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 286 km round trip from Petrodvorets - roughly 4 h 32 in the saddle. The stops in between: Northern battery No. 4, The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo, Koltushskoe Highway and back through The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 33 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Peterhof is famous for its fountains, and the road called Gostilitskoe runs along the high ground behind the palace, where the water begins. When Peter the Great decided in the early eighteenth century to build a rival to Versailles on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, the engineers had a problem, because the ground at the shore is flat, and a fountain needs a head of water. They found springs and ponds on the Ropsha heights, a few kilometres inland, and built a system of canals, reservoirs and pipes that carried water downhill to the palace by gravity alone, without a single pump. That system, the Water-bringing system of Peterhof, still works, and it is a marvel of its time.
Read the complete Gostilitskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gostilitskoe Highway is where the day begins. Next is Northern battery No. 4, 42 km on.
Kotlin Island lies in the Gulf of Finland, at the entrance to the Neva, and its job for three centuries has been to guard St Petersburg from the sea. Peter the Great founded the naval base of Kronstadt here in 1704, and the island, long and narrow, was ringed with forts, batteries and artificial islands. The northern batteries, of which No. 4 is one, belong to that long chain, built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the guns grew bigger and the ships more dangerous. They are low, grass-covered earthworks and brick casemates facing the water, and on grey days the place has a lonely, military feel. The sea is shallow here and often frozen in winter.
Read the complete Northern battery No. 4 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Northern battery No. 4 comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo.
Anna Akhmatova is buried here. The cemetery of Komarovo is a small, quiet graveyard among pines on the Karelian Isthmus, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland about forty kilometres north-west of Saint Petersburg, and her grave, a simple stone with a cross, is the one that people come to find. She died in 1966, and loved the little cottage she was given in the village, which she called her Booth. The cemetery also holds the grave of the scholar Dmitry Likhachev, and a scattering of writers, artists and scientists who spent their summers in this dacha colony, once reserved for the Soviet cultural elite.
Read the complete The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 80 km into the recorded legs you reach The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo. Next is Koltushskoe Highway.
East of Saint Petersburg, the Koltushskoe highway runs through suburban sprawl and countryside toward the village of Koltushi, and it belongs to a memorial landscape that ties the whole region together: the Green Belt of Glory, a chain of monuments marking the defensive line around Leningrad during the siege of 1941 to 1944, when nearly nine hundred days of blockade cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Monuments, steles and memorials stand along the roads where the front lines and supply routes ran, including the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga.
Read the complete Koltushskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Koltushskoe Highway, about halfway. Next is back through The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo sits at 166 km, about halfway. Next is back through Northern battery No. 4, 42 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gostilitskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Northern battery No. 4 comes up about 286 km into the recorded legs. Next is Gostilitskoe Highway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gostilitskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gostilitskoe Highway closes the day.
Gostilitskoe Highway → Northern battery No. 4 is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Northern battery No. 4 → The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo → Koltushskoe Highway is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Koltushskoe Highway → back through The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo → Back to Gostilitskoe Highway is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.