My summer car trip was supposed to be a trip to the Caucasus, the main event of which was to climb Elbrus. But in July, about a month before the start, a friend from St. Petersburg called and spoke with enthusiasm about the Rybachiy Peninsula in the Murmansk region, in the north of the European part of Russia: “The ocean, views of extraordinary beauty, fields of mushrooms and berries, abandoned military units, strategic objects since the Second World War - the lost world ... ". His story aroused considerable interest, and I began to think about the possibility of going there. But, of course, not this time. And if in this, then a good reason was needed.
And such a reason appeared. She began to rain, which, according to the forecast, was expected in the Elbrus region at the end of summer. I don’t know how much the forecast turned out to be correct, but ..., in general, I easily changed the direction from south to north. Circumstances developed so that at the same time with me a good acquaintance of my Petersburg friend was going to go to Rybachy from St. Petersburg with the company. They agreed that we can join him.
According to the navigator's calculations, there are two routes that are approximately the same in time of passage, leading from Moscow to Rybachy. One goes through Peter, the other through Vologda. The length of the first is about 2100 km, the second is about 2000 km. But the first one, a little faster than the second, since the Moscow - St. Petersburg highway has a number of toll high-speed sections. The routes go around Lake Onega from different sides and converge in its northern part. Then there is one road - to Murmansk.
I needed to go to Peter. The road to it from Moscow is well known to many. In recent years, it has been getting better: there is more good asphalt and fewer areas with strong speed limits. The way to St. Petersburg, which is 700 km, takes almost a day, if you do not rush. Night in St. Petersburg. In the morning to Murmansk. The road to it is generally good. There are places with repairs. Cameras, both stationary and mobile, are more likely than not few. Occasionally there are traffic police patrols lurking on the sidelines. The route is notable for the surrounding rocky Karelian nature, an abundance of mirrors of lakes and swamps, in places stretching beyond the horizon. Closer to Murmansk, there are fewer forests, and the landscape begins to turn into tundra.
On the way to Murmansk, we spent the night with a friend in Kirovsk. The city stands aside, about 30 km from the track, in the massif of the Khibiny mountains, well known to skiers. Returning from Kirovsk to the highway, about 200 km remained to Murmansk.
It is necessary to go to the peninsula, as they say, taking everything. There are no shops there. The Murmansk supermarket is not much different from the Moscow one - the assortment and prices are about the same. At gas stations the price of diesel fuel is about 3 rubles more than in the capital.
When we were still on our way to Murmansk, 160 km from St. Petersburg, we stopped at a store at the plant in Potanino, which produces canned meat. They bought stew there. I can say with confidence that I have never eaten any other stew better than this one. Slava pointed at the store. The same good acquaintance of my friend, with whom we were going to travel around Rybachy. By the way, Slava knows the peninsula and its history well. Once there was a military unit in which he served in the army. During his service, he was imbued with Rybachy so much that for many years he has been coming there every summer. At the same time, Slava has great experience operation of off-road equipment. Now he drives the Sobol off-road camper, which he has reconstructed with his own hands. Slava became, in fact, our guide, and his car was at the head of the column, the first to explore the off-road. But about the off-road Rybachy later. I'll tell you a story connected with it. My St. Petersburg friend, seeing the new Mitsubishi Pajero sport, in which I arrived, was seriously puzzled about how to avoid or at least minimize the damage that, as he believed, was waiting for the car on our upcoming journey. He walked around the car and said: “At least we need to remove the bumper. Well, I don’t know at all, are you ready to leave it there? Or let's leave it here and ride my pickup. " His old American pickup truck was standing nearby. I can't say that this did not alarm me, but I just said that I was not going to rush into the embrasure. “Well, that's right, if we turn around and go home,” he summed up bleakly.
Rybachy is not connected with the mainland, it is connected by a narrow isthmus with another peninsula, called the Middle, which is already turning into big land... Therefore, to get to Rybachye, you need to drive through Sredny. As you know, during the Soviet era, the peninsulas were in a closed area, where a whole cluster of military bases was created. In the "zero" entry for civilians was opened, but with special passes. From 2009 to the present day, at the checkpoint (checkpoint) Titovka, they only require a passport, and they can see what is transported in the car. The checkpoint is located on the Kola highway going through Pechenga, about 160 km from Murmansk. The point is in front of the bridge over the river. Almost immediately after it there is a right exit onto a dirt road. Turning onto it, you are not yet on Srednee, to drive about 25 km, and then about the same to Rybachy. But you can consider that your journey begins at this point.
The road to Rybachy sometimes winds like a serpentine, waddling from hill to hill, then straightens. There are no sections that are difficult to pass. But this path cannot be called easy either. It will test your nerves, because a significant part of it is solid bumps. It is useless to go around them. I can give only one piece of advice: fix all things in the car, because shaking, if you can call it shaking, will be strong. At first I tried to go slowly and look for the shallowest holes. But at some point, I really wanted it to end as soon as possible, and the principle “more gas - less holes” was used. And I find it difficult to say which of these two methods will be better for a person. The second option, in addition to reducing the time, makes it possible to feel like a participant in a rally-raid. True, if you have a sturdy SUV that has not been tested by time, then the principle of "gas" is probably not worth applying.
They say that the bumps were formed due to severe military equipmentwho comes here for military exercises. On the way back, we were almost participants in these events. The soldiers, as it seemed then, imitated the clearance of the road, they were covered by a tank, and then our Pajero Sport appeared from around the corner. We stopped about thirty meters from the tank, and its turret turned towards us with the barrel of its gun. Was it a joke or following an order-instruction, I don't know. The sensations were ambivalent.
The region where Rybachy is located has quite rich history, but acquaintance with him often turned out to be connected precisely with his military past. Vivid impressions of the beauty of the local views are now and then cut off by memorials with stars - the memory of the fallen soldiers of the Soviet army in the Great Patriotic War.
On the isthmus connecting the Sredniy to the mainland, lies the Mustatunturi granite ridge. The northern front line passed along it. The place is legendary, the only one where the Germans could not break through the front line. From one of the officers who defended him, the famous Soviet writer Konstantin Simonov took the image of a hero for his work "The Son of an Artilleryman".
Rybachy played an important strategic role, since it controlled the entrances to the Pechenga bays in the west and Motovsky and Kola bays in the east. The protection of the entire Kola Peninsula with the city of Murmansk and its ice-free port largely depended on this. The capture of this Arctic territory was one of the most important tasks for the German command. It was to be carried out by the "Norway" army, formed from two German and Finnish corps. The capture of the peninsula by the Germans was expected from the sea. In this regard, on the eve of the war, a number of defensive structures were created on Rybachye and Sredny.
As you know, the western part of the peninsulas from 1920 to 1940 belonged to Finland. This was the result of two Soviet-Finnish wars. As a result of the first of them, in 1920, our country ceded part of its territories to Finland. The second war provided the USSR in 1940 with a significant expansion of its borders in the Finnish direction, including the return of previously given lands. The fortification of Sredniy and Rybachye was carried out in a short time and was not completed before the German attack. But the Germans, having broken through the Soviet border, attacked the peninsula from the mainland. And they were stopped at Mustatunturi. Our Northern Fleet made a significant contribution to this, providing powerful fire support from the decks of ships. On Mustatunturi, the assault was carried out by the well-equipped and well-prepared huntsmen of the elite German unit "Edelweiss" for fighting in the northern mountainous conditions. The retention of the peninsulas lasted 3.5 years. Needless to say what it cost the Soviet army. This land is watered with blood.
The Mustatunturi area has stunning views. The so-called Swabian Road, which winds along lakes and hills, demonstrates them especially well. It was built during the war years to provide for the German army storming the peninsula, and comes from Pechenga, which the Germans called in Finnish - Petsamo. The turn to it is in front of the pass over the ridge on the way to the Middle. Driving along this road it is difficult to combine the charm of the surrounding nature with heavy fire and bomb strikes.
