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 Russko-Vysotskoye it runs 257 km to Russko-Vysotskoye; allow about 3 h 56 of riding. The stops in between: Koltushskoe Highway, The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo and back through Koltushskoe Highway. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 59 km this is A-121 Ladoga and Sortavala, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 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 comes up about 59 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 127 km into the recorded legs you reach The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo. Next is back through Koltushskoe Highway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Koltushskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Koltushskoe Highway, late in the day. 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.
Back at Izhorsky Bench. That is the ride.
Izhorsky Bench → Koltushskoe Highway is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Koltushskoe Highway → The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
The Cemetery of the Village of Komarovo → back through Koltushskoe Highway is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Koltushskoe Highway → Izhorsky Bench is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.