twenty percent. one independence from the soviet union. on the trial that sent here and the border moved every government provided material support to al qaeda the nine eleven attacks on america critics however say ten grand is not guilty and the verdict is merely a pretext to demonize iran and waging. those terrys in about thirty minutes after taking on a trip to russia's far northwest corner. in russia's european northwest was one of the country's oldest inhabited areas the north corrado blitzed. with records dating back to the mid night century this is a place with a rich history a powerful medieval republic it was famed for the quality of its first and the death of its scholarship before it was a mix to the greater russian state of the fifteenth century. the region is around six hundred kilometers from moscow and an overnight train journey i'll drop you

right in the center of its capital i've arrived in the famous old city of great but i'm not actually going to stay here because i've heard that this region s'posed to be one of the most beautiful in russia so that's one that. so this is telling me exactly the right way to go my problem is how do i get from a to b. and with lakes and dense forests making up sixty percent of the region that's not always an easy task. one thing about traveling through the novgorod wilderness is that you are likely to come across some fairly sizable obstacles including the largest area of swamp land in northwestern russia and if i'm going to get across that i'm going to need some serious help i think these gentlemen might have just

the ticket here. d.v.d.'s nice to meet you and me say they meet you guys right so we have a swamp tank so and when you're dealing with a somewhat unusual means of transport you have to take a seat where you can to body and comfort. it might get a little cold and muddy up here but there were some great views in good company and the breeze certainly keeps the mosquitoes off. we plowed forward and it wasn't long before we would deep in the swamp we were heading for some toll spires in the distance and our tank was taking the direct approach. the

speed current so without saying. in fact the only thing that did slow us down was a quick break to pick up some local delicacies. the journey passed quickly and before long demon was showing me around some imposing ruins stating back one hundred years. see you've picked a pretty interesting place for a weekend break here they are indeed just imagine a huge unlimited swamp the just white spot in the middle ages the lake i mean this in the middle of this spot is a. considerable just huge building of forty meters right it's amazing to think the the monks and the nuns who live too must have been very very into the

solitudes yeah yeah they really believed that let's go up to the heavens. the monastery may have been abandoned for the best part of a century but finally some restoration work is underway and if you don't mind some rickety scaffolding the newly covered roof let you see for miles around all try taking a bird's eye view of the surroundings it was time to hop back on our chariot and head to my next destination. i. think you've come back. the only way to travel. i've been dropped to the edge of the picturesque city of star rusa it's around

a hundred kilometers from novgorod and it's supposed to be one of the region's historical highlights i'm standing on the banks of the policed in the peru sierra rivers here and if you have to get a postcard from starry roofs it's quite likely to have this on it which is the city's main cathedral states back to the nineteenth century there have actually been churches on this site for almost nine hundred years. records to star in a recession that is one of the oldest cities in the entire country and in its medieval heyday this was a bustling regional trade center nowadays it's much sleepier but alongside its beautiful architecture there are a few natural surprises for visitors to. now this is another famous story roussillon bark its mineral water stream this pipe goes down around one hundred eighty meters and the water is funneled up under its own natural pressure

so let's see what it tastes like. well i can see why they don't bottle it because to me that pretty much resembles seawater but it's this water that's the center of the city's tourist industry. right well if i know the very drink a ball well that doesn't mean that it's not useful over here at the sari rouge sanatorium it's the main ingredients in all their treatments. people have been coming here to ease their aches and pains for more than one hundred fifty years and their cure all treatment is kept right out back. in the good is this mud consists of sulfide and silt and originates from

a lake that has numerous medicinal properties and we've been using it here since eight hundred thirty nine years around one point five cubic metres a day departure. but collecting all this miraculous mud is no easy task. right there to learn the technique here. to stick. down and then there's definitely an actor doing this quickly but eventually i had enough to make a delivery or here. of the precious mud. there each crate to there apparently holds almost four hundred kilos and they do ten of them every day. which is enough to make almost one hundred and fifty separate treatments i think i might need one after all this. right and once we got off. lucky people to get dirty simula don't

manage to tip this over in the process. but i thought i deserved a free wallow but sadly it seems the mob treatments are reserved for paying customers so either i could shell out and then there's this story rue says most extreme remedy a very wintry mineral water through him. and twenty odd seconds of pure health giving agony oh. oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. oh oh oh well if that doesn't kill me it would have made me stronger. it wasn't the gentlest introduction to the areas waterways but i wasn't going to let that put me off and my next destination was supposed to be the most beautiful lake district in the whole of the north region. one thing about getting back to

nature means that you sometimes aren't taking the best roads so going from a to b. can be a pretty long walk. unless you can find someone to give you a lift so gay has been working with horses all his life and he and hero regularly take visitors along the scenic route to the city of valdai one of the region's most popular tourist destinations. yes nice to know the horse is indispensable in the no go to preach i'm watching but the fact is that a motor vehicle would find it hard to clear some places in this bracket terrain what a horse can do so easily left to go left right for right back to make him stop anyway let's go. to me you know how to control him of course see if i can get here it's in a straight line and walks off into the process. easier than riding on to the.

