Blue Highway Across Karelia

A long cross-Karelia journey linking border forests, Ladoga and Onega.

Open this ride in the planner →

Why this ride

A long cross-Karelia journey linking border forests, Ladoga and Onega. The road: A121 and R21. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Sortavala start

   Sortavala is a Finnish town that happens to be in Russia. It stands at the head of a long bay on the northern shore of Lake Ladoga, in the Republic of Karelia, among granite ridges, pine woods and hundreds of small islands, and until 1940 it was part of Finland, known by the name Sortavala as well. The territory passed to the Soviet Union after the Winter War and the Continuation War, and most Finnish residents were evacuated. The architecture they left, including the town hall, the old seminary and several stone buildings in the National Romantic style, gives the centre a look quite unlike any Russian town.

   Ladoga is Europe's largest lake, almost a sea, and in the archipelago near Sortavala the water is clear, dark and cold, with bare rock islands and ferry boats. Boats leave from here to the island monastery of Valaam, one of the most important Orthodox sites in northern Russia. Inland, about twenty kilometres away, the marble quarry at Ruskeala has flooded into a turquoise lake, and its stone was used in Saint Petersburg's grand buildings. Karelia is also the landscape of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, which was collected from rune singers in these villages.

   The A-121 highway, which runs north from Saint Petersburg along the western side of Ladoga, is the usual route, a long road through forests and past lakes with moderate traffic and a few lorries. Surfaces vary, with some smooth stretches and some patched and rutted sections, and wildlife such as elk can appear at dusk, so watch for it. Summer is bright with endless white nights, early autumn brings colour and mushrooming families, and winter is long, snowy and icy.

   Because of the current political situation, travel to Russia is heavily restricted for many nationalities, and entry rules, insurance and border conditions change often, so check official advice before planning anything here. For practical matters, Sortavala has fuel, shops and cafes, and Khelyulya, a smaller settlement nearby, has basic services. Try kalitki, small open Karelian pies filled with potato or millet, and fish from the lake, usually smoked or served in a rich soup.

2. Essoyla stop

   Essoyla is a village of a few thousand people on the shore of Syamozero, one of the larger lakes in southern Karelia, a stretch of open water ringed with pine forest and dotted with small islands. It sits along the Blue Highway, an international tourist route that runs all the way from the Norwegian coast through Sweden and Finland into Russian Karelia, linking countries by the lakes and rivers that cut across the north. Essoyla is a quiet stop on that long road, a place where people still fish, gather berries and mushrooms in the forest, and heat their houses with wood.

   The area is home to the Livvi Karelians, one of the Finnic peoples of the region, whose language is close to Finnish and still heard in some villages. Their culture shows in the wooden houses, the occasional chapel and the food: kalitki, small open pies of rye dough filled with potato or millet porridge, are the classic Karelian snack and worth looking for in local cafes or shops. The lakes and forests around Essoyla are full of bilberries and lingonberries in late summer, and the air smells of pine and wet moss after rain.

   The riding through this part of Karelia is calm and flowing rather than dramatic. The road follows the terrain, rising and falling over low glacial ridges, curving around lakes and crossing rivers on narrow bridges, with long stretches of forest in between. The surface can be good or terrible depending on recent repairs, with potholes and broken edges common. Traffic is light, but logging trucks are frequent and drive hard. Moose and occasionally bears cross the road, particularly at dawn and dusk.

   Essoyla has a shop or two, and you may find a simple cafe, but services are limited. Pryazha, about thirty kilometres away on the main road to Petrozavodsk, is the nearest larger village with fuel and more shops, and Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, has everything. Fill up before heading into this stretch, carry water and some food, and take time at the lake shore. On a still summer evening, with the water like glass and the light lingering past midnight, Syamozero is pure northern calm.

3. Petrozavodsk stop

   Peter the Great founded Petrozavodsk in 1703 as a foundry, a place to cast cannon for the war against Sweden, and the name means exactly that, Peter's works. The city has since grown into the capital of the Republic of Karelia, with about a quarter of a million people, and sits on the western shore of Lake Onega, the second largest lake in Europe after Ladoga. The long embankment along the water is the city's best feature, lined with modern sculptures that were donated by twin towns around the world, and in good weather the whole town seems to walk along it.

   Onega is more like a sea than a lake. In summer the water is clear and cold, with rocky islets and long horizons, while in winter it freezes into a white plain and the shore shifts with ice. Hydrofoils run in season to Kizhi island, where the astonishing wooden churches stand, including the Transfiguration Church with its twenty-two domes, built without nails according to local tradition. The Kivach waterfall, one of the largest lowland waterfalls in Europe, lies north of the city and is a natural stop on the way to the interior.

   The ride along the lake toward Sortavala, on the shore of Lake Ladoga, is a classic north European one. Roads cross low glacial ridges, pine and spruce forests and many small lakes, with granite rock coming through the soil, and the surface is mostly good with some patched sections. The landscape resembles neighbouring Finland, and indeed Karelia was disputed between Finland and Russia and changed hands during the twentieth century, a history written in place names and in abandoned Finnish houses. Traffic is lighter than around Moscow or St Petersburg, though trucks and tour buses slow things in summer.

   Petrozavodsk has everything a rider needs, from fuel to repair shops, markets and restaurants serving local fish such as vendace and whitefish, along with the rye-crusted pies called kalitki that are a Karelian tradition. White nights in June make for very long riding days, while the warm months stretch from June to August. Mosquitoes and horseflies can be vicious in July, and autumn colours arrive in September, ahead of an early and hard winter.

