Uglich Myshkin Rybinsk Volga

A Volga route with river towns, reservoir scale and possible ferry texture.

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Why this ride

A Volga route with river towns, reservoir scale and possible ferry texture. The road: R104 and Volga roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Uglich start

   A boy died in Uglich in 1591, and the history of Russia changed. Tsarevich Dmitry, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, was found with his throat cut in the courtyard of the town's kremlin, and whether it was murder or an accident has been argued ever since. His death left the throne without an heir, set off the Time of Troubles, and gave rise to a string of pretenders who claimed to be the lost prince. The Church of St Dmitry on the Blood, a red-and-white building with blue domes on the spot, is one of the town's best-known sights.

   Uglich is a small town on the upper Volga with a lot of charm. The river was dammed here in 1940, so the water is now a broad reservoir, and the old centre sits above it with churches, merchants' houses and a monastery on the bank. The town's bell is a local legend: it rang to signal the death of the tsarevich, and as a punishment it was whipped, had its tongue removed, and was exiled to Siberia, only returning in 1892. Uglich also makes cheese, which is sold in the market, and a plate of it with local honey is a good lunch.

   The riding around is gentle and green. Roads to Myshkin, about thirty kilometres away, wind through villages and meadows, and Myshkin itself is a small town known for its mouse museum and its quiet streets. To the west, the huge Rybinsk Reservoir spreads out like a sea, with flooded forests and migrating birds. Surfaces range from fair to rough, and traffic is light, though trucks use the main roads. Summer is the best season, with long evenings and clear skies.

   Uglich has about thirty-eight thousand people, so fuel, food and rooms are easy to find. Myshkin is smaller, so top up here first. Walk along the embankment in the evening, when the light on the water is lovely. Foreign riders should check current conditions and rules before planning a trip.

2. Myshkin stop

   Myshkin is a small town on the Volga, about two hundred kilometres north of Moscow, and it is one of those places that has made a virtue of its smallness. About six thousand people live here in a cluster of old merchant houses, churches and wooden cottages on the river bank, at a point where the great river, broad and brown, rolls slowly past. The town grew rich from river trade in the nineteenth century and still has a tidy, provincial look, with a long street of two-storey brick houses and a cathedral with a tall bell tower.

   The name is said to come from the Russian word for mouse, and the town has embraced the idea with enthusiasm. A local legend tells how a mouse saved the town's founder, a prince, from a snake, and the mouse is now the town's symbol. A museum devoted entirely to mice displays thousands of mouse figures, toys, and paintings, and is surprisingly entertaining, with an interactive exhibition that has delighted children and adults for decades. There are other small museums too, some of them gloriously quirky, and a number of craft shops sell souvenirs.

   The surroundings are more serious. The Volga here is part of a chain of huge reservoirs built in the Soviet era, and the Rybinsk Reservoir, a short distance north, was flooded in the early 1940s, drowning the old town of Mologa and many villages. On the other side of the river, Uglich, with its brightly painted churches and the famous Church of St Dmitry on the Blood, is within easy reach. The riverbanks are lined with willow and birch, and in summer the water is busy with pleasure boats and cruise ships.

   Riding to Myshkin is a gentle journey on flat roads through farmland and forest, and the surface is mostly good, though patched in places. Fuel is best found in Uglich or Rybinsk, the nearest towns with larger populations, since Myshkin itself is small, and the distances between services can be long. Summer is warm and the evenings are light until late, while winter is long, dark and cold, with snow and ice. A walk along the embankment at sunset, watching the river turn pink and the boats slide past, is the best way to end a day here.

3. Rybinsk finish

   Rybinsk was built on one trade: moving grain up the Volga. In the nineteenth century this was the point where cargo from the big river boats was transferred onto smaller craft for the canal routes to St Petersburg, and every summer tens of thousands of barge haulers gathered on the embankment to sell the strength of their backs. The town grew rich on it, and the old grain exchange building on the waterfront, with its arcades and little towers, is the monument to that money. Next to it stands the Transfiguration Cathedral with a bell tower that rises high above the low skyline and is visible from far down the river.

   The other great fact of Rybinsk is the dam. In the late 1930s and early 1940s the Soviet state built a hydroelectric plant just upstream and flooded a vast area behind it, creating the Rybinsk Reservoir, one of the largest artificial lakes in Europe. Whole villages and the old town of Mologa disappeared under the water, and the memory of that loss is kept in a small museum. Ride out to the dam and the sense of scale is startling: on a grey day the reservoir looks like an open sea.

   As the finish of a ride down the Volga from Uglich and Myshkin, Rybinsk is a good place to end. The roads that bring you here run along or near the river through farmland and forest, mostly flat, with some rough surfaces and long straights where trucks set the pace. The town itself is busy with traffic, tram tracks and cobbles in places, so take the last few kilometres calmly. The embankment is wide and pleasant for an evening walk, with river boats tied up and old merchant houses facing the water.

   Rybinsk has around two hundred thousand people, so fuel, workshops, hotels and restaurants are all easy to find. It is also an aircraft engine town, home to a big factory that has built engines for decades, which gives the place a practical, industrial feel under the old facades. If you have a free morning, the cathedral and the exchange are a short walk apart, and the view across the river from the embankment at sunset is the right way to close the day.

Where this sits

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