South of Saint Petersburg, the flat, damp plain of Ingria runs off towards Pskov and the old western frontier, and the Kievskoe Highway is the road that heads that way, the route to Kyiv that gave it its name.
The Catherine Palace, with its long blue-and-white baroque facade, was the work of the Italian architect Rastrelli for the Empress Elizabeth in the 1750s, and the town was renamed in 1937 after the poet Alexander Pushkin, who studied at the Lyceum here. During the Second World War the town was occupied by German forces from 1941 until early 1944, and the palaces were stripped and burned. The famous Amber Room was removed and never recovered, and the palace has since been rebuilt, with a reconstructed amber room completed in 2003. A short drive away, the Pulkovo hill carries an observatory founded in the nineteenth century, and the road passes close to the old defence lines of the siege of Leningrad.
As a ride, this is a flat, straight, busy road, with heavy lorry traffic and plenty of speed cameras, and it is not for enjoying the bends. The better moments are the minor roads through the parks and the villages around Pushkin and Pavlovsk, where birch and pine woods hide old wooden dachas. Winter lasts long here, from November to March, with snow and ice and early darkness, and the white nights of June, when the sky never fully darkens, are the best time to travel, along with the golden September weeks when the leaves turn.
Pushkin, with some ninety thousand people, has fuel and plenty of cafes, and the palace park is a splendid place to rest, with shaded paths, pavilions and a lake with swans, though entry to the palace itself involves long queues in summer. Rules and conditions for foreign travellers in Russia change, so check the current situation before you plan to ride here. For a traditional meal, look for pelmeni, blini with sour cream and strong tea from a samovar.