Ruza Reservoir and Volokolamsk

Reservoir shorelines and quieter roads beyond Moscow's immediate commuter belt.

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Why this ride

Reservoir shorelines and quieter roads beyond Moscow's immediate commuter belt. The road: A108 and regional roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Zvenigorod start

   Zvenigorod is one of the old towns of the Moscow region, set on a high bluff above the Moskva River about fifty kilometres west of the capital, and it has long been a favourite place for city people to escape to. Its Russian nickname, the Russian Switzerland, is generous, but the wooded hills, the river bends and the onion domes among the birches do make a gentle, harmonious landscape. About sixteen thousand people live here today, and the place has fuel, shops, cafés and a quiet, provincial air.

   The town's story begins in the fourteenth century, when it was the seat of a princely appanage, and a fortress stood on the hill called Gorodok. The Dormition Cathedral there, built around 1399, is one of the oldest surviving stone churches in the region and contains remnants of medieval frescoes attributed to the school of Andrei Rublev. A few kilometres away, the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, founded in 1398 by the monk Savva at the invitation of Prince Yuri, is a handsome walled complex with white-stone churches, bright towers and a long role in the history of Russia's tsars, who favoured it as a retreat.

   In the nineteenth century, Zvenigorod became a summer resort, and artists and writers came to stay. The painter Isaac Levitan worked here in the 1880s and left landscapes that made the hills famous, and Anton Chekhov served as a district doctor in 1884 and 1885, treating local people while he wrote. Their names are still tied to the town, with memorial museums and walks.

   For a rider, the roads in the area are gentle and scenic, with smooth country lanes winding through birch forest and meadow, fields of rye and small villages with wooden houses. Mozhaisk Highway is busy, particularly at weekends when Muscovites head for their dachas, so go early. Summer is warm and green, autumn is golden, and winter is cold and snowy, and the surface can be icy. Fill up before you go, enjoy a plate of pelmeni or a bowl of soup in a café, and walk the monastery walls in the evening.

2. Ruza stop
3. Volokolamsk stop
4. 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.

5. Back to Zvenigorod finish

Where this sits

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