The Swabian road is well preserved and surprises with its quality, but the passage on it is complicated by destroyed bridges. To bypass them, you need an SUV with a high ground clearance that allows you to drive through large stones. The Germans built a chain of various engineering structures along the road. From many of them only fragments of walls remain, but they are quite easily recognizable. But there are also buildings that have almost survived.
After World War II, many different kinds of artifacts remained on the peninsulas, and especially on the adjacent mainland, including Mustatunturi - from artillery pieces and ammunition to ordinary household items used by the military. In peacetime, the Soviet army ruled here, many expeditions, search teams and just tourists have visited, so there are significantly fewer artifacts. But, as knowledgeable people say, there are still a lot of them, it just becomes more difficult to search. However, mines, shell casings, and other similar items, heavily rusted, which were not at all spared by time, because of which they no longer represent almost any historical and material value, are often found.
The sights of the Sredny Peninsula, like its history, are closely related to Rybachy. Therefore, the Medium is also interesting. But we do not dwell on it. Our goal is Rybachy. It is much larger, and beyond it is the ocean. Yes, the ocean never borders on land. On the maps, the Rybachy Peninsula washes the Barents Sea, which turns into the ocean. And, nevertheless, this is a convention, because there is water between Rybachy and the North Pole.
It was not planned to reach Rybachy on the first day. We stopped for the night, setting up a kerchief camp near the road. On the second day, we separated from the Slava group and agreed to meet on the peninsula. And this gave us one plus: the absence of a large company and support strengthened the impression of the first acquaintance with Rybachy. It began with the abandoned military village of Ozerko, attracting a couple of five-story buildings.
Gray, with blackening emptiness window sockets, they look gloomy. The sky, rain, cold gusty wind and complete desertion, added sad colors to the sky, tightly covered with heavy lead. Once inside them, you begin to imagine how and who once lived here. These impressions are probably the only thing that visiting them can give. But, and the strength of these impressions depends on their own acuity of perception, awareness, and maybe something else. Inside is not just desolation. Everything has been looted and destroyed there. Although the houses have never seen a war. They were built and abandoned by people in peacetime. What you see in these five-story buildings, then you meet all over the peninsula at all abandoned military facilities. Someone says that you can see a picture of the apocalypse in them. I would call the picture differently, something related to the decline in morality, especially manifested in the nineties, after the collapse of the USSR.
The five-story buildings appeared in the early seventies in addition to other housing and utility infrastructure created for the military. By that time, a number of troops were stationed at Rybachy, including air defense, armed with an anti-aircraft missile system. The village of Ozerko was quite well equipped, there was even a hockey court near the five-story buildings. Closer to the nineties, arms reduction began on the peninsula, followed by demilitarization, which ended in the fall of 1994. After the departure of the military, in addition to the established system of infrastructure facilities, a lot of various equipment and equipment remained on the peninsulas, in particular, freight transport, all-terrain vehicles. The material base was mothballed, but this did not protect it during the post-Soviet collapse of the country. They say that a significant part of the technique was sawn into metal.
After getting to know Ozerko, we went to look for a place where Slava was supposed to stand, and got lost. We drove along a hard, rocky road, but then mud appeared, the ground became more and more fragile. The low gear and bridge locks were already engaged, and the car was going harder. And soon we were crawling in the middle of the soggy tundra there, which can hardly be called a road, and in front of us was a swampy lowland. As a result, we turned around.
The evening was beginning, we decided to postpone the search, and stopped for the night on the bank of Bolshaya Volokovaya Bay - in the western part of Rybachye. It didn't take long to look for beautiful parking spots, there are many of them. But such places are often not without wind. And it can blow out from the ocean so that the tent will not stand up. But we found a quiet place under the rock and didn't even put up a tent, we just pulled up an awning to keep the rain out. You won't freeze in a warm sleeping bag at night.
When we arrived at Rybachy, it was cloudy, it rained from time to time. This is the Arctic and in August one cannot count on warm days. At night, the temperature drops to seven degrees. But, as we were told, a few days before our arrival, it was hot, which, in general, is a rarity for this region. Although we also found several sunny days. Winds blow often, but sometimes they are barely perceptible. In the depths of the peninsula, there may be no wind at all, but then, if there is a lake nearby, there is not a small chance of being attacked by clouds of midges.
When they say that the ocean feeds, you can think of fish, some other seafood. But the ocean even provides firewood. On Rybachye there is tundra, water and stone. And the tree can be found by walking along the shore. There are boards and logs. Just choose those that have already lay down and dried up. In general, the ocean throws out everything - both garbage and a lot of other goods. Later, on one of the beaches of the peninsula, we found a huge bay of a good rope. Perhaps it was washed away in the storm from the ship. The rope is such that it can serve as a reliable tow rope for a large SUV.
The next day there was a clear sky, the sun was shining, and we decided to take a walk deep into the peninsula. Its relief is hilly, dotted with stones, with many rock formations.
The vegetation is not high due to strong winds, a significant part of it, like a carpet, covers the ground, in some places shrubs grow densely. It is damp in the lowlands - puddles, bumps. The peninsula is cut by streams and riverbeds, therefore, traveling along it, it will not be possible to bypass them.
In rivers, the flow can be turbulent. We meet such a river. We pass it through the pile of stones.
You might think that where the tundra is, everything looks the same. However, it is not. Here, the tundra, in combination with stones and rocks of various shapes, forms interesting and diverse landscapes.
Their highlight is often the ocean or the tundra itself with its bright colorful vegetation.
The flora is quite rich. Among it there are many flowers and whole placers of berries.
The most common of these is crowberry. There are many blueberries, cloudberries, which are very popular in Scandinavia.
There are also many mushrooms on Rybachye. Of these, boletus mushrooms are often found. They can be very large.
Boletus mushrooms grow under birch trees. And they are here, only dwarf ones. They can travel along the ground and be very similar to the roots of a plant.
There are also very beautiful mosses here.
By noon, the sun was so warm that when the wind died down, it became warm in the south. At such moments, looking at the blue waters of the Big Volokovaya Bay, one could easily imagine that this was the south.
There was no need to search for Glory. He found us himself, on a motorcycle. Yes, our group had several motorcycles - cross and pit bikes. They were brought on a trailer.
With such transport, you can quickly get to where it will be difficult or even impossible to get there by car. The motorcycle allows you to see more. In addition, the peninsula will provide the motorcyclist with mud baths, water hazards, rocks, slopes, sands, in general, everything that is needed for an extreme drive on rough terrain. Moving by car, we were not looking for extreme, but we could not do without it.
Every day our group moved to a new place on off-road vehicles and motorcycles. Time was limited, so the route ran along the western part of the peninsula, where there is less off-road, and there are many attractions. Rybachye has, in a way, its main roads. They are well-rolled, with clear boundaries, and can be marked by barrels of poles along them.
Most tourists use them. And if not for the numerous waterways flowing into the ocean, and puddles in the lowlands, then it would be possible to drive through them on the most ordinary crossover. Riverbeds are saturated with large rocks and can have steep slopes, and the water level can be above the knee. These are not the peninsula's biggest obstacles, but to go around the entire western part, they will have to be overcome, and this may be enough to damage the car. Stones can hit the body, puncture the wheels and break parts located under the bottom. When crossing rivers without observing a number of precautions, the car can even be drowned. A torn transfer case protection, a punctured wheel, a broken anti-roll bar, a water-filled interior, scratches on the body - troubles that befell our group, by the way, which consisted of people not without off-road experience.
The interior of the car was flooded, however, not on the river, but on one of the roads running far from the coast through the tundra, where there were huge puddles in the lowlands. One of the SUVs, pulling the trailer, caught a hitch on a concrete slab lying at the bottom of one of these puddles and pulled over to the side of the pit. So the left side of the car was up to the glass in water and mud. The pit may have been left behind by a stalled military truck. And the slab was probably once laid to cover an area with too shaky soil. Interestingly, the puddle did not look deep and we were not ready for such a nuisance. Another thing is when crossing rivers.
