Along the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, west of Saint Petersburg, a low strip of pine forest and sand runs for kilometres between the road and the sea. Fort Seraya Loshad, the Grey Horse, stands in this coastal country, eleven kilometres from the village of Lebyazhye, among a group of forts built for the defence of the capital and the naval base at Kronstadt.
The forts date from the early twentieth century, when Russia built a ring of concrete and steel batteries to protect the sea approaches to Saint Petersburg after the war with Japan. Seraya Loshad and its neighbour Krasnaya Gorka were part of this system, with heavy guns in turrets behind thick concrete. In June 1919, during the Civil War, the garrisons of both forts rose against the Bolsheviks, and the revolt was put down with the help of British naval action in the gulf and fighting by land. In the Second World War the area was the western end of the Oranienbaum pocket, a small coastal bridgehead around Oranienbaum that Soviet troops held throughout the siege of Leningrad, with the sea at their backs.
On a motorcycle, the roads are mostly flat and straight, with a few bends where the road bends around villages and old estates. The coast road carries a steady flow of traffic, and in summer there are crowds of beach-goers heading for the sea. The Gulf is shallow and the water is cold, and in the early morning the light over the sea is flat and silvery. Winter is cold and grey, with snow and strong winds off the water, and the white nights of June give very long evenings.
Lebyazhye, a village of about five and a half thousand people, is the closest place for fuel and food, while Sosnovy Bor, a town of nearly seventy thousand, lies twelve kilometres away and has the nuclear power station that supplies much of the region. Bring mosquito repellent in summer, because the woods are damp and the insects are active. Regulations for travelling in the area, including border zones, can change, so check before you go.