Samuel Greig was a Scottish naval officer from Inverkeithing who rose to become an admiral in Catherine the Great's navy, and in 1788 he fought the Battle of Hogland against the Swedes in the Gulf of Finland, a few weeks before dying of fever at Reval. He is the S.K. Greig of the label, Samuil Karlovich in Russian style, and an estate on this coast called Sans Ennui is associated with the family, French for without boredom, a charming name for a country house. The site lies near Bolshaya Izhora, west of Lomonosov, where the land is flat, wooded and close to the water, and the Izhora river flows toward the gulf.
Riding here is straightforward. The roads follow the coast through birch and pine woods and low fields, with a good surface in most places and moderate traffic, rising in summer when dachas fill up and day trippers head for the beaches. There are few bends to speak of, but the changing light on the water makes the ride pleasant, particularly in the long evenings of early summer. In winter the roads ice over and the whole district falls silent under snow. You will also find the Troitse-Sergieva Pustyn, the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage, which stands near Strelna, a monastery founded in the early eighteenth century and revived after the Soviet years.
Bolshaya Izhora is a small place of under four thousand people, so fuel and services are best found in Lomonosov, about six kilometres away. The town has over forty thousand inhabitants and the fine palace and park of Oranienbaum, which survived the siege of Leningrad because the front line stopped nearby, and the area was held by Soviet troops as a bridgehead for years. That fact gave the old estates a lucky survival rate that many neighbours did not enjoy.
Pull up somewhere with a view of the gulf and think of the Scottish admiral, who built a career and a country house on the far side of Europe from his birthplace. Russia in the eighteenth century drew in sailors, doctors, engineers and gardeners from across the continent, and the shoreline here is dotted with their stories.