A beach in Moscow is a concept stripped to its barest semantic components: it is a place with a) sand; and b) water. It doesn't have to be salt water, nor water you can actually swim in. In fact, it is inevitably neither. The Moscow Water Authority have banned swimming in all but the most remote stretches of the Moskva river; while the sand on the beaches is imported, usually from the Gobi desert. A friend swears he found the jawbone of a camel in the sand at Beach Club. Anyway, there is something glorious about Moscow's petulant refusal to admit that it can't have a beach. "We've got the money," it seems to say, "and if we want a beach we're jolly well going to have one."