In the morning, the riverside has opened
up: it isn’t the thickly wooded bank of the previous day. There are a lot of
large, impressive houses dotted along the shore, some with large cruisers. As
we are still within a couple of hundred kilometres of Moscow, perhaps they are
still weekenders for some Muscovites…
Today is mostly on the boat, moving onto
Uglich in the late afternoon. It is a relief to have enforced out time as I do
tend to try to see as much as possible, with the result that I tire myself (and
Mum) out each day. Sitting up on the bed writing with the water and trees
sliding past the window is pleasantly restful.
We had the second of our lecture series,
with a more entertaining talk on the czars and why Russians feel the need for
an autocrat in charge.
We are travelling on canals, locks and dams
created in the 1930s to make sailing from St Petersburg to Moscow a practical
thing – doing away with the need for the Volga boatmen to drag it when the
water was low. In the process, buildings were drowned and you can see the tops
of some still.
Coming into the lock before Uglich
Our stop today is in the town of Uglich,
famous for its watches, cheese and the death of the eight-year-old heir to the
throne. The town at one time was a rival of Moscow as the capital of Russia and
was founded in the 11th century.
The Church of the Spilled Blood in Uglich
commemorates the death of the last of the original czar dynasty, which could
have been murder: it is a mystery. A number of other churches are also on the
town’s kremlin (fortress). There is a new monument to the victims of Stalin.
The highlight of the Uglich visit was a male choir of five voices. The name in
Russian means ‘Arc’ – Kovcheg. They had beautiful
voices and sang a religious chant and the famous song of the Volga boatmen.
They achieved tremendous volume, of course with melodious light and shade, in
the seventeenth century church that is now a museum, one singer with an
extremely deep bass.
We wandered around the town, taking snaps of
the old houses.
A flat ceiling made into a cupola with tricky paintwork (one of the churches in the kremlin, not church of spilled blood)
An old house in Uglich with satellite
An example of an iconostasis or icon stand, in the same church
15th century keep in the kremlin
Ceiling in the outdoor porch of a church
A house/shop in Uglich
A streetscape facing the water
Looks like u r having a good time. All good back here!! Thought that ceiling was a pie and your lunch!! Justine
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