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 182 km round trip from Petrodvorets - roughly 3 h 22 in the saddle. On the way it passes Izhorsky Bench, Volkhonskoe Highway, The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha and back through Volkhonskoe Highway. The line favours views over speed.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 25 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Peterhof is the one everyone has seen in photographs, with the golden statue of Samson tearing open a lion's jaws and the long canal running down to the Gulf of Finland. The Sobstvennaya Dacha, the Tsar's Own Dacha, is a quieter corner of the same ensemble, tucked into the parkland on the southern shore of the gulf. The ground here is the Izhorsky bench, a limestone shelf running east to west with a sudden step down toward the water.
Read the complete The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya is where the day begins. Next is Izhorsky Bench.
South of St Petersburg, the flat marshy plain of the Neva lowland suddenly steps up onto a limestone plateau. Geologists call the edge a glint or bench, and here, near Russko-Vysotskoye and Kipen, it forms a low but noticeable escarpment, the northern edge of the Izhora plateau. It is one of the natural features included in the wide UNESCO listing of St Petersburg and its surroundings, which recognises not only palaces and canals but the landscape the city was built against.
Read the complete Izhorsky Bench write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Izhorsky Bench comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. Next is Volkhonskoe Highway.
The Volkhonskoe Highway is not a scenic mountain road but a historic route on the southern edge of Saint Petersburg, running out from the city towards Gorelovo and the old road to Krasnoye Selo. It belongs to the network of eighteenth and nineteenth century highways that linked the capital with the imperial residences and military camps to the south and west, and it is included in the wider protected area of the historic centre of Saint Petersburg and its related monuments. What you see today is a mix of suburban growth, open fields and stretches of tree-lined road, with the ghosts of history underneath.
Read the complete Volkhonskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 54 km into the recorded legs you reach Volkhonskoe Highway. Next is The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha.
Here the Neva is a working river, broad and fast, carrying barges and the outflow of Lake Ladoga past factories and housing blocks on its way to the city. Yet on the left bank near Ust-Izhora, among the industry, survive the traces of a much older riverside life: the country houses, datchas in the old aristocratic sense, that Saint Petersburg's wealthy families built along the Neva in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with parks running down to the water. The ensemble of the Zinoviev datcha is one of them, included in the long list of estates, parks and buildings that make up the World Heritage Site around the historic centre of Saint Petersburg.
Read the complete The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha, about halfway. Next is back through Volkhonskoe Highway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Volkhonskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Volkhonskoe Highway sits at 103 km, about halfway. Next is back through Izhorsky Bench.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Izhorsky Bench write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Izhorsky Bench comes up about 154 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya closes the day.
The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya → Izhorsky Bench is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Izhorsky Bench → Volkhonskoe Highway is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Volkhonskoe Highway → The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Ensemble of the Zinoviev's Datcha → back through Volkhonskoe Highway is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Volkhonskoe Highway → back through Izhorsky Bench is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Izhorsky Bench → The Palace and Park Ensemble «Sobstvennaya is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.