Pereslavl and Lake Pleshcheyevo

Golden Ring architecture set against one of the region's most rideable lake landscapes.

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Why this ride

Golden Ring architecture set against one of the region's most rideable lake landscapes. The road: M8 and lakeside roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Sergiev Posad start

   Sergiev Posad is the spiritual heart of Russian Orthodoxy, and the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, its great monastery, is the reason. It was founded in the fourteenth century by Sergius of Radonezh, a hermit who became the most revered saint in Russia, and it grew into a fortified complex with white walls, blue and gold domes and towers painted in bright colours. It withstood a long siege by Polish forces in the early seventeenth century, and its fame as a centre of pilgrimage has never faded. Today it is again an active monastery and a UNESCO site, with crowds of pilgrims at weekends and on feast days.

   The Lavra's central church, the Trinity Cathedral, holds the relics of St Sergius and an icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev, though the original is now in a Moscow gallery and a copy is on view. The Assumption Cathedral, built under Ivan the Terrible, has a blue ceiling spangled with gold stars. In the grounds, there are a spring said to have healing water and a large bell tower. Women are expected to cover their heads in the churches, and photography is limited in some places.

   The town is also known for toys. Sergiev Posad was one of the centres of Russian wooden toy making, and the first matryoshka dolls were reportedly made in the region in the 1890s. A toy museum in town has historic examples, and shops along the main street sell painted wooden dolls, spoons and ornaments. The town has more than a hundred thousand people, with a busy centre and a lot of Soviet housing around it.

   The road from Moscow, around seventy kilometres, is a major highway, busy with commuter traffic and trucks, so leave early on weekends. Beyond the town, the roads toward Pereslavl and Alexandrov are quieter and pass through fields, woods and old villages, with wooden houses and small churches. The surface varies, with patches of rough asphalt, and the best weather is in late spring and early autumn. In winter, the snow and frost make the domes look even more striking, though roads can be icy.

   Fuel and food are easy in the town, with stations on the main road and cafes near the monastery, serving pies, soups and tea. Semkhoz and Skoropuskovsky are smaller places nearby. Take a scarf for your head and a bit of patience for the queues.

2. Pereslavl-Zalessky stop

   Pereslavl-Zalessky lies on the shore of a lake that Peter the Great used as a toy box, and the toy box included real ships. As a teenager, around 1688, the future emperor built a small fleet on Lake Pleshcheyevo, and the surviving boat, the Fortuna, along with some later models, can be seen in the Botik museum on the lakeside. The town is about a hundred and thirty kilometres north-east of Moscow, one of the old towns of the Golden Ring, and the lake itself is a broad sheet of water ringed by low wooded hills and fishing villages.

   The history is deeper than Peter's play. The town was founded in the twelfth century by Yuri Dolgoruky, the same prince who is credited with founding Moscow, and Alexander Nevsky, the prince who defeated the Swedes and Teutonic knights in the thirteenth century, was born here in 1220. The white stone Transfiguration Cathedral of the 1150s, rising from the old earth ramparts in the centre of town, is among the oldest surviving buildings in north-eastern Russia, with plain, powerful walls and a single dome. Around the town stand several old monasteries, including Goritsky and Nikitsky, with brick walls and golden domes reflected in ponds. Local fishermen smoke small lake fish called ryapushka, a regional speciality sold at roadside stalls.

   For riders, the backroads north toward Yuryev-Polsky and Suzdal run through quiet Russian countryside, with fields of rye and sunflowers, birch groves, wooden villages and small churches on the hills. The surface varies from smooth asphalt to broken patches, with potholes after the winter, and trucks and tractors share the road. The best times are late spring and early autumn, when birches turn yellow, and summer can be hot with sudden storms. Mosquitoes are common near the water, especially at dusk.

   Pereslavl has fuel stations, shops and cafés, and small guesthouses by the lake. The town is popular with Muscovites at weekends, so the roads and restaurants are busier then. A morning walk along the earth ramparts before the crowds arrive, with mist rising off the lake, shows the town at its most atmospheric.

3. Lake Pleshcheyevo stop
4. Rostov Veliky finish

   Rostov, known as Rostov Veliky, or Rostov the Great, is one of the oldest towns in Russia, mentioned in the earliest chronicles under the year 862, and it sits on the shore of Lake Nero, a broad, shallow lake in the Yaroslavl region. Its history gives it a quiet grandeur that few other provincial towns can match. The Kremlin, built in the seventeenth century as the residence of the metropolitan, stands beside the water, a long, white walled enclosure of churches, towers and gardens, and its bells, cast in the 1680s, still ring out across the lake in a famous peal.

   The town is part of the Golden Ring of old cities northeast of Moscow, and travellers have been coming here for centuries. It has a long tradition of enamel painting, known as finift, in which tiny, brightly coloured scenes are painted on metal, and workshops still make brooches, boxes and icons. Local gardeners are known for their onions, grown in the rich soil of the lake shore and sold in markets around the region, and the town's cuisine has a modest, hearty character that suits cold weather.

   The roads in this region are flat, wide and straight, with little change in gradient. The main highway between Moscow and Yaroslavl runs close by, busy with trucks, and quieter local roads wander through villages of wooden houses with carved window frames, birch woods and fields. Surface quality varies, with smooth new asphalt in some places and potholes and patches in others, so keep your eyes on the road. Summer is the best season, with long evenings and warm weather, while spring brings mud and winter brings snow and ice.

   Rostov has about thirty thousand people and enough fuel stations, shops and cafés to meet your needs, and Ishnya, a few kilometres away, is a smaller place with a few shops. The nearest big city is Yaroslavl, about sixty kilometres to the north, which has a fine riverside and a number of old churches covered in painted tiles. If you plan to ride the Golden Ring, allow time to wander the streets and see the churches, because the real pleasure of the region is not in the kilometres but in the stops. Pereslavl, on its own lake to the south, is a worthy partner for a day's ride.

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