Ride from the magnificent Chalet Sul Lago back to France was much nicer than the day before when we arrived.
Mt Cenis
In France we started riding the endless amount of hairpin corners and mountain passes! First we had Col du Télégraphe then Col du Galibier, Col d’Izoard and finally Col de Vars.
Here’s video climbing up the Col du Télégraphe from the north:
This climb ends in Valloire village and from the southside of Valloire starts the climb to Col du Galibier which is one of my favorites! It has a short tunnel on the top, but to reach even higher you have to take the alternative route and finally reach the 2645 meters.
Here’s video from the Col du Galibier
Col d’Izoard is more south and it starts from Cervières village (If you ride from north to south). The view on the summit is a little bit different than in many other mountain pass, the mountain walls are mostly gravel and stones! It is a barren sight!
Col d’Izoard is 2360 meters high!
Finally we had Col de Vars (2109m) where we had some ice cream!
We had the accommodation in the middle of Barcelonnette city. Here’s the route for the day 10.
adventure bike
We got 1 more rider to make this tour with us! He’s Timo and he rides Honda VFR 800, and it’s red too!
This days route was called “Lets get the real good look at River Mosel!” -And yes we did!
The route was like this! And we’re following the River Mosel all the way from Koblenz to Trier and then to Luxemburg… It was more than 230 km’s of River Mosel and those grapevine or wine bushes on the both sides of the river! I think that’s enough… Luckily we did ride something else too! In the last part of the route we had nice ride in Eppenbrunn!
And then finally the GPS found a route that it is even hard to find from the map!!!
This must be the MAIN ROAD from Germany to France!
We had accommodation in Obersteinbach, France. It was nice and “bohemian” just in the right way!
Day 3
We started the day by going to visit the 2 nice castles of Sigulda.
(https://motocaching.net/en/cache/viewb/id6980)
And also the cave down beside the river, this cave has walls of sandstone with many signatures from long time ago. (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/viewb/id6955)
Then we started riding the route for saturday. First we took nice road from Turaida to Saulkrasti. This would be very nice… but the pavement is so bad condition that you have to concentrate to keep the bike in balance and you can’t really enjoy the long sweeping bends. (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6830). From Saulkrasti you can find a monument of finnish bomber Junkers JK-274 crash in 1943. It is quite interesting to find finnish language in the middle of Latvia! (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6124)
Then after many kilometers of boring Via Baltica we took the old road of Pärnu. It is more pleasant ride because of the many small villages, old wooden houses and small shops. This 35 kilometer long road gives you some alternative route to Via Baltica. (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id4794)
In Pärnu we took a short lunch-break in Aleksandri Pub (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6338)
And in the north side of Pärnu we took a short visit in Villa Andropoff, this has quite interesting history but it didn’t give me any shivers. Looked like old Spa or something…
The Beach in this Villa was fantastic! Many kilometers of white sand everywhere.
Finally after a long and quite hot riding-day we arrived to Haapsalu. We visited the Haapsalu Episcopal Castle. Last time I was here (20 years ago?) it was only the ruins of the castle but now there was a museum and many different parts of the castle where you can enter. The bell tower, the hospital, the cathedral, the dungeons… we’re almost running everyhting through and still it took more than 1 hour! The entrance fee to the museum is 5€ and I really recommend to visit there!
(https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6310)
For saturday evening we choose to eat Pizza. There is 1 very nice pizzeria in Haapsalu, Pizza Grande!
Our hotel was the Spa by the ocean so we also enjoyed some jacuzzi and sauna (in Spa Laine)
Day 1
www.motocaching.net -Check these pages to find places near you!
In 2015 we had a group ride with motocachers few times but we also decided to do it “bigger” in 2016. So we took the boat to Tallinn and spent 4 days outside Finland. We visited over 20 caches: 3 castles, 2 waterfalls, 2 special cliffs, an old submarinebase and an old nuclearbase and ofcourse many roads.
Boat arrives to Tallinn 09.30 (thursday morning) am and 10am we were already in the first place!
This is Tallinn TV-tower (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6336) where you can visit in 170 meters to see the view but we only visited the parking area and soon continued to the next place.
This is Jägala waterfall (https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6334), only 30km’s east from Tallinn.
Then we also rode some nice roads with more corners than usually in Estonia:
From Leesi to Loksa https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id4975 and
from Loksa to Vihasoo (following the coastline) https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id4978
Somewhere there in the middle we visited the old submarine base (From the Russian rule).