board by huge areas of forest if you're looking to avoid the motorways this is a great way to appreciate them and keep out of the rain. and once you arrive in valdai itself you'll find it's most famous exports are all housed under one roof nowadays if you hear a siren coming up behind you on the road in lets you know you should get out of the way and things really weren't that different two hundred years ago in russia but back then of course they were using bells if you got a ring ring horse coming up on the roads to let you know there was a v.i.p. there and most of those bells were funny fact said here. and this is the largest bell museum in the country. were made in the city until my team thirty according to the curator there's overall the story surrounding

their origins. do you mean these are some of the famous valdai fails that made their appearance here in the early nineteenth century legend has it that sar ivan the third ordered the nov go rebel to be brought to moscow but the bell never made it there it refused to leave its native no gourd region as it were it broke up as it rolled on the hills with the result that fragments of it were scattered over a large area those fragments fell legend says give birth to the famous valdai bells go off which you. alongside the homemade versions of souvenirs force home across the centuries from russia's european wars and rescued from churches during the soviet union and they still sound just as clear today.

this is the lawyers on the banks of lake valdai the north corrode region second largest body of water and a mecca for one particular type of tourist with surroundings like these it isn't hard to see why hunting is such a popular sport in these parts along with a little wander into the woods myself i just need to pick up a couple of extra pieces of equipment. and a little companionship never hurts either. fine. i won't have to use this today unless we get in the unexpected bush is i think this is going to be more of a journey of discovery. and i think that. here. is going to lead us to something interesting. and as he's only a year old that's turns out to be rather a lot of things to do jump

a load of projects. but eventually one particular sent one out and it looks like i might be doing some shooting off a roll just not with mike i'm. a historian and craftsman and in this area he's never short of supplies. it's a mixture of the modern and the ancient hunting so these are all made from the local wood here as well on the air as. such by those who are quite common among hunters in europe in the middle ages as a rule. or about this told or just slightly lower. it was more comfortable for hunter while he was in the woods. so i thought i'd join him in a little target practice too i can remember how to do this.

but. well i think that i'm probably going to be more dangerous with a gun than the bow and i. was as close as i got to a forest animal. and it wasn't long before i was ready to exchange the call of the wild some home comforts. so i didn't bag any bunnies but i do have a whole cuppa and this few i think. i think a little already know and what better place to recharge my batteries than here on the edge of a lake felt i. admission free accreditation free transport chargers free. range month three.

three. two time free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media harty dot com. wealthy british. margetts weiner scandal. find out what's really happening to the global economy in the kinds of reports on our t.v. it's amazing what plenty of fresh air and a good night's sleep can do for you and after an evening on the banks of lake i was ready to get moving again and my archer friend asked to put me in touch with some of his fellow craftsman the not growing region is full of forests and there's a thriving woodworking industry here and plenty of talented guys working in it and

i'm off to see some of the best examples for a man and his father in law henrik run a successful house fronting business and almost every piece is locally sourced from the region's trees. and they do some stunning bespoke work to. prevent only doing this is the kind of furniture we make you know it's all handmade . we construct them out of branches that we pick up in the forest so deal with. their house front things are all handmade and put together by a team of expert competence and the occasional novice. writes so my little lesson here this is what we're aiming at. this is what we've got. i still don't get it before i. well at least my heart was in it. there were no girl decorations made with

love but the environment here doesn't just play a vital part in the region's economy it's also an important scientific research site for the famous valdai hydrological institute it's safe to say that this is a very wet area of russia and over the last fifty years they've been studying the rainfall here in fact the valdai control system has become a world renowned meterological technique but a lot of that. is down to these. the cutbush is negate the effect of wind on rainfall allowing scientists like fyodor to collect highly accurate measurements. from protects the instruments from snow being picked up by the wind show you individual shrubs have been trimmed in such a way that all of them are two metres high they take up an area of seventy square metres. aside from the special grows the institute also takes

