After a great night sleep in Inari Uruniemi camping (30€ only!) I was more than ready to start exploring new possible section for TransEuroTrail Finland.
First I had to ride the section 7 until it’s starting point which was still more than 100km away behind Pokka village. And it was paved road all the way there.
Actually before the “starting point” of section 7 I turned away from the paved road and all the fun started! I soon joined with section 1 and was riding 27km together with the “main section”! And that was maybe the best road/ track that I had on this day! Then I had route ahead of me that I knew nothing about. I planned the route to make it a section of it’s own but at some point I realised that it could be a continuation of an already existing section 7! So all this new route would be just a new beginning part of that section. And after the update the section 7 is now 770km long! So I was riding all the way down to Rovaniemi and it was almost 500km of riding! Here’s the video of that day:
My friends Eero & Lauri decided to continue west towards Kilpisjärvi. I had other plans so I started riding east. I was riding a big road all day. First it was paved road until I was in Finland and then from Karigasniemi to Angeli and Inari it was big gravel road. In Vuottašjávri I took a short break and checked the place beside the lake. But there was too many mosquitos and black flies. So I continued riding.
The landscape and views are incredible in this area! So I can say that I did enjoy my ride. It was 370km all together!
The village of Angeli I have never visited before. I had to search the result for a quite a long time about how many people lives in this village. It’s less than 100! The road from Karigasniemi south to Angeli and then east to Inari is also part of TransEuroTrail Finland section 7.
Here’s the video of this day. It’s the road up and away from Alta, so called Alta Canyon road.
Day 2 started with a light rain but it was over before I started packing my bike. Second time packing was already much faster and easier (& better). First I was riding back to Muonio and from there I called my friends Eero & Lauri who I knew were staying somewhere close in a cabin. I also had a place there for the next 1 or 2 nights.
We wanted to explore the area and make a warm up for the next day. And it ended up being such an amazing riding day! First to Pakasaivo lake and then some smaller tracks/ roads to Äkäslompolo village where we filled the tanks and enjoyed some great lunch in Ravintola Rouhe. Then we continued to the Rautuvaara mining area and we spent maybe 2 hours exploring the tracks there. That was such an amazing area! After the mining area we still checked some smaller tracks in the forest of Kolari and Muonio. For me it was first 70km to the cabin and then 200km with my friends. The route was like this:
The train from Helsinki arrived to Kolari station around 11. About 1 hour later I got my bike out from the car-carrier train.
First thing I did I wanted to find a better place to change to my actual riding gear. That I did in the parking area of one restaurant that wasn’t open yet. There was also gas station just beside and I filled my tank. Then I started riding! Pretty soon I arrived to the gate of an old mine. It was Rautuvaara that stopped working as a mine in 1988!
Big disappointment was the possibilities for eating in Muonio on Sunday afternoon! SEO Muonio right beside the main road has Rolls hamburger restaurant. But I didn’t want anything from there. Other than that there was no option! Harriniva resort has restaurant but the kitchen opens only at 5pm! SO I decided to ride straight to my accommodation and they promised to make some food for me! (What a great service!) Here is the route I did on the first day:
From Kolari to Muonio I was riding TransEuroTrail Finland Section 3. Here’s the video I made of that day:
Big recommendation for the place I stayed for the night!! It was Old School of Kihlanki village and I found the place from booking.com. Check from the end of the video… I was amazed especially how helpful and friendly the hosts were!
On the last days befere my “big adventure” I changed the tires to my bike. Metzeler MC 360 Mid Hard was already pretty much gone from the front. Rear had still about 5-6mm of knobby. New tires were Heidenau K60 and they were quite perfect for me in this situation! Then started packing:
I was very happy about the size of all the luggage! Even I decided to take my tent and camping mattress with me (and I didn’t need them!) I was ready for my biggest adventure so far.
First leg was to ride to Helsinki and put my bike to the train (Helsinki – Kolari). And after 15 hours in the train I was far north in Lapland!
