Vsevolozhsk is a satellite town northeast of St. Petersburg, and on a ride it is where the city gives way to the lake country. The town takes its name from the Vsevolozhsky family, who owned the land in the nineteenth century, and today it is a mix of apartment blocks, factories and warehouses, with about fifty thousand residents. Nothing in the town itself is a headline sight, but its position at the head of the Road of Life makes it a place that matters.
The Road of Life is the name given to the route that supplied Leningrad during the Siege of 1941 to 1944. When German and Finnish forces cut the city off from the rest of the country, the only line to the outside ran across the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga in winter, and by boat in summer. Trucks carried food and ammunition across the ice to the city and brought out evacuees, mostly children and the sick. Rail lines and roads linked the city to the lake, and Vsevolozhsk was part of that chain. Monuments along the road, including a memorial known as the Flower of Life, commemorate the people who died on the route, and the road is lined with numbered milestones, each one a small marker of the distance the convoys drove.
The riding here is straightforward. The road runs northeast through flat forest and bog, a long straight with gentle curves, and a lot of traffic near the city, especially on summer weekends when residents head for the lake and their dachas. Beyond Vsevolozhsk it quiets, and the landscape opens to glimpses of Ladoga's shore. Fog and rain are common, and the roads can be wet and patchy after the spring thaw. The best months are June to September, when the days are long.
Fuel and food are easy to find here, with stations along the main roads and supermarkets and cafes in the town. It is the last easy place to stock up before the road enters thinner country. The memorials along the road are worth a stop for anyone interested in the war.
If you have time, take the older road along the Neva toward Shlisselburg, where the old fortress stands on an island at the source of the river, a short and interesting ride.