’t see the bottom) in the middle of a narrow street and gashed her leg while I was sent sprawling face down into the dirt. I was totally traumatised from this: L got to her feet again, tested that she hadn’t actually broken anything but had only gashed herself below her left knee. So with blood streaming down her leg we made our way back to the hotel where I just got tossed into the car and a fuss was made of L’s leg, hey! I’m the one that is traumatised here.In the cool evening air we enjoyed a stroll along the promenade where there is a fun fair set up too. It had been over 30 C earlier in the day The Volga here is a wide large river and there are big cruise boats that do trips of several days and there are also ones that just do short trips for a couple of hours. they didn’t seem to be doing too well, but one of the cruise boats must have been almost full, bus loads from it were heading out sightseeing while heaps more passengers headed into the nearest bar at the Hotel Volga.As we got further south towards Volgagrad the land got much drier, what crops there are, not many, are barely clinging to life. Trees are almost non existent so with trees there is no shade to take a rest in. What trees there are have been planted, about half have died while the rest cling tenuously to life and have a few green leaves to prove it.In Volgagrad we visited the Mother Kurgan statue. Like Saratov my lot had been here in 1998. This statue is very important to the whole Russian people. It was on this hill that about 1,000,000 Russian soldiers died during a huge battle with the Germans in 1943 or 1944, L isn’t too sure which year. It was a major turing point during the war as from here the Germans were pushed back slowly and we all know the outcome of that, 44 years of communist rule in East Germany and Eastern Europe.L with include a photo of the Mother Kurgan statue, here’s some info bout it. It stands 70M tall and the sword she is holding is 10m long,Volgagrad is another large but quite pleasant city, it sprawls along the western shore of the Volga for a very long way. We could see on the other side of the river there is a popular beach where many people were either sunbathing in the +30C heat or in playing or swimming in the water. The beach was sandy. It’s only us silly Aussies who try and stay out of that sun and wear hats. Next we headed off towards Elista, This took us through a semi desert region, very little grass and bit of thorny low growing scrub here and there. The few small villages that we passed though seemed very hot and dusty, the temp at climbed to 34C. The main road we travelled on was the only sealed road in the town. However, there are plenty of trees in everyones yard and along the street, not tall but usually busy and shady.Elista, is a predominately Chinese community. These people were once nomadic herdsman but were settled here by the Soviets. There is an abundance of Bhuddiest temples and most of the other building have a distinct Asian appearance. A tiny enclave just a little separate from the town is Chess City. It was built for the 1998 Word championships and from what we could work out some sort of Chess Olympics were held here in 2004. It was all very quiet when we visited with hardly a soul about. We had a look in the Chess Palace, a large glass building attached to a hotel. Just inside the doors are three large chess boards set in the floor, complete with chessmen. but nothing much else in the whole building except a small museum that wasn’t open.The heat became relentless with the mercury hovering around the 35C as we continued on south into the north Caucasus region and the towns of Pyatigorsk and Kislovodsk, finally in the latter at an altitude or around 100m it was just a little cooler.My lot have been to both these places on previous trips at less touristy time of the year. They found the summer crowds quite daunting but did enjoy a stroll around the very pleasant pedestrian areas and partaking of the waters here and there. Kislovodsk is a spa town with several sanitariums around the town. The best water they came across was a ‘fountain’ beside the road near Dombai that was very popular with locals and tourists alike. The water was lovely and cool and people were filling 10l containers by the car load.We went right up to Dombai a ski resort in the mountains. Again it was full of summer tourists and my lot barely recognized the place from 1998 when they were here. The wonky old chair lift has been replaced with a modern one with gondolas, there are several now hotels both large and small, lots of shops where before there was only one tiny shop that sold a few provisions. The glaciers on the high mountains all around were glistening in the bright sunshine. L had spent her 50th birthday here hiking up to one of those glaciers. They have probably receded somewhat in the intervening years.In Kochebeeskoe we called in to try and find Galina who had befriended my lot back in 1998. We had seen her daughter Violetta in 2012 at Pyatigorsk but this time we didn’t manage to see either. We did however find Luba who had helped us in 2012. again she helped us out by trying to find Galina and Violetta. She is also a language teacher at the same school as Galina. The summer holidays is not the best time to be visiting school teachers as they are on holidays too. Galina is off spending time with her daughter Violetta who now has a one year old daughter. We would all like to thank Luba for her hospitality and helpfulness.It was at this point that my lot decided that they couldn’t face at least 6 days of driving in this heat or worse once they crossed into Kaxakhstan. Neither of them were enjoying it and the dust of the desert over the border where it probably wouldn’t cool at all overnight made them decide to head north to Moscow and then back to Europe while they still had enough time left on their visas to do in comfortably.Even so that was a hot trip too: The countryside that was quite productive with cereal crops around Stavropol gradually improved as we headed northward with the stunted tress and thorny scrub giving away to birch trees and pines. Although the cereal crops continued we also saw vast areas of sunflower some in full bloom whilst others were beginning to dry off, and maize, along with some sugar beet. All along the way the trees are showing the first signs of autumn with a yellow tinge creeping in. It was still 30C when we arrived on the outskirts of Moscow, yet the ice on the river had only broken up in May. and it will probably snow again well before the end of October.© Lynette Regan 11th August 2015