Leaves under the wheels: the end of the cycling season

This year's autumn was long, warm and very beautiful. But everything comes to an end one day. I look out the window and see the first snow falling. The snow swirls in the lantern light, falls on the asphalt and immediately melts. The temperature will drop during the night - and who knows what I'll see in the morning? Perhaps there will be a pure white carpet of snow under my window. Maybe the partially melted snow will turn into a snowy mess. Either way, I have little chance of going for another long bike ride this season. If I'm very lucky with the weather and all the snow melts, I might be able to get out for a little ride on the nearby streets. But it's already too cold for long rides.

To close the season, I chose a route along the Neva embankment and a few parks in the north of the city. A few years ago, the city authorities were concerned about creating bike lanes, and one of the city's longest bike lanes runs along the Neva River Embankment. This bike lane is not as close to my house as I would like it to be. But it is a good way to get to the parks.

I didn't take photos of the beginning of the route for technical reasons. The day was warm, sunny, almost windless. A lot of people decided to take the opportunity to walk along the Neva embankment. The cycle path is laid out in such a way that it is separated from the pedestrian path only by a white line drawn on the tarmac. I had to be very careful on this part of the route, and I didn't get distracted for photography.

I only stopped and started taking photos when I reached the parks. First on my route was the Lopukhinsky Garden. It is a relatively small but very beautiful manor garden on the bank of the Malaya Nevka River. In the centre of the garden stands an old manor house. It is a two-storey wooden building built in the middle of the 19th century for the merchant Gromov. The garden around this building is older, it was arranged in the XVIII century and kept the name after the surname of one of the former owners.

Further on, beyond the Lopukhinsky Garden, you can go in almost any direction: parks and gardens replace each other in an almost uninterrupted succession. You can go through the park ‘Quiet Rest’, you can go through the Vyazemsky garden - in any case you will have a beautiful and memorable walk. This time I chose the route along the alleys of Kamenny Island and then past the palace and pavilions of Yelagin Island.

My idea was to drive to the Bolshaya Nevka River to see how the construction of the new cycleway on the far, northern bank of the river was progressing. Last time I came here in the summer, I had to drive along a noisy avenue for a long time: the entire bank was dug up, and the construction zone was fenced off with netting. This time it turned out that a large part of the cycleway was already finished and available for cycling. I went back to the park to ride a little more along the park alleys amidst the beautiful autumn scenery. Autumn is wonderful, but it ends too quickly every time.