Medvezhyegorsk, the Bear's Head, sits on the northwestern shore of Lake Onega, at the head of Povenets Bay, in the Republic of Karelia. The town is a railway junction and a workaday centre of about sixteen thousand people, with timber yards, a lake harbour and a plain Soviet-era centre, but its place in history is heavier than its looks. It grew from a small village into a town in the early 1930s, when the White Sea-Baltic Canal was built nearby, and for a few years it served as the headquarters of the project.
The canal, about two hundred and twenty kilometres long, connects Lake Onega with the White Sea, and it was dug in less than two years, largely by hand, by prisoners of the Gulag camp system. Tens of thousands died, from cold, hunger and exhaustion, and the canal, which was too shallow for many ships, became a symbol of the cost of Stalinist industrialisation. Near the town, in the forest at Sandarmokh, a memorial marks the place where thousands of people were shot in 1937 and 1938, and the quiet of the pines there is hard to forget. It is a place to visit with respect.
The landscape around is Karelian: low hills, dark spruce and pine, bright birch in autumn, and thousands of lakes joined by short rivers. The rocks are among the oldest on Earth, scraped bare by glaciers, and in places you can see long scratches on the granite. In summer, mosquitoes and midges are a serious nuisance, and in June the white nights give light all through the evening. Autumn is clear and colourful, and winter brings deep snow.
Roads here, like the M18 highway that links St Petersburg with Murmansk, are straight and fairly well kept, with long runs through forest, though frost heaves and patched surfaces appear in places. Trucks are common, and overtaking on blind rises is a regular habit among local drivers. Wildlife, especially elk, crosses the road at dusk, and a collision with one is dangerous. Tolerate the long distances and take breaks.
Medvezhyegorsk has fuel stations and basic shops and cafes, and there are more in Pindushi, nearby. North of here, stations are well spaced but long gaps exist, so fill the tank whenever it is half empty. Povenets, to the south, is where the canal's staircase of locks begins.