Svirstroy

This small town on the banks of the River Svir exists primarily because of a power station. When we visited, it was just beginning to rain, and I was reminded of an autumn day in the Scottish Highlands - except that in every direction the land was flat, for thousands of miles.

In Svirstroy we saw a man making exquisitely fine jewellery using birch bark as the mounting for stones, and had tea and buns in the house of a retired midwife and her retired engineer husband, both of whom had lived in Svirstroy all their lives. It was an unforgettable experience.