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 66 km round trip from Petrodvorets - roughly 1 h 21 in the saddle. The stops in between: P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha, Krasnoe Selo and back through P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha. 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 13 km this is Saint Petersburg Imperial Shore, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Peterhof's fountains get the attention, but the coast road west of it, running along the Gulf of Finland toward Oranienbaum, is the better introduction to the landscape. The Mordvinov estate, named for a family of Russian statesmen and naval officers, belongs to the string of country houses that nobles built along this shore in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Peter the Great's new capital pulled the whole aristocracy to the Baltic.
Read the complete The Mordvinov's Estate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Mordvinov's Estate is where the day begins. Next is P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha, 18 km on.
Strelna lies at the beginning of the road to Peterhof, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, and its main feature is the Konstantinovsky Palace, begun in the reign of Peter the Great and named for a later grand duke, Konstantin. Like Peterhof, it was heavily damaged in the Second World War and later rebuilt, and in the early 2000s it was restored for the three-hundredth anniversary of Saint Petersburg. The park, with its canals and ponds, runs down toward the water, and the view across the gulf is wide and grey.
Read the complete P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha comes up about 13 km into the recorded legs. Next is Krasnoe Selo.
Readers of Anna Karenina will know Krasnoye Selo, even if they have never been within a thousand kilometres of it. It was here, at the summer camp of the imperial guards, that Tolstoy set the officers' steeplechase in which Vronsky rides his mare Frou-Frou to disaster in front of the court. For more than a century, from the early nineteenth century until the revolution, the guards regiments of the Russian army gathered each summer in this area south-west of Saint Petersburg for manoeuvres, parades and horse races, and the tsar and the court came to watch. It is listed as one of the monuments associated with the historic centre of Saint Petersburg.
Read the complete Krasnoe Selo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 33 km into the recorded legs you reach Krasnoe Selo. Next is back through P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha, 17 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha, late in the day. Next is The Mordvinov's Estate.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Mordvinov's Estate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at The Mordvinov's Estate. That is the ride.
The Mordvinov's Estate → P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha → Krasnoe Selo is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Krasnoe Selo → back through P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through P.K.Alexandrov's Datcha → The Mordvinov's Estate is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.