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 199 km round trip from Russko-Vysotskoye - roughly 3 h 58 in the saddle. It goes by way of The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya, The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate, Fort «Totleben» and back through The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate. The line favours views over speed.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 25 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go — slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
For about 21 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.
South of St Petersburg, the flat marshy plain of the Neva lowland suddenly steps up onto a limestone plateau. Geologists call the edge a glint or bench, and here, near Russko-Vysotskoye and Kipen, it forms a low but noticeable escarpment, the northern edge of the Izhora plateau. It is one of the natural features included in the wide UNESCO listing of St Petersburg and its surroundings, which recognises not only palaces and canals but the landscape the city was built against.
Read the complete Izhorsky Bench write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Izhorsky Bench is where the day begins. Next is The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya.
Peterhof is the one everyone has seen in photographs, with the golden statue of Samson tearing open a lion's jaws and the long canal running down to the Gulf of Finland. The Sobstvennaya Dacha, the Tsar's Own Dacha, is a quieter corner of the same ensemble, tucked into the parkland on the southern shore of the gulf. The ground here is the Izhorsky bench, a limestone shelf running east to west with a sudden step down toward the water.
Read the complete The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate.
On the north shore of the Neva Bay, at the edge of the modern city, lies Lakhta, a district that was a village of Finnish and Ingrian farmers when Peter the Great first built his capital. By the nineteenth century the waterfront was dotted with country estates for the St Petersburg aristocracy, and the Steinbock-Fermor family held one of them, a park of old trees and lawns with a manor house by the Gulf of Finland. The estate park, shaded and quiet, is the kind of place where the city's dacha culture began.
Read the complete The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 79 km into the recorded legs you reach The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate. Next is Fort «Totleben».
Eduard Totleben was the engineer who held Sevastopol in the Crimean War, and the Russian navy named a fort after him in the ring of defences that guards Saint Petersburg from the sea. Fort Totleben, along with its neighbour Fort Peter I, belongs to the northern line of fortifications built on shoals in the Gulf of Finland, in the nineteenth century, to protect the approaches to Kronstadt and the capital.
Read the complete Fort «Totleben» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort «Totleben», about halfway. Next is back through The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya comes up about 172 km into the recorded legs. Next is Izhorsky Bench.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Izhorsky Bench write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Izhorsky Bench closes the day.
Izhorsky Bench → The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya → The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate → Fort «Totleben» is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort «Totleben» → back through The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Steinbok-Fermor's Estate → back through The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya → Izhorsky Bench is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.