4. Medvezhyegorsk stop

   Medvezhyegorsk, the Bear's Head, sits on the northwestern shore of Lake Onega, at the head of Povenets Bay, in the Republic of Karelia. The town is a railway junction and a workaday centre of about sixteen thousand people, with timber yards, a lake harbour and a plain Soviet-era centre, but its place in history is heavier than its looks. It grew from a small village into a town in the early 1930s, when the White Sea-Baltic Canal was built nearby, and for a few years it served as the headquarters of the project.

   The canal, about two hundred and twenty kilometres long, connects Lake Onega with the White Sea, and it was dug in less than two years, largely by hand, by prisoners of the Gulag camp system. Tens of thousands died, from cold, hunger and exhaustion, and the canal, which was too shallow for many ships, became a symbol of the cost of Stalinist industrialisation. Near the town, in the forest at Sandarmokh, a memorial marks the place where thousands of people were shot in 1937 and 1938, and the quiet of the pines there is hard to forget. It is a place to visit with respect.

   The landscape around is Karelian: low hills, dark spruce and pine, bright birch in autumn, and thousands of lakes joined by short rivers. The rocks are among the oldest on Earth, scraped bare by glaciers, and in places you can see long scratches on the granite. In summer, mosquitoes and midges are a serious nuisance, and in June the white nights give light all through the evening. Autumn is clear and colourful, and winter brings deep snow.

   Roads here, like the M18 highway that links St Petersburg with Murmansk, are straight and fairly well kept, with long runs through forest, though frost heaves and patched surfaces appear in places. Trucks are common, and overtaking on blind rises is a regular habit among local drivers. Wildlife, especially elk, crosses the road at dusk, and a collision with one is dangerous. Tolerate the long distances and take breaks.

   Medvezhyegorsk has fuel stations and basic shops and cafes, and there are more in Pindushi, nearby. North of here, stations are well spaced but long gaps exist, so fill the tank whenever it is half empty. Povenets, to the south, is where the canal's staircase of locks begins.

5. Shun’ga stop

   The black rock that wellness shops sell around the world as shungite takes its name from this village. Shun'ga sits on the Zaonezhye peninsula, the long, ragged finger of land that pushes into the northern part of Lake Onega, and the deposits of this odd, carbon-rich stone, unique to the area, have been known here for centuries. Peter the Great is said to have sent his soldiers to drink from a nearby spring whose water was believed to have healing powers, and the stone and the water are still the subject of local pride and plenty of exaggeration.

   Shun'ga was also, for a long time, a trading village of real importance. Its winter fair drew merchants from across northern Russia, who came across the frozen lake and rivers to trade furs, fish and goods from the south. Today the village has around sixteen hundred people, wooden houses, a church and the quiet, slightly forgotten air of the Zaonezhye villages, which have been losing population for decades. The landscape is lovely: low ridges, meadows, birch and pine forest, and inlets of the lake everywhere you look.

   The peninsula is famous for something else too: across the water lies Kizhi island, with its wooden churches, among the most extraordinary examples of timber architecture anywhere. The road onto Zaonezhye is narrow and often rough, with gravel sections, potholes and soft edges, and it winds through forest and between lake inlets with frequent short climbs and descents. In wet weather it can be muddy and slippery, so a lighter bike and some patience are an advantage.

   Services are scarce here. You may find a small shop in the village, but fuel is a serious question: Povenets, at the top of the lake where the White Sea Canal begins, is about twenty-eight kilometres away and small, while Medvezhyegorsk is the nearest proper town for fuel and supplies. Plan accordingly and carry extra water. In summer the white nights make it possible to ride until very late, and the light on the lake at midnight, pale and silvery, is worth every pothole on the way in.

6. Pudozh finish

   Pudozh is a wooden-roofed river town on the Onega, about a hundred kilometres east of the great lake of the same name, in the far north of Karelia where the land is flat, forested and soaked with water. It is a place of about ten thousand people and a long history, first mentioned in the fifteenth century, when it was a trading post on routes between the White Sea and Novgorod. The river is broad and slow, and the whole area is a mosaic of swamps, birch woods and lakes.

   The wider region is known for something much older. On the eastern shore of Lake Onega, the granite shelves at Besov Nos and nearby capes hold several hundred petroglyphs, rock carvings of swans, deer, boats, humans and strange demon-like faces, made some six thousand years ago by the hunter-gatherers who lived along the water. The best known of these carvings, a large figure of a demon with a long nose, gives the cape its name, which means Cape of Demons. They are best seen in low sun, when raking light shows up the shallow grooves. The site is protected and reached by a boardwalk, with a small museum.

   Further out in the lake is Kizhi Island, with its famous wooden churches. The Transfiguration church has twenty-two domes and was built without nails, according to the local story, and it is one of the best-known landmarks in Russian wooden architecture. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List and is reached by hydrofoil from Petrozavodsk in summer.

   The road to Pudozh runs through unbroken taiga, and the riding here is about space rather than excitement. The surface can be rough, with patches, potholes and frost heaves, and the road crosses long stretches without any services, so a spare litre and a tool kit are not an indulgence. Elk step onto the road without warning, particularly at dusk, and in summer mosquitoes arrive in clouds.

   Pudozh has fuel, a few shops and simple cafés, with the smoked and fried fish of Onega on offer in season. The long summer evenings, from June, are pale and still, with golden light on the river. In winter the roads can be icy, and temperatures drop to minus twenty or worse.

Where this sits

Other rides by starting-point distance