Ropshinskoe Highway is the road that leaves the Gulf of Finland behind at Peterhof and climbs gently south towards Ropsha, and for a ride that starts and ends here it is a good place to look at a map and understand the ground. You are on the edge of the Izhora upland, a low limestone step above the coast. It never looks like much from the saddle, a few tens of metres of rise through birch and pine, but in this flat country that step decided who could see whom, and that mattered enormously in the last century.
The road itself is simple riding: two lanes, long straights broken by soft bends, villages with dachas behind green fences, and the occasional bus stop where people wait with shopping bags. The surface varies from fresh asphalt to patched sections that rattle the mirrors, so keep your eyes open after rain and in spring, when frost heave leaves ridges across the lane. Weekend traffic out of St Petersburg can be thick in summer as everyone heads for the dacha, and slow lorries are common. Early on a June morning, under the white nights, the light lies low and gold across the fields and the whole thing feels very far from the city.
Ropsha at the far end has a dark footnote. In July 1762 the deposed Emperor Peter III was held at the palace there after his wife seized the throne as Catherine the Great, and within days he was dead, officially of colic, almost certainly at the hands of his guards. The palace is now a ruin. Closer to the coast, Peterhof and its fountains were the Romanovs' showpiece, and between 1941 and 1944 this whole belt was front line, with the German siege ring of Leningrad running close by. Trenches and memorials are scattered through the woods if you look.
Practically, Peterhof is the town with everything: fuel stations on the main road, cafes, shops and the crowds of the palace park. Ol'gino and Gorbunki nearby have the basics. Out on the highway itself services thin quickly, so leave with a full tank. Mosquitoes in the forest edges in July are no joke; keep the visor down when you stop.