a range of samples to measure the differences in rainfall levels and it was time for the daily rounds. so these are going to be our measuring instruments containers that we're going to change you. normally the scientists would take up to twenty different measurements bert's where the temperature plummeting close to zero i was working a bit of a rush job. see what we've got collected from this is in here. approximately two point two millimeters in here to the great scientific breakthroughs in the last twenty four hours pretty typical seasonal day valdai. but it's not just rain water that's of interest to the buffets here as well as offering some pretty spectacular views lake valdai here also has a scientific claim to fame supposedly it's the second poorest lake in russia just

off the lake by car and using this rather interesting device apparently i'm going to be able to see that for myself earlier so this was your first. so bloody marys scientists from the hydrological institute and he's going to take me out. ok. for millions of years ago by migrating glaciers the lakes clarity various during the year and vladimir and his colleagues are always on hand to make a note of it it's just a matter of finding the right spot. this week quite a few meters deep here. hopefully it should be a good place to take some measurements. let's do it and see how far we get so. really keep it coming here so that is six meters.

six. so we can still see our describe the boss all the way down there and considering apparently the average for a normal lake it's two and a half. months so valdai has its well deserved reputation as the second cleanest lake in the country. but the mayor dropped me off on the shore and it was time to hit the road again i was gradually heading back towards north korea but i wasn't done with the waterways just yet. it's a little village that i'm passing through is called a pitch inskeep assads there's actually one of the earliest recorded inhabited places in russia they think back to the tenth century now i'm only way to the largest lake in the region lake elman but i'm looking for a bit of a shortcut the town lies on the banks of the mistah river and it's perfect for a more direct route assuming you can find the right transportation tolbert where larry and the boys are experienced rafters and the mistah river has some of the

best whitewater in europe in russia. everything seems pretty gentle but i was warned not to get too comfortable. don't be lulled by the quiet waters this is just the cam before the storm. it's much tougher in spring when the water rises as high as the top slabs of that in the bank meant. that point the water is to be metres higher than what it is right now with the. the mistah used to be a vital supply route and a few hundred years ago the river would have been jammed with ships making their way to st petersburg. apparently back in seventeen eighty five the british ambassador wants to fight the express command of the czarina catherine the great and rode the rapids here and i could hear them in the distance. things are just starting to speed up a little bit. now the last time i did this it was winter and about twenty five

degrees celsius out a little bit different today. five degrees in the water. but there are two things we're getting into the wrong people. i'm doing a little extreme sightseeing on this trip as well because just over here at. this course me one of the largest caves. you know of european russia and it's also got one of the longest underground streams as well going fourteen hundred meters back. and along the river banks you can find fossils buried in the rock face. go rafting here and you're combining a white knuckle ronnie's with

a trip back in time. so we made it illumines does round the corner. but not a great little sightseeing five along the way. and i didn't even get wet. as the great lake is edged by a wild and beautiful landscape. but i'm here on the banks of the mighty lake ilm an approximately fifteen hundred square kilometers of water. and over there in the distance you can see great novgorod and i'm actually on a pathway that was originally designed to be a roadway to the capital it was bought up by catherine the great in the eighteenth century but as you can see the builders didn't quite get it finished my trip was nearly over but i had one more highlight left on my route. of all the foot

work i really feel like i've also had a journey through the history of the novgorod region and i know that around here this should be somewhere which could be the icing on the cake. and lo and behold zunes what manner of cloth is this me thinks i have found the right place. this is look beaten up and it's a picture perfect reconstruction of a tenth century slavic village. well our. people there makes law here the father made it very good little bits but the days bread. everything is based on archeological data from the design insulation of the building this to the lifestyles of the inhabitants right

down to the games they used to play. and apparently correct key was a real favorite. say look i've got a cross between baseball and skittles here. and a good girl radke school equals respect in this village so it was important but i got the swing and miss. i mean i don't like tents and she's killed. finally success and miller rewarded me with a gift fresh from the village often. this base of bread will be just enough to feed you on the way. so picked up some fashionably retro new clothes some supplies i'm ready to hit the

road and off the road. a modified the old funny look along the way but as i entered the capital again and walked past it's magnificent old kremlin my how fit felt rather appropriate but i couldn't be brown the boy off forever well i've hiked driven rafted and ridden my way around the region and i'm finally back in great novgorod it's been quite an adventure but i think it's time for me to get back to the twenty first century before i make my way home.

timmy's them out of the plaster that's true with revolution and with a monument to the monuments to the mud who set himself alight and the stamp unleashed a protest movement that gave birth to the arab spring let's make believe that missile has changed in the country. converts times authorities impose a curfew no time in the west of the country way independence day brides left at least eleven people dead in the central asian state. trial an obscenity i mean you know what is that is wrong provided material support to al qaeda the nine eleven attacks in america critics however.