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.
A 412 km round trip from Molodezhnoye - roughly 6 h 56 in the saddle. It goes by way of Fort «Krasnaya Gorka», Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov, Krasnoe Selo and The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 27 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
In pine woods on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, west of the resort strip of Zelenogorsk, lie the shattered concrete remains of Fort Ino. It was built from 1909 as part of the defences of Saint Petersburg, a key battery of Peter the Great's Naval Fortress, designed to close the gulf to enemy fleets with heavy guns. When Finland became independent, the fort ended up on Finnish territory, and under the Treaty of Tartu in 1920 its fortifications were to be dismantled, which is why what remains today is mostly blasted concrete, scattered among the trees and dunes.
Read the complete Fort «Ino» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort «Ino» is where the day begins. 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» comes up about 95 km into the recorded legs. Next is Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov.
Lomonosov was called Oranienbaum until 1948, and its history is a story of ambition. Prince Alexander Menshikov, Peter the Great's close friend and favourite, began a grand palace here in the early eighteenth century, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, and the name, meaning orange tree, came from its greenhouses. Later, the estate passed to the imperial family, and in the 1760s Catherine the Great had the Chinese Palace built in the park, a small, richly decorated pavilion with painted ceilings and exotic interiors. The ensemble is part of the UNESCO listing of Saint Petersburg and related monuments.
Read the complete Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 122 km into the recorded legs you reach Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov. Next is Krasnoe Selo.
Readers of Anna Karenina will know Krasnoye Selo, even if they have never been within a thousand kilometres of it. It was here, at the summer camp of the imperial guards, that Tolstoy set the officers' steeplechase in which Vronsky rides his mare Frou-Frou to disaster in front of the court. For more than a century, from the early nineteenth century until the revolution, the guards regiments of the Russian army gathered each summer in this area south-west of Saint Petersburg for manoeuvres, parades and horse races, and the tsar and the court came to watch. It is listed as one of the monuments associated with the historic centre of Saint Petersburg.
Read the complete Krasnoe Selo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Krasnoe Selo, about halfway. Next is The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha.
Here the Neva is a working river, broad and fast, carrying barges and the outflow of Lake Ladoga past factories and housing blocks on its way to the city. Yet on the left bank near Ust-Izhora, among the industry, survive the traces of a much older riverside life: the country houses, datchas in the old aristocratic sense, that Saint Petersburg's wealthy families built along the Neva in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with parks running down to the water. The ensemble of the Zinoviev datcha is one of them, included in the long list of estates, parks and buildings that make up the World Heritage Site around the historic centre of Saint Petersburg.
Read the complete The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha sits at 143 km, about halfway. Next is back through Krasnoe Selo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Krasnoe Selo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Krasnoe Selo comes up about 239 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 280 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov. Next is back through Fort «Krasnaya Gorka».
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort «Krasnaya Gorka», late in the day. Next is Fort «Ino».
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort «Ino» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 412 km.
Fort «Ino» → Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» is 95 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» → Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov → Krasnoe Selo is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Krasnoe Selo → The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha → back through Krasnoe Selo is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Krasnoe Selo → back through Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historical Centre of the Town of Lomonosov → back through Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort «Krasnaya Gorka» → Fort «Ino» is 105 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.