The Volga’s vast and calm rivers, wide fields and dense forests, relict oak groves and bottom-land meadows of the Klyazma river… Meshchera, Zalesie, Opolie… The nature of these places is praised in songs by Russian poets and immortalized by famous painters. Travelling along the Golden Ring you may see the true value of the delightful classical Russian landscapes. They are splendid in any season.
For saving the primeval purity and unique environment of these places there were established the natural parks (Meshchersky and Pereslavsky).
Meshchera within one territory combines the flora of boreal forest, broad-leaved forest, forest steppe and prairie. In these protected areas they preserve bisons and rear Asiatic white cranes in the only one in the world nursery. One of the most popular and exciting tourist routes on Meshchera is the journey by boat to the large lakes, forming one whole Meshchera’s ring of lakes. In Pereslavsky national park there is the Pleshchevo lake, it’s one of the most beautiful lakes of the moderate-climate zone of Russia. It’s amazing for its purity and almost perfect elliptic shape. In this park it is also possible to visit an arboretum where various plants from all over the world are presented.
Not far from Sergiev Posad there is a famous sightseeing, a waterfall Gremyachy. According to the legends the water has the healing quality, it spirts out of the crevice and falls down from the height of 25 meters. Most cities of the Golden Ring are situated on the banks of the rivers and lakes. Rivers always were the fosterers for those who had settled on the banks. These areas are «happy ground» for fishery. If you are lucky, in the Klyazma river and the Oka river you may catch a «tsai» fish — a sterlet. One of the cities of the Golden Ring is Rybinsk (in Russian language the word «Rybinsk» is formed of the word «fish»), which had been named so exactly because of the profusion of fish in its rivers.
Forest is also not stingy with gifts. If you like picking mushrooms and berries, at the height of the season you will bring a full pottle.
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