Life is tough on Exmoor in the winter, but the temperature never drops nearly as low as on former West Country farmer Michael Ware's farm – in Siberia.
He has spent the last 20 years building a new life, and a new family, in the remote region where temperatures can drop to -50°C.
But although he is very happy and says he would never come back to England to live there is one thing he longs for, knowledge of the three children from his first marriage, who may still be living in the West Country.
Mr Ware, 55, who had farmed near Dulverton, first went to Siberia after an acrimonious divorce in 1992 joining a party of ten farmers on a visit to explore agricultural opportunities.
"The rest of the group came, saw Siberia, and swiftly went home again. "I was the only one who stayed."
He lives in the village of Dubinka, population 15, where he quickly met and fell in love with Tanya, a local girl and single mother, who at 18 was 17 years his junior. They have three children, Nikolai, 19, Sasha and Veronika, but during his long farm day looking after 40 sheep, 14 cows, ten hens and two pigs he wonders about his children back in England.
His daughters would now be aged 27 and 23, and his son, 25. He tried to stay in touch and wrote often, but nothing came back and now he does not know where they are. When the internet arrived in Dubinka, he tried to search for them on the web in vain.
Mr Ware's former wife is thought to have remarried and may now be living in the Warminster area.
"I have no regrets about coming to Siberia, not at all, though I would like to see my friends and family more often," he says. "There have been some hardships but I am happy here. It's beautiful, a long winter with lots of sunshine and a nice mild summer. Plenty of clean fresh air. Many beautiful places."
He says his Russian grammar is far from perfect but when he texts or calls his sister he says: "I struggle to switch to English."
His cousin, Pamela Sweetland, of Farway, near Honiton has been out to see him with her family several times. "There are extremes of temperature. It's too hot in July for me. We go in the autumn," she says. It's a very small village and when we went in the 1990s when our daughter, Geraldine was 13 the village put on a disco just for her."
Mr Ware's links with Britain helped save Sasha's life in 1996 when the then three-year-old was diagnosed with a heart condition.
"Doctors said he would have much more hope in Britain," he recalls, but the boy did not qualify for free treatment. Mrs Sweetland launched an appeal and kind-hearted West Country people helped raised £23,000, more than enough for the operation.
Mr Ware used the spare money to pay for the flight of Gambian mother and child to the UK for similar treatment, and the rest helped provide an ambulance for Romania. When the Sweetlands next visited Dubinka locals showed their appreciation by arriving with handfuls of sweets, a Christmas and New Year tradition which, though out of season, perfectly reflected the generosity of their unknown friends in the West Country.
Pictures courtesy of the Siberian Times.
