Ryazan Oka and Konstantinovo

River landscapes and forest roads east of Moscow with a clear cultural spine.

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Why this ride

River landscapes and forest roads east of Moscow with a clear cultural spine. The road: M5 and Oka 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. Peski stop

   The name means sands, and it is honest: Peski sits on the sandy terraces of the Moskva River just before it joins the Oka, a landscape of pine woods, small dachas and quiet lanes where the soil drains fast and the trees smell of resin on a warm afternoon. It is a small settlement of a few thousand people in the southeast of Moscow Oblast, between the industrial town of Voskresensk upstream and the old fortress city of Kolomna downstream, along the railway line that runs from Moscow toward Ryazan.

   For a rider this is a transition point. Behind you is the sprawl of the capital region, with its heavy traffic and endless roadworks; ahead, as you push toward Ryazan and the poet Sergei Yesenin's home village of Konstantinovo on the Oka, the country opens out into river meadows, fields and long views. The roads around Peski are local ones, narrow and often patched, threading through pine forest and past summer cottages, with the occasional sandy shoulder that can catch a careless wheel. Weekday mornings are quiet; Friday afternoons in summer bring the dacha exodus out of Moscow.

   Kolomna, a short ride east, is the place to stop properly. It has one of the best preserved kremlins in the Moscow region, with massive red brick walls and towers from the sixteenth century, and it is famous for pastila, a light, airy confection made from baked apples and egg white whipped together and dried. There are small museums devoted to it, and boxes of the stuff make a good present that weighs almost nothing in a tank bag.

   In Peski itself, expect basic shops and not much more. For fuel and a wider choice of food, Voskresensk is about thirteen kilometres away and has everything you need, and Kolomna is not much further. The river banks nearby are popular for swimming in summer, sandy and shallow in places, with locals grilling shashlik on weekends. It is not a grand stop, but in the evening light, with long shadows through the pines and the river slipping past, it has a gentle, unhurried appeal.

3. Ryazan stop

   Ryazan lies on the high right bank of the Oka river, a few hours south-east of Moscow, in the broad farming country of central Russia. Its kremlin, with the white-and-gold Assumption Cathedral, a bell tower that was the tallest in Russia in its day and a cluster of old churches, stands on a bluff above the river, and it gives a sense of how the princes of this land lived. The original capital of the principality, now known as Old Ryazan, lay farther to the south-east, and it was destroyed by the Mongols under Batu Khan in 1237, an event that is still recalled as one of the terrible moments of the Russian past.

   A good ride towards Ryazan takes the Oka as its guide. From Kolomna, a pleasant old town with its own kremlin and the famous pastila, a sweet apple confection, the road follows the river valley through meadows, birch woods and villages of wooden houses with carved window frames. The surface is mostly decent on main roads, though often patched, and the traffic is heavy with trucks on the federal highways. Side roads can be rough and dusty in dry weather, and muddy during the spring thaw in April, or in the autumn rains. Summer is warm and light, with evenings that seem endless, while winter is very cold, with snow and ice from November to March.

   Ryazan is also a land of poets and soldiers. The poet Sergei Yesenin was born in the village of Konstantinovo, a short drive from the city, and the house museum and the meadows around it are a place of pilgrimage for lovers of Russian verse, who recite his lines among the birches. The Ryazan region is known too for its airborne troops, trained at the city's famous school. Food here is hearty, from fish pies and mushroom dishes to the creamy soups and rye bread served with sour cream, and in autumn the markets are full of apples, honey and pickled vegetables.

   The city has a population of over half a million, so there are fuel stations, repair shops and hotels in good supply, especially along the main roads and on the approaches. Cash and a mobile connection are both useful, and you should check the latest travel advice and entry conditions well before you plan any journey. A walk along the embankment at dusk, as the sun sinks behind the river and the bells ring, is the best end to the day.

4. Spas-Klepiki stop

   Meshchera is the part of Russia that writers fall in love with. It is a low, sandy, forested plain south of the Oka, full of lakes, peat bogs and pine woods, and the author Konstantin Paustovsky, who wrote lovingly of it in the 1930s, called it a land of quiet beauty with nothing spectacular about it. Spas-Klepiki is a small town of about six thousand people on the edge of this country, and the starting point for one of the oddest railways in Europe.

   The Meshchera narrow-gauge line, which runs from the town into the forest, was built to haul peat and is said to be among the longest of its kind on the continent. Little diesel trains, with a few open carriages, still run along it in summer, carrying passengers through birch and pine, past lakes and clearings. Peat extraction left its mark here, and in 2010 a heatwave set off fires in the dried bogs that sent smoke across Moscow. Today the area is partly protected as the Meshchersky National Park, and the wetlands are an important refuge for birds, beavers and elk.

   For riders, the roads are quiet and flat, with the pace set by the sandy soil and the trees. Surfaces are mixed: stretches of fair asphalt, and sections that crack and sink where the ground is wet. Some tracks into the forest are sand that can trap a heavy bike, so keep to the paved roads unless you know the way. Mosquitoes in summer are determined, and autumn is lovely when the birches turn gold, though rain can set in. To the north-west, the road along the Oka leads to Konstantinovo, the village where the poet Sergei Yesenin was born in 1895, and where his family house is now a museum.

   Spas-Klepiki has fuel, shops and a few places to eat, but beyond it the villages are small, so top up. Foreign riders should check current conditions before planning travel.

5. Solotcha finish

   South of Ryazan, where the Oka loops through meadows and pinewood, Solotcha is a quiet suburb that in practice feels like a village that has been left to itself. It sits on the left bank of the river, and the road in from the city runs for about twenty kilometres through forest and fields, so the transition from the city to this green and sandy country is quick. For a rider coming from Moscow, the landscape is a gentle introduction to the Meshchera lowlands, a flat, forested, lake-studded region of central Russia that writers like Konstantin Paustovsky made famous.

   The star of the place is the Solotcha Monastery, a women's convent on the river bank with white walls and soft-coloured towers. It was founded in the late fourteenth century, in the time of the Ryazan princes, and was for centuries an important religious house of the Ryazan land. The monastery went through hard years in the Soviet era, when the buildings were used for other purposes, and has since been restored and reopened. Its grounds are quiet and mannered, the sort of place where you lower your voice without being told.

   Not far away lies Konstantinovo, the birthplace of the poet Sergei Yesenin, whose verses about the Oka, birch trees and village life are part of Russian schooling. The museum there and the surrounding fields tie the two places together, which is why the ride from Ryazan out to the countryside has been a favourite excursion.

   The roads here are mostly flat and smooth near the city, and then become patchier as you move into the villages. Expect long straight sections, some tar repairs and farm traffic, and do not expect dramatic corners. The pleasure is in the broad river valley, the pine smell on a warm day, and the way the light goes low and golden over the Oka in the evening. Summers are warm, and the sandy forest floor is full of mushrooms in autumn.

   For fuel, Ryazan is twenty kilometres away and has everything, while Polyany, eight kilometres off, has a small town's services. In Solotcha itself, bring cash and patience, since it is a place for walking by the water, not for fuelling up or shopping.

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