Tver Torzhok and Valdai Hills

A long northern escape from Moscow into lake-and-forest country.

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Why this ride

A long northern escape from Moscow into lake-and-forest country. The road: M10 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. Klin stop

   Klin is a working town of eighty thousand on the old road between Moscow and St Petersburg, and for a rider on a long day it is where the choice is turning back or pushing on toward Tver. The Leningrad highway runs right past, the railway too, and the town itself sits on rolling country at the edge of the Valdai hills, with the Sestra River slipping through.

   The reason to remember it is Tchaikovsky. He settled in the Klin area in the 1880s, and the house where he lived and worked in his last years is now a museum, kept more or less as he left it, with his piano in the room. His final symphony was written here, and he died in 1893 not long after a visit to St Petersburg. Klin also has a long industrial history, and the glass Christmas ornaments made here are still part of the local identity. In a country that takes New Year seriously, that matters. If you want a souvenir that will survive a motorcycle pannier, a small glass bauble from a local shop is the safest bet you will find.

   Riding around Klin, the pleasure is in the quieter roads. North of the main highway, the lanes toward Vysokovsk and the Dmitrov country cross low ridges, small rivers and big, empty fields. Corners are gentle rather than dramatic, the horizons are wide, and the villages are strung with wooden houses with painted window frames. Surfaces vary a lot. Good asphalt gives way to patched tar and sometimes gravel at the edges, so treat blind crests with respect. On the big highway, trucks are frequent and fast, and the wind sheet from a passing lorry can move you across your lane. Better to leave the trunk road at the first sensible exit.

   Practically, a town this size has plenty of fuel and food, with cafes and shops near the centre and along the highway. Mornings are best, before traffic builds from the capital, and early autumn has a lovely clear light on the birch woods. In winter the whole area is under snow and the roads become a different problem. Allow time for the museum if you are a music person, because the quiet garden alone is worth a short break.

3. Tver stop

   Tver is the city that nearly became Moscow. In the fourteenth century its princes were Moscow's great rivals, and the two fought for the right to rule the Russian lands, until Moscow won and Tver was absorbed in 1485. Mikhail of Tver, who was killed by the Mongol Golden Horde, was later made a saint. What remains is a river city on the upper Volga, at the point where the Tvertsa joins it, roughly halfway between Moscow and St Petersburg, which made it a natural stop for anyone travelling between the two capitals.

   That role gave it a place in the history of the road. The route between Moscow and St Petersburg ran through Tver, and in the eighteenth century Catherine the Great ordered the city rebuilt after a great fire in 1763. The result is a neat classical centre of radial streets and pastel buildings, including the Imperial Travel Palace, built so the royal family had somewhere to stay on the way. The Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin, who travelled to India in the fifteenth century and wrote of it, is remembered with a statue on the Volga embankment. The Volga here is still young, wide and calm, with willows on the banks.

   Riders heading from Solnechnogorsk up to Tver are following an old royal road, and the route is mostly fast, with a busy modern highway running alongside and smaller roads that wander through villages with wooden houses and onion-domed churches. Surfaces vary, and trucks are heavy on the main road, so take care in the rain. The best season is late spring to early autumn, with the forests at their best in September.

   Tver has some four hundred thousand people, so fuel, food and hotels are easy to find, and the villages around it, such as Sakharovo, have basics. Look for a cafe on the embankment, where you can watch the river traffic. Foreign riders should check current conditions and requirements before planning travel in Russia.

4. Torzhok finish

   Torzhok is an old trading town on the Tvertsa river, about sixty kilometres from Tver, and its name simply means the market. It was the grain gate of medieval Novgorod, a place where supplies from the Volga lands were assessed and taxed before moving north to the great city. That strategic role made it a target, and it was burned and sacked several times, once by the Mongol army in the thirteenth century. The town survived and grew, and in the eighteenth century it found a role on the road between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, hosting travellers who needed a change of horses.

   That road gave Torzhok some of its fame. Pushkin stayed here more than once, and the town is known for a dish of minced chicken cutlets named after the family of innkeepers called Pozharsky, who, according to the legend, served them to Tsar Nicholas I on a journey. Whether or not the story is true, the cutlets are on every local menu and are delicious, tender and crispy at once. The town is also famous for its gold embroidery, made with metallic thread on velvet or silk in elaborate designs, a craft that goes back centuries and was used for church vestments and slippers. The museum shows beautiful examples.

   Walking the old centre, you can see a number of historic churches and the walls of the Boris and Gleb Monastery, which has a cluster of white buildings and a tall bell tower overlooking the river. Torzhok has a gentle, lived-in air, with wooden houses, merchants' mansions and a riverside promenade where people stroll in the evening. The river is lined with willows, and in autumn the leaves float down the current.

   For a rider, the landscape here is a gentle one of low rolling hills, fields and woodland, with the Valdai Hills rising to the west. The old main highway passes close by, and traffic can be heavy and fast, with trucks, though quieter local roads lead into the countryside. Surfaces are variable, and potholes and frost heaves appear in places. The light in September, with gold fields and clear air, is a pleasure.

   Torzhok is large enough to have fuel, supermarkets and cafés, so it is a convenient place for a longer pause. The cutlets are the obvious choice for lunch, and some bakeries sell sweet pies. Mosquitoes in summer and snow in winter are the main inconveniences.

Where this sits

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