The Slavic camper has a significantly increased, high ground clearance, and in addition to it a low gear, two interwheel and interaxle locks. He was the first to slide into the water and determine whether the others could pass. The water obstacles were not long, but they hid large stones and their depth with all kinds of holes. The presence of such a specially prepared vehicle among the standard serial off-road vehicles, even good ones, on Rybachy, as I now think, is not desirable, but obligatory. If you, of course, do not want, as my friend said on the eve of the trip, leave the car there. Although, we also had one more help - motorcycles. They made it possible to quickly find out how passable the section ahead was.
The water level in the rivers of the peninsula depends on the ocean. For example, where the water can be below the knee in the daytime, in the evening, during the tide, the level can rise to two or more meters. This feature is also important to consider.
When driving across a river, do not drive too fast. We must not push the wave in front, but rather follow it. If the wave is pushed, then the water will begin to penetrate under the hood, which may end in a known way. But, when you enter the river, and the water is already at the level of the bumper, you really want to get out onto land as soon as possible, and your nerves may not stand it, your leg will add gas. I made this mistake once. Water rolled onto the hood and… thanks to Mitsubishi engineers! Now I'm not saying this for advertising, because this error can have a high cost. My Pajero Sport went wherever it was needed, forgiving mistakes, and never failed.
Before going to Rybachy, having learned about the features of its relief, I was seriously puzzled by what tires to put on the car. I went from a simple one: I called a friend - at Nokian Tires. He recommended Nokian Rotiiva AT. It is a tire, as stated in its description, with reinforced sidewalls protected from side cuts, with a tread that works well off-road, not noisy and economical on asphalt. I put it on and did not lose. On the highway, the average fuel consumption was kept in the region of 5.5-7 liters.
Some of the people who come to Rybachy do not differ in their thrifty attitude to nature, leaving behind a lot of garbage and spoiling the vegetation layer. There are places where, instead of a multi-colored carpet of tundra plants, a huge muddy meadow rolled by the wheels of SUVs turns black.
The desire of people to be surrounded beautiful naturenot showing concern for her is a real threat to the Rybachiy Peninsula. How to protect him from such a threat is a question. We raised it more than once in our company in the evenings.
Scientists have established that people lived on Rybachy in the Stone Age. This discovery was made in 1979 thanks to a military man who was fishing in the Zubovskaya Bay, who noticed the rock paintings. After that, about thirty sites were found on the peninsula. ancient man... On Rybachye there are Viking graves, a place of sacrifice of the Lapps was discovered. The peninsula was inhabited by Norwegians, Finns and Russians.
Natural resources made it possible to actively engage in whaling, reindeer husbandry, livestock breeding, and, of course, fishing - what gave the peninsula its name. Traces of the activities of the people who inhabited Rybachy at different times can be found today. But, frankly speaking, here nothing attracts to itself like nature. She is so attractive that you begin to strive to be alone with her.
It so happened that I was not able to go to Cape German - the northernmost point of Rybachy and the entire European part of Russia. On one of the last days of our stay on the peninsula, when we had already traveled around its western part and were on south bank, at Motovsky Bay, I separated from the group and went to the German one. Most of the way was known. On the route I met a handsome sand beachformed by the ebb.
I often stopped and photographed a lot, which was difficult to do, moving in a group, as time went on, and the tide began. Because of this, I faced the difficulty of crossing the river. Popped in two places. In both cases, after the bumper was hidden under the water, fearing to take risks, he switched on the reverse gear. Interestingly, the area lacked typical tundra vegetation. Around grew tall grass like reeds, the height of a car, which made it difficult to navigate. These thickets were entangled with a whole network of roads. I returned to the same place several times, but then I discovered a waterfall, found a road that goes above it, and drove through a shallow ford. With the understanding that there were not many bright hours left, my celebration was not strong. Another circumstance prevented me from being happy - there was little fuel left in the tank, and there was no spare canister with me. To go fast, without things jumping in the cabin, the day before he unloaded almost everything from the car, leaving only a sleeping bag, an ax and some food for the evening and the next morning. Not far from Nemetskoye, on the bank of Waida Bay, there is a small military detection unit (aerial objects). My hopes of getting some diesel fuel from the military were not realized. Their refusal was so categorical that ... it seems that the tourists are fed up with them.
But once on the shore of the cape, the problem was forgotten. I was alone. By the way, later it turned out that Cape Nemetsky is perhaps the most popular place among tourists who come to Rybachy. Therefore, I was lucky. In German it is beautiful in its own way: the color-rich tundra spreads like a soft carpet among very unusual rocky formations with a layered structure.
In the sea, to the left in the distance, the coast of Norway is visible.
Many have heard the song of the war years "Farewell, rocky mountains", and some may even remember the words of this song, which mentions the Rybachy peninsula, melting in a distant fog. But at the same time, few people thought: where is this land? It is located in the very north of the Arctic Circle, 150 km from the regional center of Murmansk. And Cape German, located on the peninsula, is the northernmost geographical point of the mainland of European territory.
History of the peninsula
In this harsh but beautiful place, located on the shore of the Motovsky Bay, people began to settle for a long time. The Rybachy Peninsula, according to the surviving documents, received its name back in the 16th century. Indeed, in the waters surrounding the peninsula, which do not freeze all year round thanks to the North Cape Current, the Pomors have fished since ancient times (herring, capelin, cod, etc.). The peninsula began to belong to the Russian Empire in 1826, when the state border with Norway was finally established. After the revolution of 1917, the western part of the island went to Finland, which was subsequently annexed to the USSR after
During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Arctic became the arena of fierce battles between Soviet troops and the Wehrmacht troops. The German command attached great importance to the capture of the Kola Peninsula, rich in nickel deposits, and planned to seize Murmansk, the main base of the Northern Fleet, as soon as possible, but these plans were not destined to come true. On the way of the invaders stood the Rybachy Peninsula, which is the most important strategic point, from which the entrance to the Pechenga, Kola and Motovsky bays was controlled. Rybachy remained for them an unsinkable battleship, which played a decisive role in protecting the northern borders of our Motherland.
At the end of the war, Soviet military garrisons were located on the Rybachye Peninsula, which is located almost on the very border with Norway, which is part of it, and entry into its territory was limited. Currently, most of the garrisons are closed, and almost everyone can get there.
Peninsula today
The Rybachy Peninsula, the map of which is replete with bays and bays, rivers and lakes, has become a place of pilgrimage for ecotourism lovers. Fans of off-road racing and fans of extreme diving come here not only from Russia, but also from other countries.
Also, many representatives of youth patriotic clubs arrive on the Rybachy peninsula in the summer season to visit the sites of the bloody battles of World War II and maintain the monuments to the fallen soldiers in proper condition.
This is really a real Land of the Earth - further only the boundless expanses of the Arctic Ocean, against the background of which everyone arriving here must take memorable photos. Fishing peninsula and the adjacent Srednyi peninsula are also attractive because here you can often observe the longest polar nights on the mainland (42 days) and (59 days).
Several years ago, when I just bought myself a jeep, I had a dream to go to the Rybachiy Peninsula. Several times, for various reasons, I had to postpone my dream until next year, and the very fact of driving my car along the Rybachiy Peninsula began to seem to me something akin to deprivation of virginity, like a jepper, and then all the roads are open. And finally this year the car was ready to go, and we are overwhelmed with determination. And, the dream has come true!
From the forest near Karshevo at 5 am we started on a long and difficult haul to Murmansk. Almost 700 km from Pudozh walked in the pouring rain. The Murmansk track is almost perfect, apart from a few sections being renovated. By 23 o'clock, we finally arrived in Murmansk and stayed at 69 Parallel Hotel, which, as it turned out, is very popular among all-wheel drive travelers. Everyone we met stayed in it. And near the hotel itself, dirty monstrous jeeps have already become commonplace.
