Cucumbers are the unlikely stars of Suzdal. Every July the town holds a festival in their honour, with pickles sold from barrels, cucumber-themed games and a great deal of vodka, and the joke only works because the place is otherwise so solemn. Suzdal, a town of about eleven thousand people on the Kamenka river, in the Vladimir region some two hundred kilometres east of Moscow, is a museum of old Russia: onion domes, white-stone churches, wooden houses with carved window frames, meadows running down to the river, and almost no modern buildings of any size. It is part of the Golden Ring of towns that grew up around Moscow, and the white monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal were listed by UNESCO in 1992.
At the centre is the Kremlin, which is more a fortified compound than a fortress, with an earthen rampart, a bishop's palace and the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin. The cathedral's blue domes, covered in gold stars, stand out against the sky, and the lower walls hold the oldest part of the building, white stone from the early thirteenth century, with gilded doors of the same age. Inside, painted frescoes cover the walls and ceiling in deep colour. Suzdal was a capital of its own principality for a time, and a centre of pilgrimage, with dozens of churches and monasteries tucked among the houses.
For a rider, this is gentle country. The roads across the flat farmland of the Vladimir region are fairly straight, with long views over fields, birch woods and villages, and the main route from Moscow to Vladimir and Suzdal is a busy highway with heavy lorry traffic. The surface can be rutted, especially after winter, so watch for frost damage. The better stretch is the quiet road from Vladimir to Suzdal, about thirty-five kilometres, which passes through fields and small villages. In summer the long evenings are warm and bright, in October the birches turn yellow, and in winter the snow gives the white churches a fairy-tale look, though the roads are icy.
The ride goes on to the Golden Gate in Vladimir, a twelfth-century defensive gate topped with a small church, which stands at the entrance to the old city. Suzdal has small fuel stations on the approach roads, and Vladimir, a much larger city, has everything. Do not leave without trying medovukha, the local honey mead, and a plate of pickled mushrooms, and the town's restaurants serve filling dishes like pelmeni and sour cabbage soup. The pace is slow, and that is part of the charm.