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 207 km round trip from Kronstadt - roughly 3 h 15 in the saddle. On the way it passes The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat, Volkhonskoe Highway, The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha and back through Volkhonskoe Highway. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 24 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Kotlin Island is only about twelve kilometres long and rarely more than a kilometre or two wide, and every metre of its northern shore was given over to guns. A numbered battery like this one is the sort of thing that appears on a map as a dull label and turns out to be a lump of overgrown concrete and earth, with ammunition stores half buried in the ground and a view across a shallow, pewter-coloured sea. Kronstadt, four or five kilometres away, was founded by Peter the Great in the first years of the eighteenth century to keep Swedish ships out of the new capital's approaches, and the fortifications grew in layers for the next two hundred years.
Read the complete Northern battery No. 3 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Northern battery No. 3 is where the day begins. Next is The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat.
South-west of Saint Petersburg, along the shore of the Gulf of Finland, the land is a continuous belt of imperial estates. Peterhof is the best known, with its gilded fountains and long terraces, but behind it and around it is a countryside of parks, dachas and country palaces built by the imperial family and the aristocracy from the eighteenth century onward. Znamenka was one of these. The name comes from the Znamenie, the Sign, and the estate had a palace and a park that served as a summer residence, laid out in the landscape style that was fashionable in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat comes up about 47 km into the recorded legs. Next is Volkhonskoe Highway.
The Volkhonskoe Highway is not a scenic mountain road but a historic route on the southern edge of Saint Petersburg, running out from the city towards Gorelovo and the old road to Krasnoye Selo. It belongs to the network of eighteenth and nineteenth century highways that linked the capital with the imperial residences and military camps to the south and west, and it is included in the wider protected area of the historic centre of Saint Petersburg and its related monuments. What you see today is a mix of suburban growth, open fields and stretches of tree-lined road, with the ghosts of history underneath.
Read the complete Volkhonskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 69 km into the recorded legs you reach Volkhonskoe Highway. 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, about halfway. Next is back through Volkhonskoe Highway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Volkhonskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Volkhonskoe Highway sits at 103 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat comes up about 167 km into the recorded legs. Next is Northern battery No. 3, 26 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Northern battery No. 3 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Northern battery No. 3 closes the day.
Northern battery No. 3 → The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat → Volkhonskoe Highway is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Volkhonskoe Highway → 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 Volkhonskoe Highway is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Volkhonskoe Highway → back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat → Northern battery No. 3 is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.