Having exhausted themselves, the sutras started to repair cars. First, they returned the stabilizer on the Lekhin P3 to its place, and then drove to Svyat, where they sawed down the cut bolt, and returned the stabilizer bracket to its place. Holy, thank you again so much for your help. They also found a torn off rear axle breather and torn wires from the rear interwheel lock sensor. Well, we hope that I won't need it on Rybach.
After completing all the repair activities and purchasing food, we return to the Kola trails and finally cheerfully drive towards Rybachy in the evening.
1. Soaked the wheels in the salty waters of the Arctic Ocean.
2. I crossed the Arctic Circle for the fourth time, and for the first time by car. And every time this moment is accompanied by some incomprehensible feeling of euphoria.
3. Having passed the border control, we immediately turn to the right onto the road along Titovka and enter the large waterfall Melnichny
6. If I'm not confusing anything, there was once a small hydroelectric power station on the waterfall supplying electricity to the now lifeless village of Bolshaya Titovka. According to updated information, this is a German hydroelectric power station during the Second World War.
7. Now is natural devastation
8. Second stage
9. Titovka river valley behind the waterfall
10. In an hour, or maybe more, we reach the Sredny peninsula, already in deep twilight. And here is such a surprise. Catch the warrior, find out about the shooting and where to get up for the night. There is no information yet, but the shooting will be in the area of \u200b\u200bthe road to the Two brothers. We get upset, we camp near Lake Yauhonokanyarvi, where we met the guys on Dzhimnik, with a three-month-old baby. We get to know each other for a bottle of whiskey and go to bed at dawn. If you come across a report, hello guys.
11. Sutra we come again to the soldiers, they say that there will be no shooting for the next two days. We tear up joyfully along the western part of the Middle.
12. Small waterfall
13. And here, judging by everyone, is one of the shooting zones. Everything around the road is forced wooden hedgehogs and barbed wire.
14. This is a great road!
15. Finally we got to the Ponochevny battery
17. Some mechanisms, oddly enough, work. One tower very much turned out to rotate in a circle
18. But most of the levers were torn off, and they tried, no less, to saw off the barrel of one of the guns
19. We descend back to the coast and head for the Two brothers
20. And here they are
21. Sawed down an onion with Two brothers and two machines, we were here-)
22. We get to the Rybachy peninsula and the first thing we meet is a burnt-out six with a bunch of burnt-out supplies in the cabin and trunk
23. Twilight begins. We are looking for a place to spend the night. We call into the former air defense positions located at the top. The western part of the peninsula at a glance. Having looked around the area with a keen eye, we find a good place, protected from the wind by bushes and a promising view.
24. Angry mushrooms
25. Lech, impatient before dinner and port wine, bent the key for 36
26. Parked in position
27. Having broken in azimuth through the bushes and breaking through the old trench, we went to a gorgeous place overlooking the ocean. Dense vegetation up to the hub. Vnatyag rides almost like on sand. We lay out and celebrate our arrival at Rybachy with Portuguese port and a cigar in the rays of a gorgeous sunset.
28. Sutras were awakened by the downpour. We quickly turned camp and, postponing breakfast for later, moved to Cape Nemetsky. All that is left of the radar Lena
29. The personification of the beauty of the peninsula
30. Balls. You can't go there.
31. We quickly reached the lighthouse. An ominous brick with a barrier and a hanging bicycle hint that the passage is closed further.
32. I climb onto the roof of the neighboring ruins and quickly find where I can move out.
33. And here we are at the northernmost point of the European part of Russia. Euphoria!
34. Stones, algae, zaaapah. Jellyfish swim around and shimmer with electric light like neon.
37. Near the old trenches.
38. The landscapes are fantastic. A photograph cannot convey this. Or my skill is not enough to convey this beauty.
39. The wind there is just hellish. But it is convenient to dry the tents.
40. Tent - kite
41. We pass by Vaydai-Guba and are amazed at how you can screw up everything.
42. Vaydai-Guba
43. From time to time there are such stones with numbers.
44. We get to the dead village Skobeevsky
45. Desolation
47. And the child likes
48. We leave back on the path and go towards Zubovka
49. On the way we stop at a picturesque waterfall
51. Bath with crystal clear water, where you just want to plunge. But the water there is unrealistically icy.
52. We collect a few bottles with us.
54. Drive through mountain rivers
55. And again views
56. Red fields of berries
57. I am able to move a little faster. As the turmeric ends and we go out on a more or less decent road by local standards, I stop to wait for Lech.
58. And then happiness comes. Sandy, absolutely flat road, after turmeric. We come off in full.
59. They called this hill a sandy volcano.
60. Ahead is the beach, which lacks only palm trees.
61. The road becomes trial again.
62. A little more trial and we get out to this very beach.
63. Again we come off, accelerating our cars.
64. And fooling around twisting dimes.
65. Lyokha tries to swim, but it didn't work out very well \u003d) I ran forward for a long time, but everything was shallow. It quickly became very cold and ran back to the car \u003d)
66. Now you need to try to get to Murmansk. While we are waiting for Leha to refuel, we spot reindeer. So that's what they are.
67. And here the hippopotamus arrived in time, flopping into a puddle.
But the hope of getting to Murmansk was melting before our eyes. The road didn't get any better. Already in the dark we get to Sredny and drown on a grader in the eastern part of the peninsula. Unable to withstand vibrations, my muffler falls off. We get up for the night again on Lake Jauhonokanyarvi.
69. Sutra moved to Murmansk, where they again stayed at a hotel. There was no strength to move somewhere further. I love these landscapes.
70. Already at the approaches to the asphalt we notice how the Lehin bumper continues to suffer.
71. Sutra we set out again on a long haul to Medvezhyegorsk. On the Murmansk track, by the way, there are a lot of pockets with overpasses. We are trying to do something with the muffler, as our ears are already starting to paw. But everything is useless, only welding and new pipes will help. We put off this matter until Moscow and continue to torment our ears and frighten passers-by in the villages.
The very edge of European Russia, the Rybachiy Peninsula, is an ambiguous and amazing place. It will not leave you indifferent: someone will conquer the rare beauty of many waterfalls, lakes, littoral and sand dunesSomeone will be surprised by the unique combination of dynamics and statics - the majestic calmness of the rocks and the continuous movement of the sea, while to some this region will seem harsh and inhospitable.
Several years ago, after almost half a century of "isolation" from the rest of the world, Rybachy became accessible to travelers again.
Just 100 kilometers from Murmansk, the magnificent and mysterious northern region begins.
Coast of the Rybachy Peninsula.
For a long time already civilization left these places and now everything here breathes history: mysterious stones standing from the time of fishing for Lapps, seids, mysterious stone guards, numerous batteries, fortified firing points and trenches - the echo of war, which is heard especially clearly on Rybach. Traveling to this legendary land allows you not only to touch the secrets of the past, but also to test the strength of technology and yourself. It will give you an incomparable pleasure of discovery.
On the roads of Rybachiy there are a variety of people: a jeep from Krasnodar, a motorcyclist from Munich and a caravaner from Belarus. And this is not surprising, because Rybachy is not just a place on the map, it is a different life. Maybe that's why he so easily wins the hearts of those who crave adventure.
Rybachy Peninsula - geographic information
The Rybachiy Peninsula, the northernmost part of Russia, is located on the Lapland coast of the Arctic Ocean. Geographically, it belongs to the Murmansk region.
Not everyone knows that Rybachy actually consists of two peninsulas: Rybachy proper and Sredny. They are connected by a small isthmus about a kilometer long. And very often, if no special clarifications are required, the peninsula is called by one name - Rybachy.
Fragment physical map Kola Peninsula.
The Sredny peninsula is separated from the mainland by another isthmus, on the continental part of which the Musta-Tunturi ridge is located. The middle one is a plateau that drops abruptly into the Barents Sea. It is composed of limestone, sandstone and shale. The maximum height on the peninsula is 334 meters.
