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.
375 km from Gostilitsy to Gostilitsy, about 5 h 58 of riding. The stops in between: Southern battery No 3, Primorskoe Highway, Koltushskoe Highway and back through Primorskoe Highway. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 34 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.
For about 71 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.
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.
The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag is where the day begins. Next is Southern battery No 3.
Sailors in the Gulf of Finland used to say that Kotlin Island was a long grey shape you saw only when you were already too close, and Southern Battery No. 3 is part of the reason the sailors came to respect it. It stands on the low, southern shore of the island, facing the channel that runs past Lomonosov on the mainland, one of a numbered line of coastal batteries that guarded the approach to Saint Petersburg from the sea. The batteries were built for guns and are now mostly quiet, grassy ruins of earth, brick and concrete.
Read the complete Southern battery No 3 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Southern battery No 3 comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Primorskoe Highway.
Zelenogorsk used to be Terijoki, a Finnish resort town on the Gulf of Finland, and it belonged to Finland until the Winter War of 1939 to 1940, when this stretch of the Karelian Isthmus passed to the Soviet Union. Before that, Terijoki was a place where Russian aristocrats and artists kept summer houses, and the wooden villas that survive among the pines still have some of that air. The Primorskoe highway runs north-west from Saint Petersburg along the shore to Vyborg, and this is the part of it where the road threads a sandy, forested coastal strip with dunes on one side and wet pinewoods on the other.
Read the complete Primorskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 109 km into the recorded legs you reach Primorskoe Highway. Next is Koltushskoe Highway.
East of Saint Petersburg, the Koltushskoe highway runs through suburban sprawl and countryside toward the village of Koltushi, and it belongs to a memorial landscape that ties the whole region together: the Green Belt of Glory, a chain of monuments marking the defensive line around Leningrad during the siege of 1941 to 1944, when nearly nine hundred days of blockade cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Monuments, steles and memorials stand along the roads where the front lines and supply routes ran, including the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga.
Read the complete Koltushskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Koltushskoe Highway, about halfway. Next is back through Primorskoe Highway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Primorskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Primorskoe Highway sits at 201 km, about halfway. Next is back through Southern battery No 3.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Southern battery No 3 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Southern battery No 3 comes up about 334 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag closes the day.
The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag → Southern battery No 3 is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Southern battery No 3 → Primorskoe Highway is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Primorskoe Highway → Koltushskoe Highway is 79 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Koltushskoe Highway → back through Primorskoe Highway is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Primorskoe Highway → back through Southern battery No 3 is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Southern battery No 3 → The Palace and Park Ensemble of the Villag is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.