CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Pushkin it runs 405 km to Pushkin; allow about 7 h 12 of riding. On the way it passes The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya, The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur, The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» and Fort «Krasnaya Gorka». It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The ride follows A-121 Ladoga and Sortavala for 27 km.
For about 65 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Few Russian palaces have a story as heavy as the Alexander Palace in Pushkin, the town that grew around the imperial estate of Tsarskoye Selo, south of St Petersburg. Catherine the Great had it built for her grandson Alexander, the future Alexander I, by the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi in the 1790s, a restrained neoclassical building with a long colonnade facing the park. Its fame, though, comes from the last family to live in it. Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra preferred it to the grand Winter Palace, and they raised their five children here until the revolution of 1917, when the family was placed under house arrest in the palace before being sent east.
Read the complete Alexander Palace and park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Alexander Palace and park is where the day begins. Next is The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya.
Carlo Rossi did not design a palace so much as a piece of a city. Between 1819 and 1825 he built the Mikhailovsky Palace for Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, younger brother of Alexander I, and at the same time laid out the square in front of it and the streets leading to it, so that the façades all answer one another. Today the palace houses the Russian Museum, which holds one of the greatest collections of Russian art anywhere, from medieval icons through Repin's huge canvases to Malevich and the avant-garde. Behind it the Mikhailovsky Garden runs down to the Moika, shaded and calm in the middle of the city.
Read the complete The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur.
Peterhof is the palace complex that Peter the Great built on the south shore of the Gulf of Finland, and the parks around it were developed over two centuries, taking in farms, menageries and small country estates. What you will find nearby is parkland of old trees, ponds and paths, and the sense of the wide, flat coast opening northward.
Read the complete The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 72 km into the recorded legs you reach The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur. Next is The I.Repin Estate «The Penates», 40 km on.
In 1903 the painter Ilya Repin, the most famous Russian artist of his day, moved to a wooden house in the village of Kuokkala on the Gulf of Finland, which he named the Penates, after the Roman household gods. He lived and worked there until his death in 1930, and after Finnish independence in 1917, he found himself living abroad, refusing invitations to return to the Soviet Union. The house, with its glass-roofed studio and eccentric architecture, was destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt afterwards, and it is now a museum with many of his paintings and possessions.
Read the complete The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The I.Repin Estate «The Penates», about halfway. Next is Fort «Krasnaya Gorka».
On the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, near the village of Lebyazhye, the remains of Fort Krasnaya Gorka sit among pine woods and sand dunes. The fort was built in the years before the First World War as part of a chain of coastal defences protecting the approaches to St Petersburg, with heavy guns facing the sea and their counterparts on the opposite shore at Ino, in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland. Together, the forts were designed to close the gulf to an enemy fleet.
Read the complete Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» sits at 158 km, about halfway. Next is back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates», 40 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» comes up about 268 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 332 km into the recorded legs you reach back through The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur. Next is back through The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya, late in the day. Next is Alexander Palace and park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Alexander Palace and park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 405 km.
Alexander Palace and park → The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya → The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur → The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» → Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» → back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» → back through The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Park of the Farm of Prince of Oldenbur → back through The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya → Alexander Palace and park is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.