Looking out over the Balaklava valley on a sunny autumn day, I could not help feeling a twinge of jealousy. It was here on the Sapoun Heights, just behind the city of Sevastopol, that William Howard Russell witnessed one of the great battles of the 19th century and penned an account so vivid and compelling that it still makes the spine tingle more than 150 years later.

The 34-year-old Irishman was a relative novice when he set off with the British Expeditionary Force for the Crimea in 1854 to become the first, and some would argue the finest, modern war correspondent.

When he returned 22 months later he was a veteran of three bloody battles, had endured the grinding siege of Sevastopol and watched a colleague die of cholera. His fine eye for detail and accounts of heroism electrified readers. His biting criticism of the military authorities contributed to the collapse of a government and provoked Prince Albert to denounce him as a “miserable scribbler”.

Modern battlefields are big and fast-moving. Much of the action takes place in the skies. The movement of journalists is tightly controlled by the combatants. It is almost impossible for today’s reporter to witness and record more than a snap-shot of the whole picture.

Not so for Billy Russell, as he was known by the troops, when he hurried to gain the best vantage point on the morning of October 25, after reports of a Russian surprise attack against the British flank. Armed with a telescope, a watch and a notebook, he was about to make history with his colourful account of the Battle of Balaklava.

I was already well acquainted with Russell’s epic story of the engagement between British and Russian forces. His highly charged prose about the courageous defence by the 93rd Highlanders – “a thin red streak topped with a line of steel” – who stood firm in the face of a Russian cavalry charge came to characterise the grit of the Victorian infantryman.

Readers were then treated to his description of the Charge of the Heavy Brigade. From his vantage point with the generals, whom he likened to spectators watching from boxes at the theatre, Russell could hear the battle cries of the Scots Greys and Enniskilleners and pick out regiments and even officers as the British cavalry charged and defeated a Russian force twice its size.

Finally came the tragic denouement when a misinterpreted order, carried by Russell’s friend Captain Nolan, caused the fateful Charge of the Light Brigade into the “30 iron mouths” of the Russian guns. Russell’s vivid account records how, in the space of 25 minutes, the flower of the British Army was annihilated in an act of courage and folly. General Pierre Bosquet, a French officer witnessing the carnage, summed up the scene: “ C’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre.”

Standing in the same spot today, it is hard to equate the peaceful vineyards, the copse of cypress trees and the gently undulating hills of this corner of modern Ukraine with the scenes of the “valley of death”, immortalised by Alfred Lord Tennyson, who based his poem on Russell’s report.

For this, a modern visitor requires some historical knowledge, a lively imagination and above all expert help. I was fortunate to be guided by Patrick Mercer, a serving Conservative MP, former Army officer and a lifelong Crimean War fanatic.

War buffs will love his tactical expertise about the range of the Minié rifle, the decisive use of artillery and the fighting skills of the British soldier compared with his Russian adversary.

I particularly liked his detail about the Crimean battlefields. Some English officers had brought their hunting hounds with them. Not only did they arrange the odd pursuit of a Crimean fox, but in the first engagement at the Battle of Alma the dogs chased wildly across the battlefield after Russian cannonballs.

Then there are the extraordinary characters who assembled for war. Aside from the soldiers, there were wives, servants and a collection of “TGs”, so-called “travelling gentlemen”, who came out with the army on what must have been the Victorian equivalent of an adventure holiday.

Mercer’s expertise is particularly important in grasping crucial moments of battle. It is possible to understand how an order to seize the “guns” given by the British commander Lord Raglan could have been so disastrously interpreted by the Earl of Cardigan, the Commander of the Light Brigade.

From his vantage point on the ridge, Raglan looked out over a flat battlefield. The guns he intended to be captured were British artillery, abandoned by the Turks, and being seized by Russian troops.

From Cardigan’s position in the valley below, the only guns he could see were a Russian battery at the end of a long valley lined by Russian forces.

