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 217 km round trip from Petrodvorets - roughly 3 h 35 in the saddle. On the way it passes The Coastal Fort «Reef», The Village of Olgino, Koltushskoe Highway and back through The Village of Olgino. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 34 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 37 km this is A-121 Ladoga and Sortavala, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
The Oranienbaum Springboard is not a single building but a piece of ground, and once you know the story the low woods and fields south of the Gulf of Finland look entirely different. In September 1941, as German and Finnish forces closed the ring around Leningrad, a pocket of coast around Oranienbaum, today's Lomonosov, held out. It was cut off from the city by land, supplied across the water and under the guns of Kronstadt, and it never fell. In January 1944 the Second Shock Army broke out of this pocket as one jaw of the offensive that finally lifted the siege.
Read the complete Oranienbaumsky Springboard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Oranienbaumsky Springboard is where the day begins. Next is The Coastal Fort «Reef».
In the shallow, grey waters of the Gulf of Finland, a chain of fortified islands guards the sea approach to Saint Petersburg. Peter the Great founded the naval base of Kronstadt on Kotlin Island in 1703, and over the following two centuries forts were built on artificial islets and reefs to the north and south, to form a defensive screen. In many cases the forts are military or ruined, and visits require permission.
Read the complete The Coastal Fort «Reef» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Coastal Fort «Reef» comes up about 37 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Village of Olgino.
On the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, just beyond the city's edge, Olgino is a place of pines, sand and low wooden houses, a seaside suburb that grew up a century and more ago as a retreat for Saint Petersburg families who wanted fresh air and the beach without travelling far. It is part of the World Heritage Site that wraps the historic city and its surroundings, which includes not only palaces but villages, parks and landscapes like this one.
Read the complete The Village of Olgino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 70 km into the recorded legs you reach The Village of Olgino. 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 Village of Olgino.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Village of Olgino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Village of Olgino sits at 143 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Coastal Fort «Reef».
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Oranienbaumsky Springboard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Coastal Fort «Reef» comes up about 217 km into the recorded legs. Next is Oranienbaumsky Springboard.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Oranienbaumsky Springboard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Oranienbaumsky Springboard closes the day.
Oranienbaumsky Springboard → The Coastal Fort «Reef» is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Coastal Fort «Reef» → The Village of Olgino is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Village of Olgino → Koltushskoe Highway is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Koltushskoe Highway → back through The Village of Olgino is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Village of Olgino → Back to Oranienbaumsky Springboard is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.