The boat stayed moored in Sevastopol that night, so the next day we were to make our longest coach trip across Crimea to the eastern coast and the resort of Yalta. We were met at the coach by Schnezhana once again, who was to have ample opportunity to talk to us about her part of the world during the drive. She’d discarded the long black coat as it was obvious that it was going to be a warm and sunny day, so her film star quality was diminished, but not significantly.
Soon after leaving the environs of Sevastopol the coach began to make its way along a road that followed the top of a hill with a huge valley below. It soon became evident that this was one of the most famous valleys in British military history, the one that had played host to the Charge of the Light Brigade. Suddenly there was history everywhere; there were signposts to Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman, all the sites of famous battles in the Crimean war. There were monuments both Russian and British to the fallen and Neela went round the coach handing out copies of Tennyson’s famous poem. We could actually see the beginnings of the town of Balaklava in the distance. It’s a coastal town where the British made their landing before their fatal encounter with the ‘valley of death’.
It’s now a valley of vino, with grape vines as far as the eye can see. There are little paths between the vines where it’s possible to walk and still find relics of the battle apparently, including human bones. This doesn’t seem to affect the quality of the wine however, as it’s regarded as one of the best produced by the former Soviet countries.
After this excitement, the terrain turned from being merely hilly into almost mountainous, with the peaks getting higher the further east we went. We passed through quite a pleasant looking town whose name escaped me where there was one cliff riddled with caves. There are quite a lot of caves in the Crimea, but these particular ones had been used to successfully hide local soldiers who were trying to fight off German troops, which was a good reminder that World War 2 had seriously affected the Crimea too.
Soon after this the road became a coast road and we now had sparkling blue sea to our right and the half-mountains to our left, often with striking rock formations. After quite a long period of admiring the scenery we finally stopped at what is described as one of the ‘icons’ of the Crimea. I’m not referring here to anything connected with the Orthodox Church, but to a tiny castle built right on the edge of the cliff of the Cape Ai Todor. It was built by a German oil baron in 1912 as a rather ostentatious gift to his mistress, but is now home to an Italian seafood restaurant.
We didn’t actually go down to the building, but rather viewed it from the main road where there were some public loos and surprise, surprise, gift stalls. I spent my time finding the best spot that I could to photograph the little castle to demonstrate the precarious nature of its existence; I just hope that coastal erosion isn’t too much of a problem in these parts.
After another shorter session on the road, we made a rather longer stop at one of the main attractions of the day, the Livadia Palace in the tiny town of Alupka. It was the summer palace of the last three Russian Tsars and a favourite place in particular of Nicholas and Alexandra whose furniture is still to be found on the first floor, along with a number of photographs of the doomed family. The ground floor however is given over to another piece of history.
At the end of World War 2 the Yalta conference was held between Russia, Britain and the USA, mainly to decide the fate of Germany. Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met at the Livadia Palace and the very chairs that they sat on and table that they bargained over are still on display along with documents, photos and newspapers.
I would say that the spirit of the Romanovs hovers over the palace and its gardens much more than the conference; they did live here after all, even if only in the summertime. The lower floors have been robbed of their atmosphere to some extent by the paraphernalia of the summit, whereas the upper floor rooms still hold something of the life of the family and poignant glimpses into their day-to-day routines; an office, a schoolroom, a music room, the views of the grounds and the sea which they obviously enjoyed so much.
I’d have loved to have taken the footpath that winds its way down to a beach some way below, but there was no time for meandering, we had to rejoin our coach and continue our journey. It actually took quite a while for everyone to return, so I decided that this would be a good time to try out the packed lunch that had been provided for us.
I’d been praying that it didn’t consist of a little pot of cold borsht, but my fears were unfounded – unusually the concept of the sandwich does appear to have reached the Ukraine, unlike many other European countries I’ve visited that seem unable to grasp the idea. There was also a hard boiled egg, a tomato and something that looked like a gherkin, but which amazingly wasn’t pickled and tasted just like a cucumber.
I polished this off just as the last of our group returned and we resumed our travels. Now the road became increasingly lined with buildings and we got occasional glimpses of what I assumed to be Yalta in the distance. Before long we were in its environs, travelling through quite narrow streets that sloped down fairly steeply towards the sea. The houses all had that slightly ramshackle look about them that I’d noticed in other suburbs, but this time they were punctuated now and then with equally ramshackle looking hotels.
Yalta only has a population of around 50,000, but around 2 million people can be in the region at any given time during the holiday season. If you’re thinking of staying there I’d recommend that you book your hotel some time in advance. Apart from Ukrainians it’s still the favoured holiday destination for many Russians too as well as those cruising across the Black Sea from neighbouring countries.
As we got closer to the centre the roads became a little wider and commercial properties of all kinds replaced the houses and the whole place began to look a bit smarter. We finally pulled up in a car park next to the Turkish ferry terminal which had a nice looking gift shop at the front, but, as we were warned, housed some alarmingly basic toilet facilities.
We were then pointed in the direction of the harbour and beach and told that we had a couple of hours to do as we pleased. Like everyone else I started to wander about a little aimlessly until a couple of ideas formed. I started to look for somewhere that might sell wine so that I could get a bottle or two of the Crimean variety. To my complete amazement after about five minutes I saw a shop bearing the legend Crimean Wines. I went in and prepared for the inevitable linguistic struggle I was about to have, but just in case I enquired whether anyone spoke English. My amazement was complete when one of the assistants said that he did, and could he help me.
A few minutes later I emerged with my prize for which I’d paid 40 hrivna. I took it back to the coach so that I wouldn’t have to carry it about and showed it to Schnezhana who was still standing there chatting with the driver. She said that I’d made a good choice and asked me how much I’d paid. When I told her she said that she’d paid about five times that amount in a restaurant in Sevastopol and asked me where the shop was.
