Istra Reservoir and New Jerusalem Loop

A practical Moscow loop with water, monastery architecture and quieter secondary roads.

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Why this ride

A practical Moscow loop with water, monastery architecture and quieter secondary roads. The road: A107 and regional roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Moscow start

   Moscow does not do small. It has more than ten million people, a ring road, the MKAD, that encloses a space bigger than many countries' capitals, and a centre that is arranged in concentric circles like the rings of a tree. At the middle is the Kremlin, the red-brick fortress on the Moskva river, with its golden-domed cathedrals and its walls, and beside it Red Square, with the colourful domes of St Basil's. The city was first mentioned in the chronicles in 1147, and grew from a modest wooden stockade into the capital of a vast empire.

   To ride in Moscow is to be reminded of its scale. The Garden Ring and the Third Ring carry huge flows of traffic, drivers are fast and aggressive, and motorcycles filter between lanes at speed. The best time to explore on two wheels is a summer evening, when the light lasts until late, the traffic eases, and the bridges over the river are lit. The skyscrapers known as the Seven Sisters, built under Stalin, rise from the skyline, and from Sparrow Hills, the high ground near the university, you can see the whole city spread out in a haze. The metro stations, designed as underground palaces, are worth leaving the bike for.

   From the city, a favourite day trip leads north-east to Sergiev Posad, about seventy kilometres away, where the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, the most important Russian Orthodox monastery, stands inside white walls with blue and gold domes. The road passes through forest and farmland, and pilgrims fill the monastery on holidays. It is a good outing for a long day, with plenty of cafes in the town and stalls selling painted wooden toys, a local craft.

   Fuel is found everywhere in the city and along the main roads, and the cafes range from cheap canteens to fancy restaurants. Summers are warm and can be thunderous, while winters are long, dark and very cold, with snow from November to March. Before planning any trip, check the current travel and entry conditions carefully, as they change often and can affect insurance, border crossings and the practicality of riding in Russia.

2. Istra stop

   Istra is a Moscow Oblast town of about thirty-three thousand on the river of the same name, an hour or so west of the capital depending on how badly the Volokolamsk highway has behaved that day. Its great claim is the New Jerusalem Monastery, which stands on a bluff above the water and looks like a stage set for an entire other country. Patriarch Nikon founded it in the 1650s with the idea of recreating the holy places of Palestine in the Russian countryside, and the huge rotunda of its Resurrection Cathedral was modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The river was even renamed the Jordan, and nearby hills got names to match.

   The monastery's later story is a reminder of how close the front came. In the Battle of Moscow in late 1941, German forces reached this area, and in December, as they fell back, they mined and blew up the cathedral. What you see today is the product of decades of restoration, and the soaring tented roofs and glazed tile decoration still look different in different light. Even if you do not go inside, ride past and look back at it from the road along the water.

   The reservoir behind the town was created in the 1930s as part of the water system feeding the capital, and the roads around it wander through birch and pine woods, dacha villages and open fields. Surfaces are mixed. Main roads are wide and decent, and the lanes toward the shoreline can be patched, potholed and sandy in the shoulders, so keep your speed honest. Weekend traffic from Moscow is heavy, with long convoys heading to country houses, so a Sunday afternoon return is a very different thing to a Tuesday morning start. Look out for speed cameras, which are common on the main roads, and for dogs that wander the village streets.

   Practically, Istra is large enough for fuel stations on the main roads and plenty of cafes serving soup, pelmeni and tea. Snegiri, about ten kilometres off, is smaller but sits on the same approaches, and for anything unusual you will probably need to head for Moscow itself. Give yourself an early start, take the side roads when you can, and leave time for the monastery walls at golden hour.

3. Pavlovskaya Sloboda stop
4. Back to Moscow finish

Where this sits

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