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.
From Kronstadt it runs 255 km to Kronstadt; allow about 4 h 10 of riding. The stops in between: The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat, Kievskoe Highway, Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis and back through Kievskoe Highway. An island ride, so the sea is never far.
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 44 km this is A-121 Ladoga and Sortavala, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Ships have been guided by a light on Tolbukhin island for about three centuries, and it is one of those places that makes more sense on a chart than on a road. The island lies in the Gulf of Finland, south-west of Kronstadt and out in the shallow channel that leads to Saint Petersburg, and the lighthouse on it marks the southern passage into the Neva Bay. The surrounding waters are shallow, and in the grey light of autumn the sea and the sky merge into a single pale band.
Read the complete Tolbukhin Lighthouse on Tolbukhin Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tolbukhin Lighthouse on Tolbukhin Island is where the day begins. Next is The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat.
South-west of Saint Petersburg, along the shore of the Gulf of Finland, the land is a continuous belt of imperial estates. Peterhof is the best known, with its gilded fountains and long terraces, but behind it and around it is a countryside of parks, dachas and country palaces built by the imperial family and the aristocracy from the eighteenth century onward. Znamenka was one of these. The name comes from the Znamenie, the Sign, and the estate had a palace and a park that served as a summer residence, laid out in the landscape style that was fashionable in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat comes up about 45 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kievskoe Highway.
South of Saint Petersburg, the flat, damp plain of Ingria runs off towards Pskov and the old western frontier, and the Kievskoe Highway is the road that heads that way, the route to Kyiv that gave it its name.
Read the complete Kievskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 86 km into the recorded legs you reach Kievskoe Highway. Next is Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis.
Ivan Pavlov did not do his best-known work in a lab in a big city. The Russian physiologist, who won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research on digestion and who became famous for the experiments on conditioned reflexes in dogs, spent his last years at Koltushi, a village on the low hills east of St Petersburg. Here, from the early 1930s, the Soviet state built him a whole scientific town, with laboratories, kennels, a monkey station and housing for his staff, in the hope that he would turn out a physiology of the mind. Pavlov, who lived from 1849 to 1936, said he wanted a place where animals and people could be studied in healthy conditions and surrounded by nature, and Koltushi was it.
Read the complete Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis, about halfway. Next is back through Kievskoe Highway.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kievskoe Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kievskoe Highway sits at 148 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat comes up about 216 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tolbukhin Lighthouse on Tolbukhin Island.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tolbukhin Lighthouse on Tolbukhin Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tolbukhin Lighthouse on Tolbukhin Island closes the day.
Tolbukhin Lighthouse on Tolbukhin Island → The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat → Kievskoe Highway is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kievskoe Highway → Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Scientific Town-Institution of Physiologis → back through Kievskoe Highway is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kievskoe Highway → back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Palace and Park of the Znamenskaya Dat → Tolbukhin Lighthouse on Tolbukhin Island is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.