Suzdal Yuryev-Polsky and Alexandrov

A quieter cross-country line linking small Golden Ring towns beyond the main coach circuit.

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Why this ride

A quieter cross-country line linking small Golden Ring towns beyond the main coach circuit. The road: Regional Golden Ring roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Suzdal start

   Suzdal is a small town on the Kamenka river, in the Russian heartland north-east of Moscow, and it is a place where the Russia of old churches and wooden houses survives almost whole. With a population of about eleven thousand, it has more than two dozen churches, five monasteries and a kremlin, all packed into a few square kilometres of low green meadows and willow-lined streams, and no factory chimney or tower block disturbs the skyline. The town was first mentioned in a chronicle of 1024, and for a time in the twelfth century it was the capital of the principality, until power shifted to Vladimir and later Moscow, leaving Suzdal a quiet backwater. That is exactly why it survived intact.

   The buildings are the draw. The Kremlin, a walled enclosure on a bend of the river, has the Nativity Cathedral, with blue domes dotted with gold stars and portals decorated in white stone carving from the thirteenth century. The Monastery of Saint Euthymius, which doubled as a prison for political prisoners under the Tsars, has high fortress walls and a bell tower that rings at noon. The Pokrovsky Convent, founded in the fourteenth century, was the place where Tsars sent unwanted wives. Together with the monuments of nearby Vladimir, the town has been on the UNESCO list since 1992. There is also an open-air museum of wooden architecture, with windmills and log churches moved here from surrounding villages, which is delightful in winter under snow.

   The local food and drink are an attraction in themselves. Suzdal is famous for its pickled cucumbers, celebrated in an annual festival, and for medovukha, a honey mead often served warm, along with horseradish and the thick sour cream of the region. Fresh bread and honey are sold in the market, and little restaurants serve hearty soups and dumplings.

   For riders, the roads around Suzdal are gentle, passing through flat farmland, birch and pine woods and villages with carved wooden window frames. The surface can be patchy, with potholes after winter, and the old road to Vladimir, about thirty-five kilometres away, is busy with lorries. Early summer and early autumn are the best seasons, with long light and the smell of hay or woodsmoke. Fuel is available in Suzdal and in Vladimir, which is the larger city, and it is wise to check the current situation for travel and fuel before planning a trip.

2. Yuryev-Polsky stop

   Yuryev-Polsky is a small town with a big church. It was founded in 1152 by Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, the same prince credited with founding Moscow, and the name means Yuri's town in the Field, a reference to the open plain known as the Opolye, a stretch of fertile farmland surrounded by forest. It lies in Vladimir Oblast, a short drive from Suzdal, and its quiet streets, old merchant houses and green squares give it a calm that large tourist towns lack.

   The main attraction is the Cathedral of St. George, built in white stone in 1234. Its walls were once covered with carved reliefs of saints, animals, birds and plants, a tradition of white-stone carving that flourished in the Vladimir-Suzdal region. The cathedral partly collapsed in the fifteenth century, and the builder Vasily Yermolin put it back together in 1471 using the original stones, though some are in the wrong places and some sculptures are in a different order from their original arrangement. The result is a puzzle that fascinates historians and a building of rare beauty.

   Close by, the Archangel Michael Monastery, with its fortress-like walls and towers, adds a sense of old defense. The town has several museums, including one in a former merchant house. The landscape around is open and rolling, with fields of wheat and sunflowers, patches of forest and small rivers. Roads here are quiet, with gentle bends and a mix of good and patchy surfaces, and traffic is light outside the summer weekends. The best months are May to September, when the fields are green and the days long. Spring thaws can leave potholes.

   For riders, the road between Suzdal and Yuryev-Polsky is a pleasant backroad through villages, and the way on to Alexandrov offers more of the same. Services in the town are modest, with a fuel station, a few shops and small cafes, and it is wise to fill up in Suzdal or Vladimir. A few simple guesthouses offer rooms and home cooking, and local honey and pickles are sold in summer.

   Stop in the cathedral courtyard and look at the stone carving in the afternoon light. The animals and saints seem to move as the shadows shift.

3. Kolchugino stop
4. Alexandrov stop

   Alexandrov is a town with a dark and fascinating past. In the sixteenth century it was the personal residence of Ivan the Terrible, who moved his court here in 1564 and made it the capital of the oprichnina, the terror regime in which he set up a private force to crush the boyars and, as he saw it, treason. From this place, the tsar ruled his country for seventeen years, and the Alexandrov Sloboda was the center of a system of fear. It is now a museum complex, the Alexandrov Kremlin, with a church, a bell tower, a refectory and the remains of fortifications, all tucked behind a wall in the middle of the town.

   The chief monument is the Trinity Cathedral, built in the early sixteenth century and later redecorated, and the Assumption Convent, which was a center of religious life long before and after Ivan. One of the more poignant details is the connection to women. Several royal women were forced to take the veil here, and some are buried in the convent. In the twentieth century, the poet Marina Tsvetaeva spent time in the town, and the literary connection is remembered in a small museum.

   The town lies on the border between Moscow and Vladimir regions, on gentle country of fields and forests, and it is a stop on the route of the Golden Ring of old Russian towns. The roads are mostly good, with moderate traffic, and the nearby back roads toward Suzdal, Yuryev-Polsky and Pereslavl are quiet and pleasant. Weekends in summer bring tour buses and Muscovites, so a weekday visit is calmer. Spring is muddy, and winter is cold and snowy.

   Practical matters are easy. Alexandrov has about sixty thousand people, a number of fuel stations, shops and cafes, and a few hotels. It is a good place for a pause between Moscow and the Golden Ring towns to the north and east. The kremlin has opening hours and an entrance fee, and it is best to arrive in the morning.

   Sit on a bench near the cathedral for a while. The silence behind the walls is thick, and the history seems to hang in the air.

5. Pereslavl-Zalessky finish

   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.

Where this sits

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