Rabocheostrovsk is a small port on the White Sea, and for most travellers it is simply the place the Solovetsky ferry leaves from. It lies on the coast a few kilometres from Kem, the larger town to which it belongs historically, at the point where the railway and the highway from the south meet the open water. The name means Workers' Island, a Soviet rebranding from the 1930s, and the place has the functional look of a harbour: cranes, sheds, a railway siding, and a long jetty reaching into the shallow, cold sea.
The significance is the islands beyond. Solovki, the Solovetsky archipelago, lies about sixty kilometres offshore, and it carries the weight of Russian history: a great monastery founded in the fifteenth century by the monks Savvaty, Zosima and German, which became one of the most powerful in the country, then a prison and later the first camp of the Soviet Gulag. The White Sea can be flat as glass on a June morning and rough by afternoon.
Kem, ten kilometres away, is worth a visit for its wooden Assumption Cathedral, built in the early eighteenth century, a tall, tent-roofed building painted white and green, which is one of the great surviving wooden churches of the north. Kem was also a transit point for prisoners headed for Solovki in the 1920s and 30s, and the town carries that history quietly. The local sea food is simple and good, and you may find smoked fish and fresh bread in small shops.
The road here is the long Kola highway, a good modern surface with long straights, rolling forest and occasional wet patches, and the final approach to the port is short. Traffic includes long-distance trucks, so ride with care, especially in rain. Summer brings midnight sun and mosquitoes, while autumn brings low cloud and cold wind off the sea. Winter is dark and brutal, and ferries do not run.
Fuel is at Kem, which has several stations, and it is best to fill up there before you reach the port. The port village itself is small, with a few shops and a cafe or two, and it is simplest to arrive with a plan. Walk to the end of the jetty and look out at the sea. It is cold, wide, and very northern.