In my long search for the perfect lighthouse to wage piracy from, I’ve stumbled across a chain of Soviet era nuclear-powered lighthouses running up the coast of Sakhalin, and others dotting the Polar regions of Barents, Kara and Laptev seas. Mys Aniva, in La Pérouse Straight, with seven levels of crew quarters and accessible only through treacherous seas is now utterly my favourite. Shame it’s radioactive. Which didn’t stop someone at English Russia from taking a tour, and led me, in a search to find out where tower was firstly to the remarkable Lighthouse Directory, and then to Sakhalin Lighthouses. One more excuse to venture north-east, as if volcanoes and Kamchatka Peninsula weren’t enough.