Mozhaysk Borodino Reservoir Loop

A western history-and-water loop with room to ride between major stops.

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Why this ride

A western history-and-water loop with room to ride between major stops. The road: M1 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. Mozhaysk stop

   Mozhaysk is the town on the road to Borodino, and Borodino is the reason most people know it. On 7 September 1812, about a dozen kilometers west of here, Napoleon's Grande Armée fought Kutuzov's Russian army in the bloodiest single day of the Napoleonic Wars, with tens of thousands killed or wounded in a few hours. The battlefield is now a vast open-air museum, with monuments, restored earthworks like the Raevsky Battery, and a landscape of wide fields and birch groves that is moving in its quiet.

   Mozhaysk itself is an old town, first recorded in the twelfth century, with a hilltop kremlin of earthen ramparts and a white-stone cathedral. A famous medieval statue of St Nicholas of Mozhaysk, a wooden figure holding a sword in one hand and a city in the other, is the town's emblem and appears on its coat of arms. The Luzhetsky Monastery, founded in the fifteenth century, sits on the riverbank below. After the battle, the town was crowded with wounded, and the churches were turned into hospitals.

   Near the battlefield, the Spaso-Borodinsky Convent was founded by Margarita Tuchkova, a general's widow who lost her husband at Borodino and built a church to his memory, a poignant and well-kept place. The road from Mozhaysk to Borodino follows the old Smolensk highway, the same route Napoleon took toward Moscow, and the open, rolling landscape lets you picture the armies. Riding is straightforward, on mostly decent surfaces, with gentle bends past fields and villages.

   Mozhaysk has fuel, a market, shops and cafes, with the highway to Moscow a fast run of about a hundred kilometers. The reservoir to the north, a large, quiet lake, offers fishing and picnicking in summer. The best months are May to September, with early autumn the most comfortable, and the anniversary of the battle in early September draws reenactors in period uniform to the field. Winters are long and snowy, and spring brings mud, so avoid the unpaved side roads then. The M1 highway is busy, so leave early on weekends to avoid the dacha traffic.

3. Vereya stop
4. Back to Moscow finish

Where this sits

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