The view from the train. Maybe what we could see and maybe what we felt about what we saw

The views from all the trains since we left England have been of completely flat land with no fences, hedges or walls to mark land ownership. Absolutely nothing except small paths here and there.  Also there has been little wild life and we have seen few people.

We have seen scatterings of houses, many of them little bigger than huts and sadly many of them of a poor construction.

There has been managed forest of fir and silver birch but of character there has been little.  It was clearly the same in Grandpas day and it is rather depressing and sad.

Yesterday I reflected on the opportunities for communication which have most certainly moved on since Grandpas day

He wrote of sending post card which of course we do. Mainly to my grandchildren. I have always made a habit of sending them post cards. Sometimes one a day. I try to remember to date them too.

My mum had a huge pile of post cards she had been sent over the years but sadly the date is not decipherable on most of them. I hope the cards that Charlie's three "The E numbers" as they are addressed by us on PCs and Molly and Tom will enjoy the cards as much as we enjoy sending them.

We were texting Bridget, Ted, Marie, Ruth and Brian and Aly and Tony who had come to see us off before we got to London

We had an email from the chap from the South West News Services saying the Daily Mail online had taken up the story and he gave us the link!  From that online story there have been many comments from people all over the world who have taken an interest or made comments on our trip. And of course there is the blog! So although some things have not changed, many more things have.

Today we woke soon after 6 which was in fact soon after 3am UK time as Moscow is 3 hours ahead of home time.  But we had changed our watches the evening before and gone to bed quite early after the exertions of the verbal encounter Tone had with the train attendant and the excitement of the bogies and the fact that we were hungry!

There was a frost and mist hung over the land. It was quite spooky. Much of the land by the track is flooded, whether permanently or not is not clear.  The floodwater was frozen but it still did not look picturesque. It is still flat, there are still no hills or hedges and the little houses still look very sad.

We both slept well and were pleasantly surprised.  Tea and biscuits for breakfast as Tone did not even think of running the gauntlet of his fierce Russian friend again

As we travelled on towards Moscow there was snow at the side of the track where the sun had not reached. We did see a Russian lady with a green flag at a level crossing as Grandpa had described and we saw some wonderful old and not so old trains. The houses began to be less small and we saw our first gold onion domed church.

We were at the end of the part of our trip that was organised by Great Rail Journeys and at the beginning of the part organised by Audleys so from the station in Moscow much of the time we will have a guide and a driver which we hope will work out well.  We will see.

Our first impression of Moscow is that it is enormous and that Red Square is such a tiny part of it. We have only surmised this from a map so far but will report more tomorrow