There is a tower in Nevyansk that has been leaning for three hundred years, and nobody can say for sure whether it was meant to. It was built in the early 1720s for Akinfiy Demidov, the ironmaster who ran the Nevyansk works after his father Nikita, and it stands about fifty-seven metres high, a white brick stack of several tiers with a clock and a spire. The top leans visibly away from the vertical, by a couple of metres, which makes it one of the more famous curiosities of the Urals. Stories swirl around it: that it held a secret room for forging silver coins, that the iron roof carries a lightning rod older than Benjamin Franklin's, and that a whisper at one corner can be heard at the opposite one. Some of this is local legend. What is certain is that it was part of the Demidov industrial empire, which fed the army and the building of Saint Petersburg.
Nevyansk itself is a small industrial town of twenty-five thousand, about eighty kilometres north-west of Yekaterinburg, on the Neyva River, with an old works pond at its heart. The Demidov ironworks created it in 1700s, and the Old Believers, who fled persecution and found work here, helped to create a distinctive school of icon painting. The Nevyansk icons, with their detailed gold and fine drawing, are found in museums, and the town has a good one with a collection of them.
For riding, the area is gentle. The roads from Yekaterinburg run through low hills and forest, with long straights and easy bends, and the traffic is moderate, with trucks and commuters. The surface is usually decent, but watch for frost damage and potholes after winter. In summer, the roads are warm and the forest smells of resin. September is golden, and snow comes early. The Urals here are old and low, so views are modest, but the countryside is pleasant.
Fuel and food are easy in town, which has several stations, a supermarket and a few cafés. Nizhny Tagil to the north and Kirovgrad to the west are bigger centres, and a ring of ponds and old ironworks villages lies between them.
Look up at the tower from the foot, and judge the angle for yourself. It is worth the detour, if only for the sheer improbability.