Ivanovo has two nicknames that tell you most of its story. It was the Russian Manchester, because from the eighteenth century onward it became the great centre of textile production in the empire, a forest of chimneys and mills turning out printed cotton for the whole country. And it was the City of Brides, because those mills employed huge numbers of young women, and the gender balance of the town became a national joke and a song. Today it has around four hundred thousand people and still makes fabric, though far less than it used to.
The town also holds a place in labour history. In 1905 the textile workers here went on a long strike and formed one of the first workers' councils in Russia, and the Soviet state later treated Ivanovo as a kind of proletarian shrine. Its architecture shows it: the city has a remarkable collection of 1920s and early 1930s constructivist buildings, including a long apartment block shaped like a ship and a curved housing complex locals call the Horseshoe. If you like the bold geometry of early Soviet design, Ivanovo is worth an hour's wandering.
Riding into the city is less charming than the history. The approaches are wide arterial roads with traffic lights, trams, trolleybuses and a surface that varies from good to tired, and drivers move briskly. Once through, the country to the north toward Kostroma and Plyos is far gentler, with low hills, forest and the Volga waiting at Plyos, a small river town the painter Isaac Levitan made famous. That stretch is the reason this loop exists, and Ivanovo is the urban hinge of it.
As a stop, this is where you deal with anything mechanical or practical. Fuel stations are everywhere, there are tyre shops and motorcycle dealers, supermarkets, and a full range of cafes, from canteens to modern coffee bars. It is a sensible place to sleep if Plyos is full on a summer weekend, which it often is. In the textile shops you can still buy printed cotton by the metre, and a couple of mill museums show the old machines and patterns that once clothed half of Russia.