If on arrival in Russia you pictured yourself wandering through birch forests deep in the heart of Russia in the footsteps of Pushkin, you might find something to your liking in Pushkin's family estate at Bolshoe Boldino. It's something of a pilgrimage given its distance from Nizhny Novgorod, but once there, there's certainly enough to do to make the journey worthwhile.

This large country estate was in the family of Russia's best-loved poet since the times of Ivan the Terrible. Though the tragic hero Alexander Pushkin himself did not spend a large proportion of his life here, the time he spent at Boldino is thought of as one of the most productive of his life. Just after his engagement to Natalia Goncharova, he set off for the family estate, but thanks to a cholera outbreak was quarantined there; perhaps for Pushkin this was a blessing in disguise, as he was able to write a great number of poems and short stories and also provisionally complete his masterpiece, the novel in verse Eugene Onegin.

As well as the family's house, the estate has a number of other museums, attractive buildings, a church and beautiful woodland grounds.