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.
327 km from Kronstadt to Kronstadt, about 5 h 35 of riding. On the way it passes The I.Repin Estate «The Penates», Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re, The Babolovsky Park and Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis. The line favours views over speed.
For about 42 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
35 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it. Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through.
Kotlin Island sits in the middle of the Gulf of Finland like a cork in a bottle, and Peter the Great knew it. He seized this stretch of coast from Sweden in 1703 and almost at once began fortifying the island to guard the new capital, Saint Petersburg, which lay at the head of the gulf. Over the next two centuries a ring of forts and batteries grew up on islands, shoals and the shore, and Kronstadt became the home port of the Baltic Fleet. The batteries named in these ride titles, Southern and Northern, belong to that defensive system.
Read the complete Southern battery No 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Southern battery No 2 is where the day begins. Next is The I.Repin Estate «The Penates», 38 km on.
In 1903 the painter Ilya Repin, the most famous Russian artist of his day, moved to a wooden house in the village of Kuokkala on the Gulf of Finland, which he named the Penates, after the Roman household gods. He lived and worked there until his death in 1930, and after Finnish independence in 1917, he found himself living abroad, refusing invitations to return to the Soviet Union. The house, with its glass-roofed studio and eccentric architecture, was destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt afterwards, and it is now a museum with many of his paintings and possessions.
Read the complete The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re.
Saint Petersburg began here, on Hare Island in the Neva, where Peter the Great laid the foundations of the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1703. The fortress, with its tall golden spire above the cathedral where Russian emperors are buried, still marks the heart of the city, and from its walls you look across the river to the Winter Palace, the Hermitage and the long granite embankments that make the city one of the most beautiful in Europe. The historic centre and its related monuments form a World Heritage Site.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 84 km into the recorded legs you reach Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re. Next is The Babolovsky Park.
Inside a ruined palace in a quiet park south of Saint Petersburg sits one of the strangest objects in Russia: a gigantic bath carved from a single block of granite, more than five metres across, made in the early nineteenth century by the stonemason Samson Sukhanov for the Babolovsky palace. The palace, a small Gothic style residence built for Catherine the Great's favourite Prince Potemkin, was later rebuilt and then ruined during the Second World War, but the bath was too heavy to move and remains inside the shell of the building.
Read the complete The Babolovsky Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Babolovsky Park, about halfway. Next is Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis.
Ivan Pavlov did not do his best-known work in a lab in a big city. The Russian physiologist, who won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research on digestion and who became famous for the experiments on conditioned reflexes in dogs, spent his last years at Koltushi, a village on the low hills east of St Petersburg. Here, from the early 1930s, the Soviet state built him a whole scientific town, with laboratories, kennels, a monkey station and housing for his staff, in the hope that he would turn out a physiology of the mind. Pavlov, who lived from 1849 to 1936, said he wanted a place where animals and people could be studied in healthy conditions and surrounded by nature, and Koltushi was it.
Read the complete Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis sits at 153 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Babolovsky Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Babolovsky Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Babolovsky Park comes up about 206 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 238 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re. Next is back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates», 38 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates», late in the day. Next is Southern battery No 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Southern battery No 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 327 km.
Southern battery No 2 → The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» → Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re → The Babolovsky Park is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Babolovsky Park → Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis → back through The Babolovsky Park is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Babolovsky Park → back through Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Re → back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The I.Repin Estate «The Penates» → Southern battery No 2 is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.