On the south-eastern shore of Lake Ladoga, east of Saint Petersburg, a road ends at the water. This is the start of the Road of Life, the supply route across the ice that kept Leningrad alive during the siege of 1941 to 1944. The siege lasted 872 days, from September 1941 to January 1944, and it cut the city off from nearly everything except the lake. In the first winter, when Ladoga froze, trucks and horse-drawn sledges began to cross the ice with food and fuel, and on the return journey they carried out women, children and the sick. Lorries broke through the ice, and bombing and artillery attacked the route, but it kept going.
Memorials mark the place. A monument called the Broken Ring commemorates the breaking of the blockade, and at the lake shore a lighthouse at Osinovets and a monument known as the Flower of Life remember those who died and those who crossed. The siege is a deep wound in Russian memory, since hundreds of thousands of people died, many of them of cold and hunger, and it is treated here with real gravity. The visit is quiet and best done respectfully.
Ladoga itself is the largest lake in Europe, a grey inland sea, and the shore here is low, with reeds, pines and small beaches. The nearby town of Shlisselburg stands where the Neva leaves the lake, and its fortress, Oreshek, on an island, was founded by Novgorodians in the fourteenth century and later became a feared prison. The weather on the lake is changeable: strong winds, sudden fog and cold even in summer, and the water stays icy long after spring has arrived.
The riding is flat and straightforward, along a main road lined by forests and villages, with a fair amount of traffic near Saint Petersburg and on the road itself. In summer the light lasts late into the night, and in winter it gets dark soon after lunch, so the best time is from late May to early September. Fuel is available in Shlisselburg, Imeni Morozova and along the main road, with the large stations on the approach from the city; small villages like Borisova Griva have little. The Koltushi highway ride heads toward the village where the physiologist Ivan Pavlov built his research station, a quiet piece of science history on the way.