Hmm, haven't put anything on here for a while. Probably because we haven't been up to much.
However, this weekend, we assembled a caravan of friends and travelled two hours to the north-west (roughly) to the Deer Streams national park. It was supposed to take two hours to get there. The collective 'we' can be chalked down as 'special' when it comes to navigation. It took us over four hours. Firstly, somehow we got it into our heads that it was 120km along the Perm road. I have no idea where that one came from. So, we drove 120km, 125 km, 130km - no signs, just a very lovely road through the low undulating hills of the Urals skirting the edges of Revda, Pervouralsk, Talitsa and Bisert. It was after Bisert that one of us decided to turn the page of the map. Horror all round. We'd gone two pages too far. Not a problem - we stopped, had a cup of tea (good work from Yulia with the thermos, although hot tea at 30+ C is a stretch for me), swatted off horse-flies the size of ponies, and turned around back to find the turning to a place called 'Lower Ear-rings' (well, it probably isn't called this, but that's my literal translation). Masha emerged from the car with the words 'We went past the turn off an hour ago. I thought you knew where we were going.' - Thanks for telling us that. In the days of modern telecommunications, a simple phone call with the query 'err, wasn't that the turn off?' may have saved us a few hours there.
Lower Ear-rings is spectacular by the way. It's a small village, possibly bordering on being a town, with lots of old, pretty ornate wooden houses and a huge blue lake in the middle with one cracking hill rising at one side. Pine forests all around etc, pretty much everything you imagine of the Russian countryside. My failure to have the camera on hand means no pictures. A few more wrong turns, increased temperature between drivers and navigators and eventually we made it. It turns out that we must have had an old map. ;)
Eventually we made it to the park in glorious sunshine. Who could have known what was to come...
The park is about 30 or 40 square km with a number of different routes to take. We'll have to go back there at some point to do some more walking. Lots of people take tents etc and hang out for a few days. Our first route took us to the caves, which turned out to be across a small river which was about wasit height to us and shoulde rheight to the kids. So instead of reaching the caves, we dipped our feet in the river, all said how great it would have been if we'd thought ahead and brought towels etc so that we could swim, and promptly marched back.
A. by this time was getting tired and the suggestion that we take another walk to a statue of an angel was greeted with groans, so he and Masha went off to the cafe by the car park to sit and wait. Well done them. We set off to the angel under thunder and a few sparks of lightening, with most people wandering back in teh opposite direction and only us going on another walk. A woman walked past and said 'Don't worry, it's a dry storm!' She was most definitely wrong. Thunder, lightening, torrential rain ensued. In for a penny, in for a pound though and we decided to complete the walk. The last 100 metre were interesting. A series of metal steps, not firmly secured to anything and with the bannister coming away from the rocks took us down between two very close cliffs to the angel itself. The lightning and thunder was pretty wild and after a few pictures and lots of 'this is very beautiful', 'oh, Russian nature', 'the wild Urals weather', we started to head back. It carried on raining. And then it rained more. Our dreams had come true and we had got the swim we wanted - just not in the river. Pretty much sprinting back to the car we found Masha and A. in the cafe, they laughed at us, got us some hot tea (no birch vodka on offer unfortunately) and we all said how much it had been worth it. It had been worth it, and getting drenched just added to it. The walk was really nice and the park is great. And so, we headed home. To find out that the storm had brought trees down in Ekat and caused some damage all over the city and is now being spoken of as a hurricane that ripped through the city leaving an immense trail of destruction.
And this post is now far too long...
However, this weekend, we assembled a caravan of friends and travelled two hours to the north-west (roughly) to the Deer Streams national park. It was supposed to take two hours to get there. The collective 'we' can be chalked down as 'special' when it comes to navigation. It took us over four hours. Firstly, somehow we got it into our heads that it was 120km along the Perm road. I have no idea where that one came from. So, we drove 120km, 125 km, 130km - no signs, just a very lovely road through the low undulating hills of the Urals skirting the edges of Revda, Pervouralsk, Talitsa and Bisert. It was after Bisert that one of us decided to turn the page of the map. Horror all round. We'd gone two pages too far. Not a problem - we stopped, had a cup of tea (good work from Yulia with the thermos, although hot tea at 30+ C is a stretch for me), swatted off horse-flies the size of ponies, and turned around back to find the turning to a place called 'Lower Ear-rings' (well, it probably isn't called this, but that's my literal translation). Masha emerged from the car with the words 'We went past the turn off an hour ago. I thought you knew where we were going.' - Thanks for telling us that. In the days of modern telecommunications, a simple phone call with the query 'err, wasn't that the turn off?' may have saved us a few hours there.
Lower Ear-rings is spectacular by the way. It's a small village, possibly bordering on being a town, with lots of old, pretty ornate wooden houses and a huge blue lake in the middle with one cracking hill rising at one side. Pine forests all around etc, pretty much everything you imagine of the Russian countryside. My failure to have the camera on hand means no pictures. A few more wrong turns, increased temperature between drivers and navigators and eventually we made it. It turns out that we must have had an old map. ;)
Eventually we made it to the park in glorious sunshine. Who could have known what was to come...
The park is about 30 or 40 square km with a number of different routes to take. We'll have to go back there at some point to do some more walking. Lots of people take tents etc and hang out for a few days. Our first route took us to the caves, which turned out to be across a small river which was about wasit height to us and shoulde rheight to the kids. So instead of reaching the caves, we dipped our feet in the river, all said how great it would have been if we'd thought ahead and brought towels etc so that we could swim, and promptly marched back.
A. by this time was getting tired and the suggestion that we take another walk to a statue of an angel was greeted with groans, so he and Masha went off to the cafe by the car park to sit and wait. Well done them. We set off to the angel under thunder and a few sparks of lightening, with most people wandering back in teh opposite direction and only us going on another walk. A woman walked past and said 'Don't worry, it's a dry storm!' She was most definitely wrong. Thunder, lightening, torrential rain ensued. In for a penny, in for a pound though and we decided to complete the walk. The last 100 metre were interesting. A series of metal steps, not firmly secured to anything and with the bannister coming away from the rocks took us down between two very close cliffs to the angel itself. The lightning and thunder was pretty wild and after a few pictures and lots of 'this is very beautiful', 'oh, Russian nature', 'the wild Urals weather', we started to head back. It carried on raining. And then it rained more. Our dreams had come true and we had got the swim we wanted - just not in the river. Pretty much sprinting back to the car we found Masha and A. in the cafe, they laughed at us, got us some hot tea (no birch vodka on offer unfortunately) and we all said how much it had been worth it. It had been worth it, and getting drenched just added to it. The walk was really nice and the park is great. And so, we headed home. To find out that the storm had brought trees down in Ekat and caused some damage all over the city and is now being spoken of as a hurricane that ripped through the city leaving an immense trail of destruction.
And this post is now far too long...
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