The length of Rybachy from Cape Nemetsky to Cape Gorodets is about 60 km. The width of the largest southeastern part of the peninsula is 25 km.
The local shores are made of black slate rocks, above which, in the inner part of Rybachiy, hills and mountains covered with tundra vegetation are located. The highest of them is called Eina, its height is 299 m.
The waters of the Barents Sea washing the peninsulas are not frozen all year round thanks to the North Cape Current. There are many fish in the coastal waters: capelin, cod, herring.
The northernmost part of the Rybachy Peninsula is Cape German.
The climate of the Rybachiy Peninsula is special due to its location practically in the middle of the Barents Sea. The weather on the peninsulas can seriously differ even from the villages of Pechenga or Zaozersk located near the sea. This is due to the nature of the Barents Sea and to the fact that the peninsulas are separated from the mainland by the relatively high Musta-Tunturi ridge. The mountains may not let bad weather, but on the contrary, they can block the path of rain clouds that will hang over the Fishing months.
In summer, the sun hangs over the horizon all day long, so the local seasons do not coincide too much with the generally accepted seasons. It is cold here all year round, even in summer the average monthly temperatures do not rise to 20C, and the weather changes very sharply.
On the Rybachy Peninsula in early summer. View of the Middle. On the horizon is the Musta-Tunturi ridge.
The best time for the rally is the second half of summer, when the peninsula is still warm by local standards. In June-July mosquitoes and midges are found on Rybach, in August they are gone.
Local roads are special too. It is not worth moving along them in an unprepared car, especially without installed crankcase protection. It should be borne in mind that they were built a very long time ago, during the period when the peninsula was a closed zone, were operated mainly by the military, who have their own requirements for cross-country ability. For the last twenty years, after most of the garrisons were closed, no one here has taken care of the roads. The conclusion from all this suggests itself unequivocally.
On the other hand, with an experienced driver, ordinary cars also reached Rybachy's extreme points.
Brief historical outline
The first people came to these lands during the Mesolithic period, that is, about 10-12 thousand years ago. Their sites, characterized by a small area and a thin cultural layer, have survived. Scientists claim that this indicates that the first settlers to Rybachy were few in number and led an active lifestyle. They were gathering and hunting reindeer.
Archaeologists noticed an interesting detail: the settlement of the peninsula proceeded from two directions - south and northwest. They proved that for a long time Rybachy was inhabited by people from the Volga-Oka interfluve and from the territories of modern Finland, Norway and Karelia.
Later, the Sami or Lapps, a Finno-Ugric people who were engaged in deer breeding and fishing, lived on Rybach. Pomors, the descendants of Novgorodians who once came to these regions rich in fish and furs, got along well with them. The Pomors were exclusively engaged in trade and "sea" business.
Waida-lip today.
Since the beginning of the 16th century, active fishing has been carried out in these parts; there are 16 fishing camps, numbering 109 fishing huts. These camps, which included Tsyp-Navolok, Vaida-guba, Zubovo and others, periodically came to desolation, then flourished.
In 1865, the Russian emperor invited Norwegian and Finnish colonists to these lands, who came here from Finnmarken and Varanger fiord. They, unlike most of the Pomors and Sami, who by that time appeared on Rybach only in the summer, began to settle in the harsh land.
After Finland gained independence, the western part of the peninsula was given to it. The border went along the isthmuses and cut the Sredny one almost in half.
Immediately after the Soviet-Finnish war in 1940, the separated territories were returned to the USSR. The new border between the countries was drawn by water to the west of the Sredny Peninsula.
Mass grave of Rybachy's defenders.
During the Patriotic War, fierce battles took place on Rybach and in its coastal waters. The peninsula became a key area of \u200b\u200bdefense on the way to Murmansk. Throughout the war, the Nazis failed to advance an inch in this direction, for which the die-hard Rybachy was named the Granite battleship. For almost four years the Nazis could not take the peninsula and break through to Murmansk.
After the end of hostilities, the peninsula is rapidly developing. The military plays a special role here, which is explained by the close proximity to the border of Norway, a NATO member. Several secret military facilities are stationed on the peninsula, so its territory was closed to any visit.
Despite this, work is underway at Rybach to restore and increase the reindeer herd destroyed during the war years. Geologists are also working here. In the 70s of the last century, the geological base of the Academy of Sciences was opened on the Middle. Its employees are engaged in unique studies of the earth's crust using magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generators.
Unfortunately, since the mid-90s, life on the peninsulas has come to a standstill. Most of the military garrisons are disbanded or withdrawn, geologists and geophysicists are also curtailing their activities. Buildings and property remain abandoned. Since that time, the peninsula has been opened for visits by Russian citizens.
The history of the Rybachiy peninsula is associated with many interesting facts, which can encourage the traveler to study the history of the region more deeply, and move away from the well-trodden routes.
Not far from Tsyp Navolok there is Mount Anikievka, on the slope of which is the grave of Anika the warrior. This rather unpleasant character distinguished himself by taking away from the fishermen who sailed to Tsyp-Navolok part of their catch. He said that he would stop extortion only when a man was found who would defeat him in a fair fight. This turned out to be Ambrose, a monk of the Pechenga monastery. They fought for a long time in a stone circle, in which later they buried Aniku the warrior killed in a duel.
The famous poem "The Son of an Artilleryman" was also born on Rybach. In the fall of 1941, Konstantin Simonov arrived on the peninsula. Among the stories about the battles for Musta-Tunturi, he was particularly engrossed in the story of how the regiment commander sent his friend's son to adjust the artillery fire. The spotters were behind enemy lines and called fire on themselves. Simonov worked all night on the work, in the morning it was already ready and over time it became one of the best poems about the war.
Nikolay Bukin, the author of the words of the famous song "Farewell, rocky mountains", also served on Rybach. A participant in the first battles for Rybachy, an artilleryman and a correspondent for a front-line newspaper, he managed to find words that touched everyone's soul, so many consider this song a folk song.
Another relic of those years is carefully kept on Rybach - the border sign, which remained on Musta-Tunturi, on the territory not captured by the enemy. Despite the fact that this was a section of the old border, the significance of this fact was enormous.
The history of the first Russian research vessel Perseus is also connected with the peninsula.
The ship, rebuilt from a whaler, embarks on its maiden voyage in 1922. Perseus took part in 99 expeditions, carried out scientific, commercial and hydrological research, his contribution to national science would be truly fundamental.
In July 1941, the legendary ship was sunk by fascist bombers in the Eina Bay of Motka Bay. At the same time, the skeleton of Perseus was covered with stones and turned into a pier. Thanks to this, fragments of a ship's hull set can still be found on the shore.
Historical landmarks
There are many seids on the peninsula. This is the name of boulders of various shapes and sizes that stand separately in an unstable position. Most often they are rounded, from 0.5 to 10 m long. Locals believe that the Sámi sorcerers - noids, when dying, turn into such stones, therefore, they consider them sacred. Scientists have proven that seids transmit energy, transferring it from stone to stone, and change the level of radiation above them.
It is worth noting that in our time almost any free-standing stone is taken as a seid. But most of them are products of the destruction of rocks, or even simply brought by the glacier. But it is better to look for real Saami seids with an experienced specialist.
Map of attractions and memorable places of Rybachy and Sredny. From the book of M. G. Oreshets "Orphaned shores".
The northernmost hearth in our country was found in Zubovskaya Bay rock art... Local petroglyphs have one peculiarity: the image, painted with ocher on the rock, was later duplicated with some kind of sharp tool, scratched out on a hard surface.
Several sites of ancient people from the Paleolithic and Mesolithic times were also discovered on Rybach. They are located in the Zubovskaya Bay, on the Päiva and Maika rivers. There are here "shaman circles", as the burials of people of the Stone Age are called, and the sacred stones of the Sami in the Middle, to which the ancients sacrificed.
