In 1553 an English ship looking for a northern passage to China ended up instead in the mouth of the Northern Dvina, near a monastery dedicated to Saint Nicholas. Its captain, Richard Chancellor, made his way to Moscow and the court of Ivan the Terrible, and the trade route he opened between England and Russia through the White Sea shaped the history of the north for more than a century. The monastery still stands on the edge of what is now Severodvinsk, its wooden and stone buildings surrounded by the cranes and workshops of one of the largest shipyards in the country.
The city itself is young, built from the 1930s onward around that shipyard, which has produced many of Russia's nuclear submarines. It was long a restricted place and still has a strongly military and industrial character, with wide Soviet avenues, rows of apartment blocks and a population of nearly two hundred thousand. It is not a beautiful city in the conventional sense, but it has a certain stark grandeur, and the sea is never far away. Yagry island, joined to the city by a bridge, has a long sandy beach on the White Sea, popular with locals in the short summer.
The ride from Arkhangelsk, about thirty-five kilometres east, crosses flat, marshy country along the Dvina delta, with forest, bogs and small rivers. The road is straight and generally decent, but busy with commuters and trucks at rush hour. Beyond Severodvinsk, the coastal roads westward along the White Sea are quieter and rougher, with gravel sections and long stretches of forest. The weather is cool even in summer, and the White Sea wind can be raw.
Severodvinsk has all the services a rider needs: fuel, shops, cafes, hotels and workshops. Be discreet with photography near the shipyard and military areas, which are sensitive. For a break, the beach on Yagry is pleasant on a warm day, and the monastery is worth a look for its connection to Chancellor and the English trade. In June the white nights mean that darkness never really falls, and the light over the White Sea at midnight is pale, silvery and strangely beautiful.