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.
225 km from Kronstadt to Kronstadt, about 3 h 30 of riding. On the way it passes The Water-bringing system of Peterhof, The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag, Dudergof and back through The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag. The line favours views over speed.
For about 58 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.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 26 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.
The Barrier of Stone is a name that sounds like a medieval wall, though what is actually out here is a creature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the great flood barrier that stretches across the Gulf of Finland to protect St Petersburg. The city has been flooded again and again since its foundation, because it sits at the mouth of the Neva on land barely above sea level, and when westerly storms push water up the gulf the river backs up and spills into the streets. The worst floods are remembered in literature, most famously in Pushkin's poem about the bronze horseman.
Read the complete The Barrier of Stone write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Barrier of Stone is where the day begins. Next is The Water-bringing system of Peterhof.
The fountains of Peterhof run without a single pump, and that is the cleverest thing about them. When Peter the Great planned his gardens in the 1710s and 1720s, engineers led by Vasily Tuvolkov worked out that the water of the Ropsha hills, about twenty kilometres to the south, stood high enough above the Gulf of Finland to feed the fountains by gravity alone. They dug canals, built ponds and laid pipes, so that the water flows from the heights to the Upper Garden and down to the Great Cascade, where it shoots high into the air. The system, still essentially the same, is part of the UNESCO listing for Saint Petersburg.
Read the complete The Water-bringing system of Peterhof write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Water-bringing system of Peterhof comes up about 58 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag.
Gostilitsy is a village on the Izhora Upland, west of Ropsha and south of Peterhof, and it is one of those places near St Petersburg where the imperial past hides behind fences and overgrown trees. The estate here is associated with Alexei Razumovsky, the Ukrainian Cossack singer who rose to become the favourite and, by many accounts, the secret husband of Empress Elizabeth in the eighteenth century. The palace and park ensemble that grew up around the manor included a house, a church, ponds and landscaped grounds fed by springs, and it is listed among the monuments of the historic centre of St Petersburg and related groups, a UNESCO site that includes many of the palaces and estates around the city.
Read the complete The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 87 km into the recorded legs you reach The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag. Next is Dudergof.
South-west of St Petersburg, the flat land of the Neva lowland rises unexpectedly into a pair of wooded hills, the Duderhof heights, the highest ground for many kilometres around. Their name comes from Finnish, and they have long been a landmark, used for military observation since the eighteenth century and as a summer retreat for the people of the capital. In the nineteenth century, the imperial army held its summer manoeuvres around nearby Krasnoye Selo, and the officers' villas and parade grounds became part of the social life of St Petersburg.
Read the complete Dudergof write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dudergof, about halfway. Next is back through The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag sits at 118 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Water-bringing system of Peterhof.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Water-bringing system of Peterhof write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Water-bringing system of Peterhof comes up about 184 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Barrier of Stone.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Barrier of Stone write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Barrier of Stone closes the day.
The Barrier of Stone → The Water-bringing system of Peterhof is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Water-bringing system of Peterhof → The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag → Dudergof is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dudergof → back through The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag → back through The Water-bringing system of Peterhof is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Water-bringing system of Peterhof → The Barrier of Stone is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.