Unlike some battle sites that have changed beyond recognition, the Crimean battlefields remain much as they were during the war. At Alma, it is possible to retrace the exact steps of the British regiments, who forded a river and charged up a hillside to defeat the Russians. At one point, we came across the overgrown grave of Captain Horace Cust, surrounded by cows in the middle of a field. The inscription recorded that it had been erected by his brother officers in the Coldstream Guards.

At Balaklava you can relive various engagements by clambering through vineyards and picking out the remains of defensive earthworks and gun emplacements, which are still clearly visible.

Inkerman, the last and bloodiest British battle site, requires a slog through heavy vegetation on a steep hillside to find the location of the Sandbag Battery, which changed hands several times during the battle at the cost of thousands of lives.

Above all, the war is very much alive in modern Crimea. At the site of the Battle of Alma archaeologists were removing musket balls, human bones and other remains from a mass grave site. Flowers had been laid that morning on the monument to the Russian dead. A bouquet had also been placed on the British memorial.

The city, which was destroyed by the French and British and razed again less than a century later by the Germans in the Second World War, remains in touch with its bloody past. Although locals are friendly towards British visitors, some still speak with pride about the tough resistance offered by their ancestors to the invaders. Admiral Nakhimov, who was killed commanding the defence of Sevastopol, is revered as a modern hero, and the extraordinary panorama depicting the siege of Sevastopol remains popular with ordinary families and school parties. A beautiful natural harbour set on seven hills, it is one of the most picturesque cities of the former Soviet Union.

Locals also make a healthy living from the war. Trophy hunters, who scour battle sites and old army camps with metal detectors, sell British military relics, such as regimental badges, buttons and bullets, at the local flea market, open on weekends near the St Vladimir Cathedral in Sevastopol.

The nearby port of Balaklava, once the main British supply route, is still a busy dockside. The old British army buildings, where Russell once had his digs, are now restaurants and cafés. The harbour, dominated first by British warships and later by Soviet nuclear submarines, is now home to the luxury yachts of Russian millionaires and is popular with wedding parties.

Sevastopol and Balaklava were inadvertently preserved until a decade ago because they remained closed military cities thanks to their strategic importance as bases for the Black Sea Fleet, today divided between Russia and Ukraine. As a result, the modern world has been slow to intrude.

But that may not last long. Expensive new kottegi (villas) belonging to the nouveaux riches are beginning to expand outside Sevastopol, over ground once bitterly contested. Restaurants and bars are sprouting up along the waterfront and tourists are beginning to arrive in large numbers to visit what I regard as one of the most picturesque cities of the former Soviet Union.

The first McDonald’s has now opened. Locals refer to it as the third foreign invasion of Sevastopol.

Richard Beeston is The Times Diplomatic Editor.

Need to know

Ian Fletcher Battlefield Tours (01634 319973, www.ifbt.co.uk) has an eight-day Crimean War tour, visiting key battle sites with expert lecturers, leaving on September 7, 2008. The cost, from £1,600pp includes all travel and most meals.

Richard Beeston travelled with Martin Randall Travel (020-8742 3355, www.martinrandall.com/history). Its 2008 history tours include: Wellington in the Peninsula, leaving on September 13 for 13 days to Portugal and Spain, from £2,410pp; Poets and the Somme, a four-day tour based in Arras, leaving on September 5, from £990pp; and Operation Overlord, to Normandy for four nights on June 7, from £1,140pp. All tours are accompanied by expert lecturers and include all travel and most meals.
Where to eat: Sevastopol has dozens of cafés and bars along the Kornilov waterfront. Try Primorsky Boulevard for seafood. The Kazbek restaurant on Gogol Street has excellent Georgian cuisine.
Reading: Ukraine, Andrew Evans (Bradt, £14.99); Ukraine, Sarah Johnstone (Lonely Planet, £14.99).

Times recommends

• The HQ of the great morairaway.com villa scam: a postbox
• The bloggers' travel guide to. . . Copenhagen and Malmö
• A Devon holiday with mates - on a budget