On Anikiev Island (located opposite Tsyp-Navolok) you can see a unique stone chronicle. The slab is covered with carefully carved names of skippers who went to Murman for fish in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Here are the names of Dutch, German and Danish sailors. Russian merchants were also noted on the plate. The famous Rybachi ethnographer Mikhail Oreshet managed to find the earliest autograph of V. Malashov, who visited this region in 1630.
One of the pillboxes guarding the Rybachiy coast.
Most of Rybachiy's monuments belong to the period of the Great Patriotic War. They are scattered across the peninsula: preserved bunkers, fortifications, memorial signs and mass graves. There are a lot of them at Musta-Tunturi, where the bloodiest battles took place.
If you climb the ridge, you can see the German fortifications carved into the rocks, there are also memorial signs and many burials. At the foot of Musta-Tunturi there is a museum dedicated to the memory of Rybachy's defenders. It was created and preserved by Yuri Aleksandrovich Kobyakov, a former geophysicist who worked here. This museum also houses an unconquered border sign taken from Musta-Tunturi.
The abandoned position of the anti-aircraft missile battalion with the callsign "Lockout".
There are many other "monuments" on Rybach. These are abandoned military towns, which once housed military units. Skorbeevka, Ozerko, Chetverka, Lockout, Zubovka ... The list goes on. These villages were born with difficulty, they lived joyfully and brightly, they died absurdly and hard. Today it is a kind of museum of the frozen Soviet era, ghost villages lost in the tundra, which are occasionally visited by travelers.
Abandoned 152mm artillery battery.
Natural attractions of the peninsulas
The nature of the Rybachy Peninsula is unique and extraordinarily beautiful. It takes your breath away from the views. If you get out of the car and walk along the tundra, you will get a lot of pleasure: you can see everything kilometers ahead and you will find something interesting at every step. Either an exotic animal or bird, or handsome reindeer, or a rusty "echo of war". And how many berries and mushrooms! Blueberries, cloudberries, rosebush, white and even northern ginseng.
MMP-1966 - 2008 Heroic Rybachy. (Part 1).
Almost most of my life connected me with the Rybachy Peninsula. For the first time I got to Rybachy in July 1966 on the Ilya Repin steamer, when I arrived in Murmansk, as a cadet of the LMU - for an annual practice. Later, I went to the Rybachiy Peninsula, already in navigator and captain positions on MMP passenger ships: Ilya Repin, Petrodvorets, Akop Hakobyan, Vologda, Klavdiya Elanskaya, Kanin and mx "Polaris". My last visit to Rybachy was at mt Polaris in the summer of 2007, when Rybachy was being mastered by specialists from the Murmansk Shipping Company who were looking for oil on the peninsula. I then told N.V. Kulikov that he would not get oil in these places. And so it happened ...
I still have the best memories of this land, sacred for all Murmansk residents. Many of my years were devoted to the peninsula, when the ships of the shipping company stood on the regular passenger line Murmansk - Ozerko, providing residents living all over the peninsula with everything they needed. Communication with the mainland was carried out at that time mainly through the MMP passenger ships. Another year I visited Ozerko up to a hundred times a year, walked and traveled the peninsula up and down. I have special and best memories for the period 1988-2003, when Colonel Viktor Viktorovich Kudelya, my good friend and the last commander of the entire peninsula, was in command of the brigade in Ozerko. Despite the fact that a lot has been written about the Rybachy Peninsula in the literature, and especially about its heroic pages during the Great Patriotic War, I want to devote my attention to my beloved land in terms of my memories. I would also like to make a small historical excursion into the past of the Rybachiy Peninsula.
The Rybachiy Peninsula (Sami village Giehkirnjrga, Finnish Kalastajasaarento, Norwegian Fiskerhalvya) is a peninsula in the north of the Kola Peninsula. Administratively Rybachy is part of the Pechenga district of the Murmansk region. It is washed by the Barents Sea and the Motovsky Bay. It is a plateau that abruptly drops off to the sea. The plateau is composed of clay shales, sandstones and limestones. Height up to 300 m. Tundra vegetation. Off the coast of the peninsula, the sea does not freeze all year round thanks to the warm North Cape Current. The coastal waters are rich in fish (herring, cod, capelin, etc.). Sredny peninsula is located to the south of the peninsula. From the north, a relatively large bay - Zubovskaya Bay juts out into the peninsula for 3.5 kilometers.
Since ancient times, in the coastal waters of Rybachy Pomors have been fishing. In the 17th century, there were 16 fishing camps with 109 fishing huts. Since the 16th century, the name Rybachy Peninsula has already been mentioned. Dutch traveler Guyen van Linshoten (English), a member of the 1594 expedition, mentions that he saw "the land of Kegoth, called the Fishing Peninsula." Stephen Barrow (English) On June 23, 1576, after traveling to the northern shores of Russia, during interrogation he claims that he was in the village of Kigor, and in his diaries for 1555 he mentions the Kegorsky Cape (now German). At this place there was a lively bargaining through which the Russian state was trading with Europe. In 1826, when the border between the Russian Empire and Norway was drawn, the peninsula was assigned to Russia, despite the fact that Norwegian settlers lived on the peninsula. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 9 colonies of Norwegians and Finns on the peninsula, in which 500 people lived. After Finland gained independence, the western part of the peninsula was ceded to the Finns, which was returned to the Soviet Union after the Soviet-Finnish war.
During the Great Patriotic War, fierce battles between Soviet and German troops took place on the peninsula and coastal waters. In Murmansk, a street is named after the fighters who defended the strategic peninsula. After the end of the war, the peninsula was heavily militarized, as it was in close proximity to the NATO member country Norway. Currently, most of the military garrisons are completely closed here. Quite recently, the territory of the Rybachy Peninsula was finally opened to the public. And immediately dozens of jeeps, all-terrain vehicles and hundreds of fans of the northern extreme rushed here ...
The Rybachiy Peninsula is truly the end of the earth. The northernmost point of the European part of Russia is located here. You feel this especially acutely, standing on a cliff, at the edge of the ocean, squinting from the strong north wind... Behind the back - "space balls" radar station and the pointing finger of a lighthouse, and in front, as far as the eye can see, is a body of water. Naturally, Rybachy is a closed area. But it was possible to get here absolutely legally by requesting the appropriate permission from the border guards in advance. The only people to whom the entrance is still closed are foreigners. Previously, this small, bare patch of land, surrounded on all sides by water, was literally packed with military units. Norway, a NATO member, is just a stone's throw away, and all the waterways to our northern ports pass by. Now everything has changed.
The troops were withdrawn, the remaining small units look frightening: gloomy shabby barracks, scattered remains of equipment, dirty, wolf-like conscripts looking from under their brows. I don't want to look at all this.
From Murmansk to Rybachy, if you go by car, it is only a few hours' journey. But this path is extremely interesting. The landscape changes literally every ten kilometers. Still dense forests give way to light forests, they are replaced by "northern dwarfs", and even further north - and they disappear from view. A thin shrub can be found only in the lowlands between the rocks, and everywhere mosses, lichens and some kind of grasses that have taken root here, which still manage to bloom here, dominate. This is the real tundra. Only the tundra is not low and swampy, but rocky. Small mountain ranges go across the entire peninsula, forming a fantastic unique relief. In the valleys, if you can call them that, there are a great many transparent lakes, swamps, streams and rivulets. All this, following the usual cliché, I would like to call a space landscape, but in fact, of course, the landscape is the most earthly, it is simply difficult to find the appropriate epithets to describe it. It is much easier to tell about the tropics, where there is a riot of colors and a constant celebration of life. And here there seems to be nothing but wind, rocks, stones, water and moss, but all this is so mesmerizing that sometimes you want to look at this picture, without stopping, for hours.
