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 Kronstadt it runs 291 km to Kronstadt; allow about 4 h 45 of riding. On the way it passes The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin, Highway Pushkin - Gatchina, The Blocade Ring and back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina. 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 45 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Kronstadt is a naval town on an island, and nothing about it feels like anywhere else in Russia. Kotlin lies about thirty kilometres west of the centre of St Petersburg, a long thin island of some twelve kilometres, and when Peter's engineers decided to close the sea approaches in the early eighteenth century they did it with timber. The barrier of cribwork was a line of log cribs filled with stone, sunk across the shallow channels so that enemy ships could only pass under the guns, and this label points to that engineering memory rather than to anything you can ride up to and touch. The cribs rotted or were buried long ago, and the sea lanes are now marked by fort islands and the modern dam.
Read the complete The Barrier of Cribwork write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Barrier of Cribwork is where the day begins. Next is The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin.
On the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, between St Petersburg and Peterhof, the old road runs past a string of palaces and estates that the Russian elite built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be near the sea and the court. Among them, near Strelna, stands the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage, a monastery founded in the eighteenth century as a dependency of the great Trinity Lavra of St Sergius near Moscow. It is part of the wide UNESCO listing of St Petersburg's historic centre and the monuments around it.
Read the complete The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin comes up about 45 km into the recorded legs. Next is Highway Pushkin - Gatchina.
Two imperial palaces lie at either end of this road, and between them the flat country south of Saint Petersburg still carries the scars of the twentieth century's worst siege. At the northern end is Pushkin, the former Tsarskoye Selo, where the Catherine Palace stretches its blue and white façade for hundreds of metres and the reconstructed Amber Room glows inside. At the southern end is Gatchina, Paul I's palace, grey and fortress-like, in a park of lakes and islands. The historic road between them is one of the many components of the World Heritage Site of the historic centre of Saint Petersburg and its related monuments.
Read the complete Highway Pushkin - Gatchina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 81 km into the recorded legs you reach Highway Pushkin - Gatchina. Next is The Blocade Ring.
The Blockade Ring stands on the south bank of the Neva, east of Saint Petersburg, close to where the Road of Life began its journey toward Lake Ladoga. It commemorates the siege of Leningrad, which lasted from September 1941 to January 1944, roughly 872 days, and the corridor that kept the city alive. When Shlisselburg fell in September 1941, the city was cut off by land, and the only lifeline ran across Ladoga, by boat in summer and over the ice in winter.
Read the complete The Blocade Ring write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Blocade Ring, about halfway. Next is back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Highway Pushkin - Gatchina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina sits at 159 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin comes up about 247 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Barrier of Cribwork.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Barrier of Cribwork write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Barrier of Cribwork closes the day.
The Barrier of Cribwork → The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin → Highway Pushkin - Gatchina is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Highway Pushkin - Gatchina → The Blocade Ring is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Blocade Ring → back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Highway Pushkin - Gatchina → back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Monastery Troitse-Sergieva Pustin → The Barrier of Cribwork is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.