Buoyed by this success I went off towards the harbour mulling over my second idea. On the way into the town we’d caught a glimpse of a very pretty looking church. As I’m not that well disposed to sitting about on sea-fronts, I decided that I might be able to see the church from the harbour as all the roads sloped upwards from there, and find my way to it to have a better look.
I reached the harbour and panned across the rows of buildings that stretched up the hillside. Sure enough there were the domes of the church glistening in the afternoon sunshine which was now quite hot. After a couple of dead ends, I finally found the road that led me to my goal. It turned out that I was visiting the Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral which had been built by Tsar Alexander III in memory of his father. It’s on one of the main roads that lead into the town and I had to carefully negotiate the traffic before I could reach my goal.
I took some photos from the pavement and then decided to try to get inside to see what the interior was like. I walked along by the iron railings and up to what was a quite English looking entrance to the churchyard with a wooden arch over it. There was a bench with two men sitting on it and a woman standing by them, all three chatting away. They all appeared to be in their seventies, all wore black or dark colours and all had that heavily weathered countenance that Eastern Europeans seem to specialise in.
As I approached, they all stopped talking and eyed me up and down. I hoped that would be the end of it and intended just to carry on walking past them and up to the building, but as I reached them the woman started talking to me. I had no idea what she was saying of course, except for one thing; several times she said the word for three and then held up three fingers, just to emphasise the point.
What was she trying to tell me? When locals address you like this, they’re usually after money, but three hrivna would hardly be worth the bother. Nevertheless I took a five hrivna note from my pocket and held it out. She shook her head and refused the note and the two men began to laugh as she started her spiel again. Three what? I wondered if she was trying to give me a lecture about the holy trinity. It was clear that they didn’t want me to go any further, so in the end I shrugged my shoulders at them and beat a retreat back along the pavement.
After taking a few more photos from the angles I could muster I went back the way I’d come, a little annoyed that I couldn’t have spent a bit more time there having made the effort to find it. It suddenly struck me that she might have been trying to tell me something about three o clock, which was rapidly approaching, but decided that it would have to remain one of those things that I’ll never know.
Soon I was back down on what in England would be called the esplanade and I had a slow and very pleasant walk along the length of it, taking in the sights and sounds of the mostly Ukrainian holiday makers. It did remind me a bit of somewhere like Torquay back in the sixties. They even had one of those boards, painted with amusing figures on the front but with holes where the heads should be; you stick yours through from behind and have your photo taken. I also passed a small beach where hundreds of locals were crammed together on the available sand – for a moment I felt quite at home.
Eventually I made my way back through to the road where our coach was parked which was mainly lined with quite nice looking restaurants. I spotted one of the American couples in one of them and went over to ask how their meal had been. They didn’t look happy and explained that they hadn’t had it yet. Considering there was now only twenty minutes until our coach left I didn’t hold out much hope for them. They’d ordered a barbecued meal and hadn’t reckoned on the chef having to start up a basic charcoal fire from scratch. I wished them luck and made my way back to where Schnezhana and Neela seemed to be deep in conversation with the driver.
Apparently there was some debate about what time we needed to back in Sevastopol as the ship was leaving that evening - no-one seemed quite sure of the exact hour, let alone minute. I climbed back onto the coach and watched as the others made their way. Last of course was the restaurant couple who’d eventually had to pay for their half-cooked meal and leave it sizzling tantalisingly on the barbecue.
Once we got going and had climbed the hill out of Yalta, Schnezhana announced that we wouldn’t have much time for stops on the return journey, but she hoped there would be one back at the scene of the Charge of the Light Brigade. We took exactly the same route back as the one we’d come by, so as far as the sights went it was mainly a pleasant reprise, especially along the coast road.
Back at the ‘Valley of Death’, we did make a brief stop for Schnezhana to give us a quick description of where everyone was when the famous incident happened. The coach had stopped on a hill overlooking the valley and we were roughly where Lord Cardigan had been when he sent the ill-judged order to attack that part of the valley which was bristling with cannons. Lord Lucan was there too apparently, which must have been about the last time anyone saw him.
As it turned out our rather hasty return to Sevastopol was not as necessary as our guides had thought, but it was better than missing our boat. As a result I had time for a little chat with Schnezhana on the harbour side before re-boarding. She had spent some time training as a guide, but she still found it hard to understand why westerners should want to come to the Ukraine when countries like Italy, France and Spain were so available to us.
I told her that I’d been to all those countries, as had probably most of the people in our group, and enjoyed them, but Eastern Europe had a particular fascination for me, not least because it was relatively un-commercialised and a little more mysterious. She said that she’d most like to go to Italy to see Rome and Venice, and I couldn’t help imagining her, in her long, black coat, throwing her coins in the Trevi Fountain or languishing in a gondola.
Her expression was such that if one of us had happened to have a spare ticket from Sevastopol to Rome she would have dashed off there and then. I recommended that she should also try to visit Florence and began describing it, but she asked me to stop as I was ‘making her jealous’. It was time to go, so I told her I was sure that she’d make it to Italy soon, but stopped myself from adding that with the tips she’d been getting, she’d probably do so in considerably more style than I had.
Shortly we were sailing out of the harbour in the evening sunshine, the buildings of Sevastopol looking quite charming in this gentle light. The local ferry boat passed us on its way in and the inevitable exchange of waving took place; the ferry grew smaller, the buildings grew smaller, Sevastopol grew smaller – we were out on the Black Sea again. In the morning we would be back in the Dnepr delta ready to make our return journey all the way up the river to Kiev. There was still plenty to see, but there was already that slight feeling that we were on our way home.
Kiev | Zaporizhia | Odessa | Sevastopol | Yalta | The Dnepr | Return to Kiev