But back in the thirties it was crowded here, Russians, Finns, Sami lived here, there was even a whole Norwegian village with the bird's name Tsyp-Navolok. Here is what is written about the former population of Rybachy in the "Guide to the North of Russia" (St. Petersburg, 1898, p. 78):
- “On the eastern shore of the Rybachy Peninsula, next to Tsip Navolokom, there is Korabelnaya Bay, which for a long time has been revitalized by the activity of the factor founded here by the St. Petersburg merchant Pallisen, who then passed on to the merchant Zebek and from him to the Rybak society. The ship factor left a noticeable trace of its activity in our Murmansk and White Sea fisheries by using the American purse seine to catch herring and capelin and by introducing frostbite to preserve the bait. " I borrowed this quote from the book of my friend, a great connoisseur of the Kola land, Murmansk writer Mikhail. Nuts "Orphaned Shores" published on the Internet at his own website. The photograph posted there shows Mikhail Oresheta with a beard and a megaphone in his hands, along with an unnamed border guard, as well as our former enemy, and now a German friend, Gerhard Dag, and the head of North Sea schoolchildren Galina Penkova. Misha is a local historian and historian who has dedicated his life to our northern land.
It is a pleasure to walk on the tundra - you can see everything many kilometers ahead and almost at every step you meet something unusual and different, now an exotic beast, now an unexploded mine that has lain from the war. Here, literally, a motley partridge jumps out from under her feet and, diligently pretending that she is not all right with her health, begins to lead you away from her brood. Usually, pretending to believe, I follow her, keeping a distance, not moving away, but not letting close either. Then I turn around and see how she, convinced that I am at a safe distance for her family, squeaking loudly, hurrying back from both her paws - to the children.
Of course, fish is also found here - where would the name Rybachy Peninsula come from? And this fish is truly royal: brown trout, trout, delicious salmon.
Throughout Rybachye there are hundreds of streams, rivers and lakes with this beautiful fish. I fished constantly at Rybachye in all seasons and with great success.
And once, in the middle of the 19th century, Rybachye and whales were "swung" not without success. The last time, in my memory, a real whale threw itself on a sandbank in the Zubovka area in 1993. I saw this whale east of Kildin Island when I was going to Gremikha on the Kanin, and even approached it at a very close distance in order to record it floating up and fantanizing on a video camera.
For fish in the 80s and 90s, one did not have to go far. I caught her in the Ship Brook, and in Poltyna, and in Ein with their crystal and cold waters. The fish could be seen directly from the shore. If tropical islands are called coconut or banana-lemon paradise, Rybachy is undoubtedly a cloudberry-blueberry-mushroom paradise. To pick mushrooms for frying or berries for jam, we did not need to move further than 200-250 meters from the pier where the ship was moored - there were a great many mushrooms and berries. And if Viktor Viktorovich gave me a car, then there were so many mushrooms that you simply could not carry them away. They paid attention to russules only at the very beginning of the mushroom season, until the brown birch trees came, but they also ceased to be of interest when they crawled out into the light of day and immediately in such quantity that "even with their oblique mow", strong red-headed boletus boletus.
I knew places where porcini mushrooms grew in abundance, but, of course, I tried not to give them out to anyone. Who knows northern ginseng? Along the valleys of streams, among the stones, sometimes right on the sheer cliffs, our northern "ginseng" grows - a pink radiola, or, in a simple way - "golden root". I had to meet with him more than once - it was about a quarter of an hour of a leisurely journey from the pier to my nearest plantations. At the golden root, rhizomes and roots are used for medicinal purposes, harvested in the second half of July and the first half of August only from large specimens with at least 2 stems. The rhizomes and roots of the plant contain tyrosol, radioloside glycoside, essential oils, tannins, anthraglycosides, malic, gallic, citric, succinic, oxalic acids, lactones, sterols, flavonols (hyperazide, quercetin, isoquercetin, kaempferol), and sugars (mainly sucrose), lipids.
Pharmacological studies have established that the extract from rhizomes in 40% alcohol has not only a stimulating and adaptogenic effect, similar to the preparations of ginseng and eleutherococcus, but also increases blood pressure.
Autumn on Rybachye comes quickly, hastily, not fussing, but businesslike. The tundra becomes kind of dark and unfriendly, as it was in the summer, and did not have time to look back, and the sun is almost gone. Darkness falls quickly. It is clear that there will be no return: it is said, and basta is serious. She will not, as in St. Petersburg, rush back and forth, but will do her autumn job and immediately transfer her affairs to winter. Gloomy and unfriendly, it reminds of seriousness with its winds, unleashing its might on Rybachiy. In 1968 I saw when a hurricane demolished and destroyed half of the buildings along the shore of the Ozerko Bay.
All seasons in the North are fairly well defined. They do not rush and do not jump from one to another. Winter immediately grabs with a stranglehold and will not let go to the end. Here winter does not rush anywhere. Declared and immediately get it. Severe frosts, dense and some kind of solid blizzards immediately show who is the boss here. If not in the spirit, he can spin his devilish dance so that you involuntarily start to respect.
The forest on Rybachye and Sredniy - alder and birch - grows only along the valleys of streams, where the winds are not so strong, but even here they make the trees bend bizarrely. In August the slopes are covered with lilac-purple willow tea. Autumn begins in September, the tundra becomes burgundy red, lingonberries ripen, replacing blueberries and blueberries, cloudberries leave even earlier, in mid-August. In October, the lingonberry will go under the snow, so that the partridges have something to profit from in the spring - almighty Nature has thought of everything on this score.
Ein's lip is a kind of oasis on Rybachye. In contrast to the central and northern regions of the peninsula, there is even lush grass, where cattle used to be grazed before. Guba is surrounded by high hills with steep rocks, which are worth standing here overnight. During the war, the guba was the main source of supply for the garrison on Rybachye - for this, a pier was built, the remains of which are still visible. Another attraction of the bay is the sunken research vessel "Perseus". A two-masted steam-sailing schooner with ice contours was built in Onega in 1918 as a hunting hunting ship, but in 1922 the unfinished ship was modernized in Arkhangelsk and became a research vessel. For its intended purpose, the vessel operated in the seas of the Arctic Ocean from 1923 to 1941. It was a real floating marine scientific institute. I even managed to find some technical data of the ship: displacement - 550 tons, length - 41.5 meters, width - 8 meters, draft - 3.2 meters. There were 7 laboratories on this ship, including 1 meteorological one. It was on this vessel that echo sounders were first used to detect schools of fish (1939)! Since the beginning of the war (since 1941), "Perseus" was handed over to the military, and in the same year it was sunk by German aircraft. So the ship and the scientific laboratory became the basis for the above-mentioned pier. At low tide, his remains are still visible ...
"Bolshoye Ozerko" - ... emerged as a colony in 1860 on the southwestern coast of Rybachy ... In 1920 it was the center of Novoozerkovskaya volost. The population in 1926 was 247 people, in 1938 -127 people. In 1930, the collective farm "Pogranichny Rybak" was organized ... In 1960, the village of Ozerko was designated by a row of prefabricated panel houses, popularly called "Finnish" ... Over the years of existence, the anti-aircraft missile systems located on Sredny and Rybachye became obsolete morally and tactically. In the late eighties - early nineties, they began to be reduced ... In the fall of 1994, the last group of soldiers and officers left the village of Ozerko. A period of pogroms began on everything that had been created with such difficulty over the years. At this time, the worst features of our national character appeared - to take everything that lies badly, to beat that which cannot be carried away.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we got a dubious legacy: scattered here and there missile system silos, barracks, submarine bases. The construction of these sensitive facilities cost the state many billions, and now they are being destroyed under the prickly winds of the Arctic. It hurts that the incredibly complex, expensive mechanisms, which could still be restored, were completely abandoned, as if this was a shed that no one needed. And I myself took part in the construction of many military facilities on Rybachye in Soviet times, transporting thousands of tons of building materials on board Hakob Hakobyan, as well as on other cargo and passenger ships of the shipping company. Therefore, it was doubly painful for me to look at what happened to the peninsula after 1995.
