Where are Britain’s dachas?

In the winter, the smoke from wood fires rises above the chimneys of snow-covered houses in Peski, set into the woodland just an hour’s train ride outside Moscow. In the summer, it is replaced by the smell of grilling meat and the sound of children playing outside.

The Russian dacha has a romantic reputation, conjuring up images of ornate wooden cottages and secluded country estates for aristocrats. The reality, however, resembles a Tolstoy novel far less than it does a vast Butlins holiday camp, with swathes of the world’s largest country given up to recently-erected chalets.

In one of the sparsest and emptiest nations on the planet – buying a plot of land doesn’t mean parting with hefty sums of money, and building the ideal retreat from scratch is a lifelong passion project for millions of people. As a result, entire villages that come alive only on weekends have popped up around major cities, as hammering and drilling adds to the noise of couples arguing and dogs barking in the nearby houses.

Despite the wild expanses, patchworks of buildings cluster around each other, stretching along dirt roads and tapping into the overground pipes that keep them supplied with water and gas. Old wooden dwellings sit side by side, next to freshly-plastered tin roof houses with seemingly no planning rules or permissions required. Professional builders put up flashy glass-and-steel designer homes for well-heeled customers, while the quieter gated communities and historic cottages are jealously guarded and passed down the generations by those gifted them during the Soviet era.

This is the Russian countryside dream. Having a dacha means having the opportunity to load up the car after work on a Friday and join the exodus out of the city. It means weekends taking the kids out for walks in the country, picking berries and mushrooms or swimming with friends in the disused quarry. It means being able to host rowdy birthday celebrations with extended family, sitting outside until the early hours on plastic garden furniture drinking and eating whatever is ready to pick from the allotment. For many, it means freedom.

And maybe most importantly, given city-dwelling Russians generally live in small flats without gardens, it offers a much needed and regular escape. Lots of families have effectively two addresses – one where they sleep in the week, near to work and schools, and another where they unwind and spend their free time. “I need to find a friend with a dacha and get out of the city,” one acquaintance in Moscow told me recently, “I’m going mad spending summer in my apartment.”

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, that pressure to escape was even greater. As many people worked remotely or temporarily took breaks from their businesses, those with family retreats in the surrounding regions became very popular overnight. While Muscovites filed digital permission slips to be allowed to go to the doctor or to exercise outside, those lucky enough to have somewhere to stay away from the capital sat round fires, made jam and watched the world descend into chaos from afar.

That same story will sound familiar to British people. In the week before Christmas, thousands crushed into London’s St. Pancras Station as a last-minute midnight stay-at-home order loomed, with many intent on making sure the home they stayed at was one out in the country somewhere with their families. As far back as March, with offices emptying out across Britain, a subtle divide emerged between those whose flat-pack London pads stayed as their Zoom backgrounds, and those fortunate enough to have family outside of the city to stay with.

The experience of the two groups couldn’t have been more different. With the Health Secretary threatening to close city parks over coronavirus transmission fears, and online commentators debating the merits of wearing masks on busy streets, young people in London sweltered through hot weather in one- and two-room apartments which they paid over the odds for in order to be close to workplaces that were no longer open. When things began to reopen once again, they emerged, sickly and overweight, just as their tanned and relaxed pals jumped out of Land Rovers back from the Home Counties.

While the pandemic laid bare the divide between those with the money and connections for a rural retreat and those without, it applies all the same in normal times too. Unless fortunate enough to have grown up outside the city, or have the flexibility and cash to move out, taking a break in the countryside is nearly impossible for most people. Holiday rentals have soared in price since the world’s borders began to close, but they had hardly ever been a significantly cheaper option than budget flights to, say, Spain. As a result, huge numbers of Britons have seen much more of their country than what falls within the M25.

That unequal access to the green fields and fresh air of the countryside for city-dwellers has only been made worse by increasing numbers of people seeking to relocate full-time. The rise in prices for homes out in the sticks have more than doubled compared to ones in urban centres since last year. For those who will still need to live near their places of work, or can’t stump up the cash, the dream of leaving the sprawl behind them is becoming harder and more expensive. If a first home in a rural area is hard to come by, a second home is a luxury available only to very few.

While Britain may be a very wealthy nation by global standards, being squeezed into small apartments without easy access to the countryside is a lifestyle that would mark you out as a member of the urban poor in Russia, a state in which people are nominally far less well off. While official salary statistics are undermined by the colossal under-the-table economy, it is clear that the second home lifestyle that is available only to the uber-monied in the UK comes at a far cheaper price elsewhere.

The problem, some will say, is that Britain is a small island and there simply isn’t enough space. But if you take a two-hour drive from London in any direction you will undoubtedly speed past no end of unassuming sites that, for a Russian, would be a great spot for a dacha.

Yet in the UK, where there is no history of settling a treacherous frontier or expanding out into the unknown, the countryside is synonymous with centuries-old churches and stone cottages. There is plenty of room in the Shires, it seems, but not for cheaply constructed weekend houses and the loud families who come with them. The very idea of allowing such communities to be built would see hundreds of well-meaning campaign groups spring up and swing entire councils in favour of the angriest local candidates.

While ordinary Russians in places like Peski spend their weekends cooking outside and swimming in the rivers, Britain’s countryside is still quiet and pristine and, just like its residents want, mostly off limits.