Yaroslavl Volga and Vyatskoye

Volga landscapes and a chain of historic settlements with strong stop density.

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Why this ride

Volga landscapes and a chain of historic settlements with strong stop density. The road: M8 and Volga regional roads. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Rostov Veliky start

   Rostov, known as Rostov Veliky, or Rostov the Great, is one of the oldest towns in Russia, mentioned in the earliest chronicles under the year 862, and it sits on the shore of Lake Nero, a broad, shallow lake in the Yaroslavl region. Its history gives it a quiet grandeur that few other provincial towns can match. The Kremlin, built in the seventeenth century as the residence of the metropolitan, stands beside the water, a long, white walled enclosure of churches, towers and gardens, and its bells, cast in the 1680s, still ring out across the lake in a famous peal.

   The town is part of the Golden Ring of old cities northeast of Moscow, and travellers have been coming here for centuries. It has a long tradition of enamel painting, known as finift, in which tiny, brightly coloured scenes are painted on metal, and workshops still make brooches, boxes and icons. Local gardeners are known for their onions, grown in the rich soil of the lake shore and sold in markets around the region, and the town's cuisine has a modest, hearty character that suits cold weather.

   The roads in this region are flat, wide and straight, with little change in gradient. The main highway between Moscow and Yaroslavl runs close by, busy with trucks, and quieter local roads wander through villages of wooden houses with carved window frames, birch woods and fields. Surface quality varies, with smooth new asphalt in some places and potholes and patches in others, so keep your eyes on the road. Summer is the best season, with long evenings and warm weather, while spring brings mud and winter brings snow and ice.

   Rostov has about thirty thousand people and enough fuel stations, shops and cafés to meet your needs, and Ishnya, a few kilometres away, is a smaller place with a few shops. The nearest big city is Yaroslavl, about sixty kilometres to the north, which has a fine riverside and a number of old churches covered in painted tiles. If you plan to ride the Golden Ring, allow time to wander the streets and see the churches, because the real pleasure of the region is not in the kilometres but in the stops. Pereslavl, on its own lake to the south, is a worthy partner for a day's ride.

2. Yaroslavl stop

   Yaroslavl stands on the Volga at the mouth of the Kotorosl, and its old centre is the best preserved in the Golden Ring. According to tradition, the town was founded in 1010 by Prince Yaroslav the Wise, who, the story goes, killed a bear on the spot, which is why a bear is on the city's coat of arms to this day. UNESCO added the historic centre to the World Heritage list in 2005, mostly for its churches, which date mainly from the seventeenth century, when the city grew rich on trade along the Volga.

   The churches are the thing to see. The Church of Elijah the Prophet, built in the 1650s, has frescoes covering every wall, painted in bright blues, reds and golds, and its five domes are among the prettiest in Russia. The Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery, a fortified complex with a bell tower that gives a wide view over the river, is just next to it. At the Strelka, the point where the two rivers meet, a park runs down to the water, and in the evening locals walk and watch boats pass. The Volkov Theatre, founded here in 1750, is claimed as the first professional theatre in Russia.

   The roads here are flat, with broad views over fields and forest. The highway to Moscow, the M8, is fast and heavy, with trucks, while the smaller roads to Kostroma and Rostov run through villages with wooden houses and gardens full of sunflowers and hollyhocks. Surfaces are mixed, with patches of poor asphalt, and in spring after the thaw, potholes can be bad. The best time is late summer and early autumn, when the light is soft and the fields are golden.

   With over six hundred thousand people, Yaroslavl has all the fuel, food and repairs a rider could need, and the smaller towns around it, like Tunoshna, add a few more. Parking is easy near the centre, though the cobbled streets are rough on a bike. Foreign riders should check what is currently possible before planning travel.

3. Nekrasovskoye stop

   Nekrasovskoye sits on the left bank of the Volga roughly halfway between Yaroslavl and Kostroma, a settlement of a few thousand people that for most of its history went by a much plainer name: Bolshiye Soli, Big Salt. Brine springs rise here, and for centuries the town boiled salt for the Volga trade, which in old Russia was money as solid as grain. In the Soviet period it was renamed for the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, who grew up on the Yaroslavl side of the river and wrote some of the most quoted lines in Russian about Volga barge haulers and peasant life.

   The ride here from Yaroslavl follows the river through flat to gently rolling country, birch and pine broken by fields, with the road surface ranging from fresh asphalt near the regional centre to patched, wavy tarmac once you leave the main roads. It is not technical riding. The pleasure is in the scale of the water, which at this point is wide and slow, and in the villages with their carved window frames painted blue and green. Watch for potholes after winter and for tractors pulling out of farm tracks without much ceremony.

   A short way from Nekrasovskoye lies Vyatskoye, a former trading village that has been restored into a kind of open museum of merchant life, with brick houses, a church and several small museums. If the ride title brought you this way, that is the reason to linger. The salt springs themselves are tied to an old spa tradition, and the mineral water still has a reputation locally for being good for the stomach, though tasting it straight from the source is an acquired pleasure.

   In practice Nekrasovskoye is a working town with what a rider needs: fuel on the way in, a few shops, cafes of the canteen kind and a bench by the river. Yaroslavl, about forty minutes away, is where you go for a proper meal and a hotel. Early summer is lovely here, with long evenings that stretch past ten o'clock and the river glowing pale until late; in autumn the birches turn yellow and the light goes amber. Mosquitoes along the water in June are relentless, so bring repellent and keep the visor down when you stop near the bank.

4. Kostroma finish

   Kostroma sits where the Kostroma river joins the Volga, and its position at the confluence made it a significant town for nearly nine centuries. The founding is attributed to Yuri Dolgoruky in the twelfth century, and from the Middle Ages it was a prosperous trading town, famous for its linen and flax. The Volga here is wide and slow, with long sandbars, and the waterfront is lined with a tidy promenade where people stroll in the evenings.

   The great moment in Kostroma's history took place at the Ipatiev Monastery, a fortified complex with white walls and a tall bell tower on the river bank. In 1613 a delegation of nobles came here to ask the young Mikhail Romanov to accept the Russian crown, ending the Time of Troubles and starting the dynasty that ruled until 1917. The monastery is a vivid place, with a remarkable collection of old wooden buildings brought from the countryside gathered in an open-air museum nearby. The story of Ivan Susanin, a peasant who is said to have led a Polish force astray in the forest to protect the young tsar, is told in the town, and a statue of him stands in the main square.

   Kostroma is also the home of the Snow Maiden. The playwright Alexander Ostrovsky set his fairy tale play there, and the town has adopted the character, with a small themed house for visitors. The older streets are lined with merchants' houses, and the central square has a fire tower from the early nineteenth century in the style of a neoclassical lookout, reminding you of the dangers of a wooden town.

   The riding around Kostroma is mostly a matter of flat plains and slow river views. The road along the Volga to Plyos, a charming small town beloved by painters, is one of the best in the area, with views from the high bank over the river. Surfaces vary, and trucks, local buses and cattle are common on the smaller roads. In the summer there are plenty of mosquitoes near the water.

   The city has everything for the traveller, including fuel, repair shops and good places to eat. Local dishes include fish from the Volga and the cheese that gave Kostroma a reputation across the country. Evening light on the water is lovely, and the best seasons are late spring and early autumn.

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