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.
172 km from Gatchina to Gatchina, about 3 h 20 of riding. It goes by way of Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa, The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha, The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya and back through The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The ride follows A-121 Ladoga and Sortavala for 22 km.
Gatchina has a palace that most visitors head for first, but the building that makes riders and architects alike stop and stare is the little Priory Palace standing on the shore of Black Lake in Prioratsky Park. It looks like a small Gothic castle with a tower and a chapel, pale and slightly unreal against the water, and it is built of rammed earth. Nikolai Lvov, the architect and polymath, put it up around 1799 for Emperor Paul I, who had made himself Grand Master of the Knights of Malta and wanted a residence to offer the Order. The earth walls, compacted in layers and then plastered, have now survived more than two centuries of Russian winters, which is a better record than plenty of brick.
Read the complete Prioratsky Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Prioratsky Park is where the day begins. Next is Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa, 27 km on.
Countess Yulia Samoilova is the sort of figure that the nineteenth century produced in numbers: rich, independent, beautiful, fond of artists and impatient with convention. She was a society woman who spent much of her life abroad, especially in Italy, and who is remembered in Russian painting as the muse of a famous artist. A villa on the southern edge of Saint Petersburg's estates bears her name, and it sits in the quiet country between Pavlovsk and Gatchina, in a landscape of old parks, small rivers and pine woods.
Read the complete Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 64 km into the recorded legs you reach The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha. Next is The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya.
Carlo Rossi did not design a palace so much as a piece of a city. Between 1819 and 1825 he built the Mikhailovsky Palace for Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, younger brother of Alexander I, and at the same time laid out the square in front of it and the streets leading to it, so that the façades all answer one another. Today the palace houses the Russian Museum, which holds one of the greatest collections of Russian art anywhere, from medieval icons through Repin's huge canvases to Malevich and the avant-garde. Behind it the Mikhailovsky Garden runs down to the Moika, shaded and calm in the middle of the city.
Read the complete The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya, about halfway. Next is back through The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
back through The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha sits at 108 km, about halfway. Next is back through Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa, 27 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa comes up about 145 km into the recorded legs. Next is Prioratsky Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Prioratsky Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Prioratsky Park closes the day.
Prioratsky Park → Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa → The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha → The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Palace and Park of the Mikhailovskaya → back through The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha → back through Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Yu.P.Samoilova's Villa → Prioratsky Park is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.