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.
A 75 km round trip from Lomonosov - roughly 1 h 17 in the saddle. On the way it passes Oranienbaumsky Springboard, The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag and back through Oranienbaumsky Springboard. The line favours views over speed.
For about 18 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 17 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 south shore of the Gulf of Finland west of St Petersburg is a strip of dachas, palaces and old military ground, and the place marked here as Maximov's Datcha sits within it, a couple of kilometres from the town of Lomonosov.
Read the complete The Maximov's Datcha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Maximov's Datcha is where the day begins. Next is Oranienbaumsky Springboard.
The Oranienbaum Springboard is not a single building but a piece of ground, and once you know the story the low woods and fields south of the Gulf of Finland look entirely different. In September 1941, as German and Finnish forces closed the ring around Leningrad, a pocket of coast around Oranienbaum, today's Lomonosov, held out. It was cut off from the city by land, supplied across the water and under the guns of Kronstadt, and it never fell. In January 1944 the Second Shock Army broke out of this pocket as one jaw of the offensive that finally lifted the siege.
Read the complete Oranienbaumsky Springboard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Oranienbaumsky Springboard comes up about 18 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag.
Ropsha is one of those places where the scenery is gentle and the history is anything but. The village sits on the low Izhora Upland southwest of St Petersburg, between Krasnoe Selo and the coast road at Lomonosov, and the palace that gives the estate its name looks down over a chain of spring-fed ponds and a slow, wooded park. It was here, in July 1762, that the freshly deposed Emperor Peter III was held after his wife Catherine seized the throne, and here that he died a few days later under circumstances nobody at court cared to explain. Catherine became "the Great"; Ropsha became a footnote with a chill on it.
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 37 km into the recorded legs you reach The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag. Next is back through Oranienbaumsky Springboard.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Oranienbaumsky Springboard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Oranienbaumsky Springboard, late in the day. Next is The Maximov's Datcha.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Maximov's Datcha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at The Maximov's Datcha. That is the ride.
The Maximov's Datcha → Oranienbaumsky Springboard is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Oranienbaumsky Springboard → The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag → back through Oranienbaumsky Springboard is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Oranienbaumsky Springboard → The Maximov's Datcha is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.