Terioki, or Terijoki in Finnish, is the old name of Zelenogorsk, a resort town on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, about fifty kilometres from St Petersburg. Until the Winter War, it was part of Finland, and before the revolution it was one of the favourite dacha destinations for the wealthy of the imperial capital, who came by train to spend summers among the pine trees and sandy beaches. After the Soviet Union took the Karelian Isthmus in 1940 and again in 1944, the Finnish population left, and in 1948 the town was renamed Zelenogorsk, the green hill.
The town still has traces of its former life. A few wooden villas from the early twentieth century survive along the shady streets, and the church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, built shortly before the First World War, stands in the centre with its distinctive domes. There is also an old Finnish Lutheran church. The beach is wide, sandy and shallow, with long views over the gulf to Kronstadt on clear days, and in summer it fills with families from the city.
The riding is gentle. The coastal road from St Petersburg, the Primorskoye shosse, runs along the shore through Repino, Komarovo and Zelenogorsk, with pine forest on one side and the sea glimpsed on the other. It is mostly straight with gentle bends, and on summer weekends it is clogged with traffic heading to the beaches. Weekday mornings are much better. The faster motorway, the Scandinavia highway towards Vyborg, runs inland. Repino is home to the Penates, the house of the painter Ilya Repin, now a museum, and Komarovo is known for its cemetery where the poet Anna Akhmatova is buried.
The landscape is typical of the Karelian Isthmus: pine and birch forest on sandy soil, lakes, bogs and granite boulders left by the ice sheets. In June, the white nights mean daylight lasts almost around the clock, and the light on the gulf in the late evening is soft and silvery.
Zelenogorsk has fuel, shops and cafés. Bear in mind that conditions for foreign travellers in Russia have changed considerably; check visa, insurance and travel advice carefully before planning a trip, and expect payment cards issued abroad not to work.