This is amazing abandoned place where I have visited before. But it still makes me think about the working conditions during Russian rule! https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id4977
Here’s a video from Hara to Loksa village:
Next we had another waterfall, over 30 meters high!
This is Valaste waterfall quite close to Russian border, there’s also a beautiful view to the sea (Gulf of Finland) https://motocaching.net/en/cache/view/id6335
We spent the night in Mustvee, a small city beside the Lake Peipsi. This is a huge lake with half of it belonging to Russia.
Early morning in Lake Peipsi.
…to be continued
Finally I desided to take my FIRST bike out! And what a weekend it was! Almost 700 kilometers (>500km on sunday) with my first bike BMW S1000XR!
It’s not difficult to guess what was my first first direction? Yes, to Inkoo and Fagervik! That road simply makes you smile everytime you ride it!
The Café wasn’t open but I didn’t mind. I only stopped to take this photo and then I continued to enjoy my first “real” motorcycle ride (of 2016)!
On sunday we had a groupride in eastern Uusimaa. There was 11 bikes in the start.
This picture is from the first break in Pukkila.
And this is from the last break in Kulloo. The route was just fantastic!! You can hardly find any better roads this close to Helsinki (East side). Only in the north side of Pukkila we visited shortly Päijät-Häme province, otherwise we stayed in Uusimaa province. Here is the route.
I was riding with a friend last sunday (24th of April). It was very cold weather but luckily we had enought clothes. We made a nice ride to Lahnajärvi and back…. it was about 190 km’s. This time I had the camera attached in my helmet so now the picture is not with the resonance.
In this first video you need to check the video from 14:15! There’s a goshawk very near to the road and it flies away when I ride to it’s place.
In this video the road gets pretty bad in 02:05.
Eli soratiet Kirkkonummella.
I live in the city (municipality) called Kirkkonummi. Here are some possible gravel roads to ride with motorcycle (if you like that stuff!?) These are the ones with no dead-end, so you can actually continue riding without turning back. This is map part 1:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YLJ-tpXfA4TDCePogyMZ72qw7P4&usp=sharing
And here is map part 2:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=15jh647UQ6s3biW98g_sS58UE1qI&usp=sharing
Some more roads actually goes out of the Kirkkonummi. But these few roads gives a somekind of possibility to practice riding in the gravelroad.
KTM 690 Enduro is 1 cylinder engine with quite nice power, easy to ride in almost everywhere! It has some vibration in the handlebar but it doesn’t bother me -So I desided to try my Sony 4k-camera in it.
But oh no… It just doesn’t work! The vibration makes the camera shake, rattle and roll (it makes the resonance depending the rpm of the engine), and in some parts it’s very disturbing watch the video! But then again in some parts of the video the picture is quite ok!
This is the first video of the routes I rode yesterday. Second video here:
Maybe one ore two still more to come…
Last sunday we had a groupride. I had a message that if you have ordinary streettyres you can manage this trip (in the gravel roads)… and we had quite interesting riders and bikes!
This was Aprilia Mille with Pirelli Supercorsa!
Then there was BMW F800ST with Continental Road Attack and Yamaha Tracer with Pirelli Road Pilot. And we had a few surprises in the route!
That’s me with my KTM 690 Enduro! There was a river going over the road but luckily it was only about 15-20 cm’s deep water. So everyone rode over it! Last attempt was with the BMW F800ST:
In the picture the water looks much deeper because the bike makes a wave… But we got all over it quite easily. This was so much fun!!
It was actually already before easter when I got the offer from my Honda VFR1200X Crosstourer. After trying to sell it so long time I was quite happy with offer I got from Bikeworld. But I had to wait over 1 week for the delivery of the new KTM 690 Enduro.
This photo was taken only 10km’s after I bought it and already I’m offroad!! Ok it’s only like 20 meters away from the pavement but anyway that bike really invites you to make turns away from the road.
My way home (normally about 30km’s) turned in to 90 kilometers of gravel roads and some little bit illegal roads. I even found some nice and interesting places.
Here’s the route I rode yesterday (few places I couldn’t add to the route since googlemaps doesn’t allow it).
The real offroad places (forest etc) are still snowy or at least very wet so for now I’m staying mostly on the gravel roads. But luckily there are lots of those here in my area!
GoZa Mite 