Blessed are the smokers

As if one monstery visit was not enough, we were told that we would be switching to a smaller boat at 6pm or a second half day tour on the monastery island on Konevets. Eeep. This reminded me of a very wise article I once read that said tourists should treat major sights as like Battenburg cakes - one is a delight, two in a day is pushing it and three is definitely too much.

Our tour guide was a very weather-beaten man with a huge beard, who as my friend pointed out as we disembarked, looked like he might have convictions for violence.

'My name is Aleksey, that's A-L-E-K-S-E-Y, prounouced Aleksey,' was his opening gambit.

He then went on to list the ground rules for visting the monastery. They went on for a very long time, including a ban on smoking on manastery grounds, which was pretty much the whole island.

'Is anyone here a very heavy smoker?,' he asked. No one dared to own up to this obvious sin, even the ones I had seen chaining fags only a few hours earlier. Luckily he must have been used to this response, because he added, 'There is a special place, specially blessed by our Father Superior for the smokers.'

Some of the comments sounded more like general advice, like 'It is bad to drink strong alcoholic drinks'. Once it was finally over and all the girls had put on the usual mandatory long skirts, we were allowed to set off for the main monstery complex. It was worth the wait - while Valaam had seemed more focued on tourit trade then genuine spiritualism to me, Konevets is quiet and beautiful, with its sadly run down buildings only adding to its charm. Only a few dozen monks live in the main building, though there was lots of helpers and children from two youth camps who were singing as they went to collect an afternoon snack. A beautiful nineteenth hotel, built to house pilgrims on the monastery's heyday, is now so decrepit that it is unsafe to enter and will be pulled down within a few years unless funding is found for repairs. We heard haunting religious singing in the top half of the main church which has suffered heavy damage, but the helf-ruined frescos looked so much lighter and fresher than the usual Orthodox wall of gold.

Aleksey seemed to revel slightly in the island's misfortunes. We heard about all the buildings that were no longer in use, and how they had not had a state visit since Alexander II in 1858. One other visitor of note had been, he said, a French writer, but he hadn't liked it much because of the poor weather and the mosquitos (which to be fair, were awful). Even the original monastery founder had ended up there by mistake in a boat crash and had originally hated the place (though he did come round in time, apparently).

We also got to admire a barn that was built in 1861, and which was showing it's age if you ask me, and had a wander through the quiet fir and silver birch woods. In the middle there is a giant stone where pre-Christians allegedly made regular horse sacrafices, giving the island its name, which is linked to the Russian word for horse. Apparently the monstery's founder had prayed all night at the stone when he heard about this, and a huge number of evil spirits had come out, many of which turned into mosquitos, which bite people in revenge and hatred.

As if bloodsuckers aren't enough, it emerged that there is also a naughty horse in the small monastery farm.

'He bites the tourists,' said Aleksey. 'He was on Valaam, but he was expelled for bad behaviour.'

Luckily, the bad horse stayed out of sight, but we did get to meet a lovely cat, who was up for a cuddle and some goats who seemed to want to bond with Ginger. She was less certain about this budding friendship.

Ginger meets goat.

I also met this lovely cat by a little church.

I took up the chance to become a special blessed smoker on our return to the main area, and who should be there but old Aleksey, happily puffing on a cigarette. We had a good chat sitting on an old fold out bed left for the blessed smokers. He told us that he had discoved religion aged 17, and went to forbidden services at 7am on Saturday mornings 'when the KGB were still asleep'. However, as a critic or the Soviet regime he had not escaped attention and said he was 'invited' to leave Moscow - the alternative inviation being arrest - and went to live with his relative in the north Caucasus for ten tears until the fall of the Soviet Union. He had worked as a bread maker, a carpenter, a postman, a tour guide, but was now considering becoming a monk. The only issue is whether or not to marry - local priets must marry before taking their vows, but monks are bound to celibacy. Aleksey said he was going to wait a while to see if the right woman turned up, and if not he would become a monk.

With that, it was time to go, just leaving time for Dom to get a telling off for trying to have a quick swim while we waited for the boat - apparently the sight of a young man clad only in trunks would embarrass the monks horribly. The others asked Aleksey if he'd like another cigarette for after dinner and he whispered that he would but his director was nearby and didn't know he liked a smoke, so we had to slip it into his pcket in cloack and dagger style, before he waved us off back to the boat and back homewards.

