Gatchina is the kind of town you reach by flat, straight Ingrian roads, and the first impression is of birch, pine and wide skies rather than anything dramatic. Forty-odd kilometres south-west of St Petersburg, it sits on land that was once swampy and sparsely settled, until the eighteenth century decided otherwise. Catherine the Great gave the estate to her favourite Grigory Orlov, and the architect Antonio Rinaldi built him a severe, castle-like palace of local limestone beside a lake. After Orlov died it passed to her son Paul, who made it his private kingdom, drilled his soldiers on the parade ground and added the odd fortress-style touches that suited his nature.
The palace is the reason people come, but the whole historical centre is worth a slow loop. The park around it is full of water: the White Lake, island pavilions, hidden bridges and a priory built from earth and stone, which is a peculiar thing to find in a Russian park. Gatchina was occupied in the Second World War and the palace was gutted, so what you see has been rebuilt over decades from photographs and fragments. That makes the finished rooms feel earned rather than inherited.
For a rider this is a town stop, and it is a good one. With almost ninety thousand people there is fuel on the main approaches, plenty of cafes and shops, and room to park near the park gates without drama. The roads in from the Petersburg side are busy and often rutted at the edges after winter, so give yourself margin, particularly in the wet. Cobbled stretches in the old quarter are rough and slippery after rain, and trams or lorries leave little forgiveness.
The best time is a clear morning in late spring or early autumn, when the light on the pale walls is soft and the lake is quiet. Summer weekends bring tour buses and local families, and winter turns the whole approach to ice for months, which is not motorcycle weather. If you are heading on towards Babolovo and the other parks that ring the city, the countryside stays gentle and green, a low rolling landscape of fields, wet woods and old estate roads. It is not twisty, but it is rich in stories, and Gatchina tells the loudest of them.