Repino takes its name from Ilya Repin, the painter of the Volga Boatmen and of some of the most famous portraits in Russian art, who lived here for the last three decades of his life in a wooden house he called Penaty. At the time the village was called Kuokkala and belonged to Finland, and after the revolution Repin found himself on the far side of a border from the country whose history he had painted. The house, with its glass studio and odd gables, is now a museum, and the garden paths through the pines lead to his grave.
The village lies on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, part of the Kurortny district of St Petersburg, a long strip of resort settlements, pine forest and sandy beaches that has been a summer escape for city dwellers for well over a century. Dachas and sanatoriums hide among the trees, and on a warm day the beach fills with families, sunbathers and people walking dogs along the water's edge. The sea here is shallow and brackish, and on still evenings the sunsets across the gulf toward Kronstadt can be spectacular.
As the start of a ride up the coast to Vyborg, Repino is a gentle beginning. The coastal road runs northwest through pine woods and past villages and small resorts, never far from the shore, with glimpses of sand and water through the trees. The surface is generally good near the city, though traffic on summer weekends is heavy and the speed limits change constantly through settlements. Early morning is the time to set off, with the light coming through the pines and the road nearly empty.
Fuel and supplies are easy to find: Repino has shops and cafes along the main road, and Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk, both close by, offer everything. There are restaurants of every kind along this stretch, from beach cafes to formal dining rooms. If you have an hour, the Penaty museum is worth a look before setting off, both for Repin and for a glimpse of how the Finnish era shaped this coast, which changed hands twice in the twentieth century and still carries Finnish names under its Russian ones.