Thanks for all the information. That's good news about the Moscow - Murmansk road, I had a hard time on the Baltic highway to Moscow last summer; for very long stretches the road basically ceases to exist.

Based on what Jervig says I might go up through Finland though, and save Karelia for another trip on its own. That's easy to do from Moscow and it's a part of Russia I've never really been to.

?? Really? I've been on that road several times and didn't notice any issues, although I probably haven't been on it in 2 years now. This is the road through Rzhev and Velikiye Luki, or a different one?

Yes, that's it. I was on it last July. Local people warned me not to, I decided they were exaggerating how bad it was, but they weren't. You can read a bit about it here: The blog of Navalny in English - At The Entrance To The City Of Nelidovo Stands A Concrete Shed, On Which Is Written,"Russia,Forward"

That blog by "Navalny" sounds a bit like black propaganda: "Road M9 is always under construction, but it is getting worse. There are more dead villages around - at night there will not be a single light for tens of kilometers - and the people I meet are more and more gloomy, wandering somewhere with their sleds along roadsides or voting without any particular hope in their eyes: I also don't see regular buses, by the way. Except for a few roadside service stations, everything is more poverty-stricken: run down kebab restaurants and barns with spare parts for the trucks. Local people, as in the XVI century, trade basic goods along the road: dried mushrooms, frozen berries, and coarse fur for clothing."

On my 20.000km through Russia I haven't had any such negative experience.

That's a fair comment given who Navalny is, but those aren't his words, he's actually quoting an article from Russian Forbes magazine. Leaving aside the hyperbole - and I was through several dead villages off the M9 - the highway itself was in a disastrous state last summer. Several local people tried to persuade me to divert through Belarus, but I didn't have a visa so couldn't. The problem is that the road is under total reconstruction, so it alternates between very short stretches of excellent highway; the original highway, which is heavily potholed & worn through to the metal; and sections where the highway has been completely removed to make the new surface. The latter is most of it, and consists mainly of gravel. But I was on it in heavy rain, so it had turned to gravel & mud mixed with construction vehicle oil. And because it's the main highway it gets all the local traffic and all the long distance lorries from the Baltics. In some sections it was just a single lane, so traffic in both directions was playing chicken: lots of wrecked vehicles in the ditch. I didn't see anyone else on a bike for about a couple of hundred kilometers and I understand why. I'd like that road to work because it's a convenient route to the Baltics for me, but I'm not going back on it until I hear it's been fixed.