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 Kronstadt it runs 310 km to Kronstadt; allow about 4 h 52 of riding. The stops in between: The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin, Highway Pushkin - Gatchina, The Blocade Ring and back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina. 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 52 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Forts are places for people who like their history with a view of the sea, and Kotlin island has more of them than most. Northern Battery No. 2 is part of the chain of defences that guarded the northern channel into the Gulf of Finland, and it dates from the great programme of fortification that Russia undertook in the nineteenth century to protect Kronstadt and, behind it, the capital. The batteries line the island's northern shore, low, squat and half buried in the pines.
Read the complete Northern battery No. 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Northern battery No. 2 is where the day begins. Next is The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin.
On the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, between St Petersburg and Peterhof, the old road runs past a string of palaces and estates that the Russian elite built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be near the sea and the court. Among them, near Strelna, stands the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage, a monastery founded in the eighteenth century as a dependency of the great Trinity Lavra of St Sergius near Moscow. It is part of the wide UNESCO listing of St Petersburg's historic centre and the monuments around it.
Read the complete The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin comes up about 52 km into the recorded legs. Next is Highway Pushkin - Gatchina.
Two imperial palaces lie at either end of this road, and between them the flat country south of Saint Petersburg still carries the scars of the twentieth century's worst siege. At the northern end is Pushkin, the former Tsarskoye Selo, where the Catherine Palace stretches its blue and white façade for hundreds of metres and the reconstructed Amber Room glows inside. At the southern end is Gatchina, Paul I's palace, grey and fortress-like, in a park of lakes and islands. The historic road between them is one of the many components of the World Heritage Site of the historic centre of Saint Petersburg and its related monuments.
Read the complete Highway Pushkin - Gatchina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 88 km into the recorded legs you reach Highway Pushkin - Gatchina. Next is The Blocade Ring.
The Blockade Ring stands on the south bank of the Neva, east of Saint Petersburg, close to where the Road of Life began its journey toward Lake Ladoga. It commemorates the siege of Leningrad, which lasted from September 1941 to January 1944, roughly 872 days, and the corridor that kept the city alive. When Shlisselburg fell in September 1941, the city was cut off by land, and the only lifeline ran across Ladoga, by boat in summer and over the ice in winter.
Read the complete The Blocade Ring write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Blocade Ring, about halfway. Next is back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Highway Pushkin - Gatchina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina sits at 159 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin comes up about 254 km into the recorded legs. Next is Northern battery No. 2, 40 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Northern battery No. 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Northern battery No. 2 closes the day.
Northern battery No. 2 → The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin → Highway Pushkin - Gatchina is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Highway Pushkin - Gatchina → The Blocade Ring is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Blocade Ring → back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina → back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin → Northern battery No. 2 is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.