This point lies in the White Sea, off the coast of Karelia, and no road leads to it. Small Zayatsky belongs to the little Zayatsky islands in the Solovetsky archipelago, which sits some sixty kilometres out from the mainland, and getting there means a boat. The name comes from the Russian word for hare, and the islands are low, windswept and covered with moss, crowberry, juniper and stunted pine. On a clear day in summer the water is pale and cold, the light is long, and the white nights of June make it hard to know when evening begins.
The islands are known for something far older than the monastery that dominates the archipelago. On the larger of the two, the Bolshoi Zayatsky, archaeologists have recorded more than a dozen stone labyrinths, spirals of boulders laid out on the ground, along with burial cairns and stone settings thought to be about three to four thousand years old. Nobody knows for certain what they were for; theories include ritual paths, fish traps, or maps of the afterlife, and local Pomors later gave them names. Walking around the stone spirals is a strange experience, since the pattern is clear only when you stand within it.
The nearby main island has a very different history. The Solovetsky Monastery, founded in the fifteenth century, grew into a fortress and a centre of the White Sea trade, and then in the twentieth century the Soviet state used it as the first and one of the most notorious camps of the Gulag. The story hangs over the island, and the monastery has been returned to the church and rebuilt. The island is a World Heritage site.
For a rider, the realistic version of this ride is on the main Solovetsky island, which has a few gravel and dirt roads, crossed by lakes and canals dug by the monks, and on the Karelian mainland, where the roads to Kem and Belomorsk run through forest and bog. Ferries and boats to the islands run only in the warmer months, and the sea can be rough, so crossings are cancelled in bad weather. Mosquitoes in summer are ferocious, and the best defence is a headnet and patience. Current rules for foreign visitors in Russia and on the archipelago should be checked well in advance.