Moskovsky Prospekt is the long, straight avenue that runs south from the heart of Saint Petersburg towards Moscow, and the road you are on is the oldest piece of the highway that links the two capitals. The first paved road between them was laid in the early nineteenth century, a line of stone and gravel across marsh and forest, and it still carries the traffic that gives the two cities their rhythm. The city that lines it is a very different Saint Petersburg from the one on the postcards: wide streets, heavy Stalinist buildings and long perspectives of tower blocks.
A little way along, the avenue passes the Moscow Triumphal Gate, an iron monument built in the 1830s to celebrate the Russian army's victories, and then runs past Victory Square, with its monument to the defenders of Leningrad. The siege of the city by the German army lasted almost nine hundred days, from 1941 to 1944, and the front line ran close to the southern suburbs. Further south, the Pulkovo Heights, where the observatory stands, were a battlefield. Their history is present in every monument along the road.
For a motorcyclist this is a place to pass through rather than to linger. The avenue is wide, busy and full of traffic lights, and trams run in the middle of it in some sections. Cobbles and tram lines can be slippery in the wet, and drivers are fast and aggressive. Fuel is plentiful, with stations on every main road in Kupchino and Avtovo, districts of around fifty thousand people each, and cafes and shops at every corner.
Come early in the morning to avoid the worst of the traffic, and keep to the left lanes if you intend to pass through. Summer evenings are mild and light, while in winter the road is salted, black and wet, and the grit on the surface is hard on the tyres.
If you have time, look for the old milestones and the little parks along the avenue, where the city's past peeks out from behind the concrete.