Crusin' Russian style

A few days ago we were packed off on the first of a series of 'regional trips', which seem to combine a potent mix of high level meetings, fun and daytime drinking. The first of these took in St Petersburg and a boat trip to some of the islands of the nearby lake Ladoga.

We went straight from the night train to a set of business meetings, in which our Russian programme leaders serenely swanned out of their tiny cabins looking polished as ever, and everyone else struggled under the strain of getting a slot in one of the two toilet and washroom cabins as we swished ever closer through the suburbs of St Pete.

After a quick breakfast and talk at the Alfa club, used for high level and celebrity clients, we were taken to the American consulate, where we discussed the new LGBT laws, visa restrictions, doing business in Russia among many other things. We joked that you could tell we were back in American territory as it was one of the first places we had seen in Russia with recycling. On the way out, someone asked the American consul if the contents of the bins were actually recycled and he shrugged and said: 'Probably not'.

After a quick obligatory photo, we piled back on the bus a drove for a million miles about an hour to the Baltica beer factory, where we got to admire thousands of litres of beer in the making. It has to be said that although I'm sure the history of Baltica beer is long and very interesting, the tour did not really do this justice. The actual bottling floor was hypnotic, with hundreds of beer bottles whizzing through automatic belts as they are filled, sealed and packed. However a lot of the rest of the tour focused on admiring score of medals and odd gifts the company had been presented. Eventually Clare decided to take action and demanded to know how much more of this we were going to have to sit through before we got to the promised 'degustation'. Our tour guide got rather sniffy at this.

'This trip is not for people who just want to taste beer,' he said. 'Anyone can buy the beer in the shop.'

'Where's the shop then?' said Clare.

Touche, I think.

Having finally spent some time sampling a vast variety of beers, I liked the fact that a beer stop at the supermarket was built in as the next scheduled activity, giving us half an hour to load up on beer for the two days in board. The idea that anyone would not want to pick up four pack of beer, a bottle of vodka and some dried fish snacks was clearly something that had not even crossed their minds, and it seemed churlish not to get into the spirit of the thing. Our boat cabins each also had a little mini-fridge installed, ready to chill our purchases. Further down the corridor, we found a gold plaque boasting that it had been a design triumph of the GDR.

The food on the boat was a graphic reminder of why Russian is not considered one of the great cuisines of the world. I have not ever eaten Soviet food, but in my imagination, this is what it would be like. Our first dinner consisted of a 'salad' made entirely from finely sliced chicken, ham and cheese, mixed with mayonnaise, and garnished with an inexplicable slice of orange. It was followed by what I believe was intended to be beef stroganoff, sitting greyly on a patch of mashed potato, followed by a swiss role with a sweet, greasy and chemical scented 'cream' which was garnished with stripes of bight green sludge that tasted like fake kiwi fruit mixed with toothpaste. Yum.

Stratton and Cody relaxing Russian-style on the boat.

We woke up in the morning already moored at Valaam monastery island, where we were given a tour round by the island's most elegant woman, who pointed out many interesting church interiors and the very tip of Vladimir Putin's own special retreat for when he comes to receive one-on-one spiritual instruction. Apparently when he is about the place is swarming with SAS types and many of the paths are closed to visitors, and we were warned quite strenuously against wandering off the path for a closer look.

Our guide also told us about the island's nature, which includes several elks (hurrah). But it seems that the elks favourite snack of young fir trees meant the island can only support a limited number of the beasts.

'Some more came across the ice in winter, but we shot them,' she said, her eyes not wavering for a moment under her elegant hat. Eep. I decided to keep quiet about the fact the island had just gained another Elk, and not give any young fir trees even a cursory look, just in case.

Our guide, one of a relatively small number of lay people living on the island told us that the monks are trying to actively encourage them to move away, leaving it solely to the monks. Already the population has shrunk hugely, she said, but many people who have grown up there still feel it is there home and don't want to leave. But in time, the monks will probably gradually manage the population downwards.

The trip also took in the main monastery building, were all the monks seemed to be constantly playing on their iPhones. We were given a short concert of religious singing, which seemed to be heavily focused on pushing CDs, and were ordered out of a church because a service was about to begin. The monastery has thrived in recent years, not least since Putin has chosen it as his personal religious base, but I was more struck by the commercialisation than any sense of spirituality.