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 Mariyenburg it runs 276 km to Mariyenburg; allow about 3 h 57 of riding. On the way it passes S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui», Koltushskaya Elevation and back through S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui». 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 59 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Gatchina is one of the great imperial estates ringing St Petersburg, and the Menagerie, the Zverinets, is its wild back garden: a large walled tract of forest north of the palace that was laid out in the eighteenth century as a hunting reserve, with deer and other game kept for the court. Today it is mostly woods, ponds and paths, and on a hot day it is the coolest place within reach.
Read the complete Park «The Menagerie» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Park «The Menagerie» is where the day begins. Next is S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui», 67 km on.
Samuel Greig was a Scottish naval officer from Inverkeithing who rose to become an admiral in Catherine the Great's navy, and in 1788 he fought the Battle of Hogland against the Swedes in the Gulf of Finland, a few weeks before dying of fever at Reval. He is the S.K. Greig of the label, Samuil Karlovich in Russian style, and an estate on this coast called Sans Ennui is associated with the family, French for without boredom, a charming name for a country house. The site lies near Bolshaya Izhora, west of Lomonosov, where the land is flat, wooded and close to the water, and the Izhora river flows toward the gulf.
Read the complete S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui» comes up about 59 km into the recorded legs. Next is Koltushskaya Elevation.
East of Saint Petersburg, the land swells into a low ridge of moraine, left behind by the great ice sheet. The Koltushi Heights are not high, only some tens of metres above the surrounding plain, but in a country as flat as this, they are noticed. The landscape is a patchwork of pine and birch woods, wetland and open farmland, with the village of Koltushi scattered along the roads. A century ago it was a rural district, and the physiologist Ivan Pavlov, famous for his work on conditioned reflexes, founded a research station here, which people half-jokingly called the capital of conditioned reflexes.
Read the complete Koltushskaya Elevation write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 139 km into the recorded legs you reach Koltushskaya Elevation. Next is back through S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui», 66 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui», late in the day. Next is Park «The Menagerie».
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Park «The Menagerie» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Park «The Menagerie». That is the ride.
Park «The Menagerie» → S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui» is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui» → Koltushskaya Elevation is 80 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Koltushskaya Elevation → back through S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui» is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through S.K.Grieg's Estate «Sans Ennui» → Park «The Menagerie» is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.