Arkhangelsk is the city Russia built when it had no other door to the sea. Ivan the Terrible ordered a port on the Northern Dvina in 1584, close to where the river splits into a maze of channels and islands before entering the White Sea, and for more than a century it was the country's only seaport open to European merchants. English and Dutch ships came here for furs, timber and tar. Peter the Great visited, built ships, and then founded St Petersburg and took the trade away, but the city kept its character as a northern timber and shipbuilding town.
You feel the water everywhere. The Dvina is wide, slow and brown, and the city stretches along it for kilometres, with wooden houses, Soviet blocks and cranes sharing the bank. The Pomors, the Russian settlers of this coast, lived by fishing and sealing and sailed far into the Arctic, and their culture still colours the local food, which leans to fish, cloudberries and rye. The great scientist Mikhail Lomonosov was born in a village a short way upriver, and his statue stands in the city. Malye Korely, an open-air museum of wooden churches, windmills and farmhouses, sits on the edge of town and is a good place to see what the north once looked like.
The riding out of town is long, flat and forested. Roads to the White Sea coast and toward Onega run through spruce and birch, with bogs on either side, and the surface can alternate between decent asphalt and broken patches, especially after the thaw. Distances are large, and so are the gaps between services. In June the white nights mean you can ride very late, and mosquitoes make stops short. In winter, the whole region freezes hard and daylight shrinks to a few hours.
Arkhangelsk has more than three hundred thousand people, so fuel, food and repairs are all easy, and Isakogorka on the edge of town adds more. Fill the tank before heading out, since smaller villages may have little. Foreign riders should check what is currently possible before planning a trip.