Russia · RU

Ozero Sterzh

Lake Sterzh is a long, narrow, glassy reach of water on the Valdai Hills in Tver Oblast—and the first of the Upper Volga lake cascade through which the young river Volga actually flows. Its name is traditionally read as "the quiet lake," and that stillness is its defining charm: calm, mirror-clear water hemmed in by pine forest and high sandy banks, almost entirely free of crowds. Roughly 12 km long and up to 1.5 km wide, Sterzh is the third-largest of the Upper Volga lakes. The bottom is mostly silt, with sand and shingle along the river's channel; the deepest water lies toward the northern end, and the southern shallows narrow into a slow river that leads on to the next lake, Vselug. Visitors rate it among the cleanest of the whole lake chain. Beyond the scenery, Sterzh rewards two kinds of traveller above all: anglers chasing perch, pike, zander and bream over the lake's hidden stone ridges, and anyone after a slow, rural break in log cottages and tent camps on the shore. It is also woven into early Russian history—at the point where the Volga enters the lake stood the chronicled town of Sterzh, marked by a famous 12th-century cross.