I want to walk around Rybachy in 2007, when I was there for the last time, having driven more than a hundred kilometers on an ATV, through my once native places.
The abandoned structures of the Sredny and Rybachy peninsulas allow one to study the history of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the history of unfulfilled hopes and unrealized plans. An abandoned village is like a lonely sick person: he seems to live, but there is no joy. We have always been extravagant. It is especially acutely felt here, on the Rybachiy and Sredny peninsulas, on our strategic maritime border. This is a frozen museum of the Soviet era. Abandoned garrisons and defensive fortifications are like scars on the body of the tundra. Alien. There are many of them, but each of them is lonely in its own way and each has its own story of escape.
Garrisons, which, at first glance, have everything you need for life - high-rise buildings, clubs, gyms, but not a single living soul. Ghost villages, lost on the map, orphaned overnight, which are only occasionally visited by lonely travelers. Moreover, there are monuments - with the drooping head of the Rybachi heroes. They are shadows of the past, warlike, saturated with glory that has become useless to anyone. Nothing to say. Now the village looks like an abandoned battlefield. And it will collapse and deteriorate as long as there is at least one more gram of metal left that you can hand over, or one more brick that you can take with you. The process of plundering is set on a grand scale ... But even if there were no plunders, I do not believe that life could ever return to these houses. Our reality is that even a good house that loses one owner does not always find a new one. This is especially true of buildings owned by the armed forces.
Rybachiy is very favorably located, alas, not only from the point of view of fishing: the peninsula overlooking Norway is an excellent springboard for our troops. It is unlikely that in the near future he, or at least part of him, will become civilian.
Villages on the Rybachiy Peninsula, almost all destroyed. Several metalworkers now live in Bolshoy Ozerko, collecting the remains of metal. It's beautiful and eerie there, like a cemetery.
This is where I started my last trip in Rybachy in the summer of 2007 by ATV, reaching the camp of geologists and back. Practically, starting from the village. Bolshoye Ozerko, there is a road built during the Second World War, and it is radically different from all the other "roads" on the peninsula. Compared to them, this is a full-fledged dirt highway; it is through it that cars get to the peninsula (well, of course, only those that could drive through the pass)!
The village of Zemlyanoye (Pummanki), located in the very center of the Middle, was generally surrounded by something that remotely resembled a real forest. Somewhere I heard that Zemlyanoye is still a residential village ... but as soon as I entered the outskirts, there was no doubt: there was no one there for a long time. Abandoned houses, equipment left right in the middle of the road ... If I didn’t know the history of these places, I would assume that about 15-20 years ago the war started here and the inhabitants fled, leaving everything they had. But the reality is more sad - such a well-located village with capital buildings was simply abandoned due to the redeployment of military units. But here I have visited my friends of border guards so many times. Here we bathed in a beautiful sauna, fished, hunted, picked mushrooms and berries. There was an excellent shooting range, where I fired at almost all types of weapons, from TTs to machine guns and grenade launchers. On the Vykat brook, I set nets and fished for salmon. Naturally, now the bridge across the Vykat was destroyed, but a quite acceptable ford had already been "trodden down" by the cars nearby and I was able to drive on ...
After a few hours of travel, I reached the former camp of geologists, turned back to Sredny, to return to Ozerko again.
But for now, I am driving from Cape Zemlyanoy along the western coast along a long 30-meter cliff, made of the finest shale plates, through which many small springs break through. The famous "Two Brothers". There is some kind of mysticism here - it is not without reason that the Sami have since ancient times considered the Pummanki mountain to be the habitat of sorcerers (noids). According to legend, two of them - brothers Noyd-Ukko and Noyd-Akka - were punished for their atrocities and turned into these stone sculptures. Beautiful places! The declaration of the Rybachy peninsula as a national park with the obligatory transfer of it from the Ministry of Defense, as a mismanaged and inept owner, to the relevant structures involved in the preservation of natural and other heritage, could contribute to the development of tourism on the Barents Sea coast, which in turn would have a positive effect on the preservation and objects of military heritage. Tourists still visit these places with pleasure, but only in a wild way.
Traces of the presence of hydrocarbons, characteristic of gas and oil fields, were discovered in the Sredny several decades ago. In the 70s, the Ministry of Geology of the USSR recommended starting drilling there, but not even sufficient geophysical surveys were carried out on the peninsula.
In 1994, the regional administration registered, with the support of several oil firms, the Severshelf company, which conducted seismic surveys on Rybachye. They gave encouraging results for oilmen. Apparently, the oil field stretches from the peninsula to the sea - to the Rybachinskoye oil field. According to experts, in principle, subject to all standards, drilling and oil production on land is an order of magnitude safer than offshore drilling.
In 2002, one of the co-owners of the Murmansk Shipping Company Nikolai Kulikov, the former CEO of Lukoil-Arctic-Tanker, founded a new company, Murmanskneftegaz, which received a license to operate on the peninsula a year later. The company was even registered and located in a building owned by the shipping company. Having issued only a license (MUR series number 11451 NP) in March 2003 for the start of activities and organization of work on the profile in the fall of the same year, Murmanskneftegaz began prospecting work on the Sredny peninsula, in fact, on the isthmus between Sredny and Rybachy. Equipment began to be brought to the peninsula - a disassembled oil rig, tractors and other equipment. At the same time, the project for the work and the necessary documents determined by the terms of the license for geological exploration drilling was not developed. The administration of the Pechenga district of the Murmansk region was not informed about the timing of the start of work, which did not prevent the death of a part of the tundra and the conflict situation in this regard. The opinions of local reindeer herders were not taken into account either.
And all this despite the fact that, for example, the following clause was added to the license terms: “3.1.4. To start field geophysical work and well construction only after the development of ... projects of the corresponding types of work. Organize and carry out the procedure for assessing the impact of the proposed activity on the environment (EIA). Include the EIA materials in the composition of the object of the state ecological expertise. “Apparently, the heads of the limited liability company did not even look into the document,” says Sergei Zhavoronkin, head of the environmental organization Bellona-Murmansk.
As it turned out, the land on which Murmanskneftegaz began to develop a vigorous activity, since 1991, has been leased from the Rangifer reindeer breeding farm, which has more than 500 reindeer. Having learned about the expansion of oil workers, reindeer breeders turned to the regional land committee. “The reindeer herders could not have acted otherwise, since they, the tenants, are primarily responsible for the outrage on the territory they lease,” says Sergei Zhavoronkin. In December 2003, the land committee of the Murmansk region established that the oil workers had seized the land plot illegally, and fined Murmanskneftegaz with the obligation to eliminate the deficiencies discovered within three months. In addition, as the inspectors of the regional department of natural resources established, as a result of the activities of Murmanskneftegaz, about 4 hectares of soil cover with reindeer, which is the main food of reindeer, was destroyed on the peninsula. The Department of Natural Resources issued an order to suspend the preparatory work and provide the department with all the necessary documents.
However, the work, as I know, is being carried out on the Sredny, to this day. The new capitalists have no guns and tanks, and those that exist have not fired for a long time.
I still have a map of the places where, over the years of my visits to Rybachy, I have walked and surveyed almost every square, every stream, every swamp with berries and every lake with fish. All these are native places. All this is the heroic Rybachy. All this is our common memory - for those who want to remember and to whom all this is dear. I hope Rybachy will someday be reborn. But that will be later.
Where is it happy today? Maybe this "happy today" was seen by the last Rybachy commander - Viktor Viktorovich Kudel? Or thousands of other Rybachin residents? Why did millions of our fathers and grandfathers die in 1941-1945? To be victors or, in the end, defeated? There is no definite answer to these questions. But still! Glory to the heroes of the Rybachiy Peninsula! And eternal memory to them!
I returned to Ozerko, having driven more than a hundred kilometers with bitterness in my soul ...
