The fountains of Peterhof run without a single pump, and that is the cleverest thing about them. When Peter the Great planned his gardens in the 1710s and 1720s, engineers led by Vasily Tuvolkov worked out that the water of the Ropsha hills, about twenty kilometres to the south, stood high enough above the Gulf of Finland to feed the fountains by gravity alone. They dug canals, built ponds and laid pipes, so that the water flows from the heights to the Upper Garden and down to the Great Cascade, where it shoots high into the air. The system, still essentially the same, is part of the UNESCO listing for Saint Petersburg.
The landscape around Ol'gino, where this system passes, is quiet and rural: meadows, birch groves, drainage channels and small ponds, with the water slipping through stone-lined canals. It is not a showpiece, so do not expect a visitor centre at every corner, but there is real satisfaction in following a canal that has run for three hundred years. Fishermen like the ponds, and herons stand in the shallows.
The nearest town is Ol'gino, small, and the large town of Peterhof has fuel and shops. The Gulf coast, with the coastal fort Shanets and the old batteries, lies not far from here, and it forms part of the defensive line that held during the siege of Leningrad. The monuments of the Blockade Ring are on the same route and connect the engineering of the eighteenth century with the war of the twentieth.
The roads in this area are flat and straight, with rural lanes between fields and woods. Surfaces are mixed, with patches of broken asphalt, and rain turns the verges to mud. It is peaceful riding, with light traffic outside the weekend rush. Late spring and early summer, when the meadows are in bloom and the evenings are long, are the best times, and in autumn the birch and aspen turn yellow along the canals.