Prioksky Terrasny Nature Reserve

The Oka River National Park near Serpukhov, founded in 1948 to protect the rare plant life of the marshy forests, is now a UNESCO biosphere. Most of the park is off-limits to tourists, but you can visit the bison reserve with a guide to see these prehistoric giants roaming through the woods. There is also a small museum with stuffed and dusty dioramas of the other local wildlife, including beavers and badgers, wild cats and capercaillies. A tour costs 150 roubles per person and the last one starts around 3 pm daily - quite a good time to visit as the bison start to come closer to the fences in anticipation of feeding time. One guide, Marina, speaks English. Phone (4967) 70-71-45 to book.

Tula

Eighty kilometres further on, this large industrial city still has a nine-towered 16th-century kremlin at its centre. The brick walls enclose the Uspensky Cathedral and the popular armoury museum, full of imperial swords and ornate rifles. Tula's traditional industries make weaponry, samovars and gingerbread. There are museums dedicated to each of these and souvenirs on every corner.

Yasnaya Polyana

With the 100th anniversary of Tolstoy's death coming up next year, there is no chance of anyone forgetting about the great writer any time soon. The simple house and sprawling gardens at Yasnaya Polyana are a monument to the man whose philosophy inspired Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Leo Tolstoy was born on this estate in 1828 and lived his last years there too.

"Without my own Yasnaya Polyana, I can scarcely imagine Russia and my relation to it," he wrote.

The direct train from Moscow each weekend arrives at the Lev Tolstoy memorial station, which has an exhibition hall. A shuttle bus transfers you to the estate, where you can wander through the orchards he planted, past the bench he sat on, to the simple grassy mound where he is buried - but to get inside Tolstoy's house, you have to be part of a tour group. Reverential excursions (in Russian) cost 150 roubles, taking in the local schoolhouse and other sights of interest.

Polenovo

Only a fraction of the number of visitors who shuffle through the vine-covered porch at Yasnaya Polyana find their way to the beautiful estate at Polenovo. The houses and gardens of the painter Vasily Polenov are between Serpukhov and Tula, near the town of Tarusa. Polenov designed the main house, neighbouring studio and landscape gardens himself and lived there for nearly 40 years. The mansion was built in 1892 with the money he got from selling his painting "Christ and the Sinner", sketches of which can be seen on the first floor.

Both inside and out, the houses are reminiscent of the artists' colony at Abramtsevo, where Polenov also lived when he first married. Paintings by Repin, Kramskoi, Surikov and Levitan fill every space on the walls along with Polenov's own art. He died there in 1927 and was buried near the local church. Just over 10 years later, the estate first opened as a museum (open Wed.-Sun. 11 am-4 pm, 100 roubles to visit both buildings). It has a beautifully maintained park, a café, diorama display and great views of the river. Polenov first discovered the area when he was sailing along the Oka. "The landscapes... are beautiful," he wrote. "I wish we could settle there".

How to get there

Serpukhov, Tarusa and Tula are all accessible from Moscow's Kursky railway station on the "elektrichka" trains. There are three express trains a day to Serpukhov which take an hour and a half.

At weekends, a special train with carriages named after Tolstoy's novels runs directly to Yasnaya Polyana estate. It leaves Moscow at 9.10 am every Saturday and Sunday morning and departs for the return journey at 6.10 pm, reaching Kursky station three hours later.

Alternatively, from Yasnaya Polyana you can catch various buses and "marshrutka" minibuses back to Tula from the nearby Shekino-Tula highway. Simply cut up the hill through the Soviet-era school (founded by Tolstoy's daughter), almost opposite the estate, to reach the main road.

There are infrequent buses (the 41 and the 105 respectively) from Serpukhov to the Bison reserve or from Tarusa to Polenov's estate, but it's simpler to get a taxi (about 250-300 roubles in each case).

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 704