My bike seems to work nicely!! I did already a trip to Himos and back.
The right side (365km) was the trip from my home to Himos and I was following TET Section 1 from Somero to Evo. That was super nice ride!
Section 1, Somero – Evo
Then returning home I took the left route and it was only about 310km but it had also more than 50% of paved roads… Then yesterday I changed the tires for my bike. Now I have Heidenau K60 and those are more like 50/50 tires but they also should last quite a lot of kilometers. Since in 3 days I’m leaving to my summer adventure trip… First I’m taking the train from Helsinki to Kolari and that will be 921km and it will last 14 hours! Today I took a proper testride for my new tires. I checked one POI from TET Finland Section 5. I was adding this place to the list of POI’s on last update and now I can say that it’s very nice place but there was no firewood and that’s a pity! Here’s a video from today’s ride:
Ovanmalm Recreation area
So next sunday will be my first day far away north of Finland! You can follow my trip here.
It was the same ride on 1st of May when these problems started! It felt like the power was cutting/ stalling very shortly. And sometimes bike even did stall and it was difficult to get running again! My bike went to Biketeam Raisio and first they found that idle actuator was not working as it should. They changed the new one and checked the error codes and it looked better. But after I got bike back home I couldn’t ride it more than 30km! All the problems were back or they were even worse!
Bike went back to Biketeam and now with some serious investigations! “The engine running problems continues. Error codes comes from: 000230 electric fuel pump 000335 Crankshaft sensor 000561 DME voltage supply, terminal 30 Cleaned a badly oxidized ground wire under the voltage regulator, after this the idle running improved considerably. Was running for 30 min. with some throttle every now and then without stalling. The error codes did return. Measured petrol pressure at about 3bar, so OK! Ignition coils measured, are OK! Gas valve housing cleaned, Wire harness inspected and found no significant abrasions/wear but when the harness is moved with hand the injector nozzle activates and sprays gas into the intake manifold (!). The harness was peeled over a distance of about 30cm and found a point where the wires were badly worn and the plus wire was connecting with other wires, fixed! After this, the bike was test ridden a couple of times with no problems and no error codes came back. The repair was deemed successful.”
I feel a strong sense of gratitude and I deeply respect Biketeam for what they have done! They spent incredible amount of time/ hours to find the problem and they finally did! I really hope that my bike will work now… At least this summer! On 4th of June I was riding by bike back home! Everything was working and bike felt smooth!
This show kind of started when I bought this BMW G650 XChallenge bike. It has so crazy system as the rear suspension/ absorber. The full shock absorption and suspension is made by Continental manufactured Air Dampener that looks like this:
My Air Damping system didn’t keep the pressure anymore so it was time to change it to something better! So I made the change in the winter 2021-2022:
After this change I was riding and enjoying my ride until this years early spring when I suddenly noticed that the Touratech was going to the bottom all the time. I did only about 12000 kilometers with it during these 2 seasons. That Touratech Shock absorber was not working anymore. I sent email to Touratech and they answered right away. They wanted me to send my shock back to the factory. So luckily warranty was still valid! After one week I sent another email and I was asking “What’s happening with my rear shock?” and they answered that maybe next week someone is coming to check it. This was little bit disappointing! But ok, they promised to contact me right away when there was something new happening. But then I started to think “Can I trust this Touratech anymore? Will it break again right away? Could I afford to buy Öhlins??” And quite soon I made the order about Öhlins rear shock (Best in the market?) I got that one very fast and installed it to my bike. I made this ride with the new Öhlins rear shock. But that ride ended in to the pool of oil!!
My bike throwed the oil out! At this point I didn’t know where it was coming from. And when I showed the pictures to few other guys they said it’s so clear oil it must be coming from the brand new Öhlins!! But 2 days later I found the leak from that small oil hose:
After I changed that hose I thought again that everything is ok and I made this amazing 300km ride! But I noticed during that ride that the brand new Öhlins is actually leaking! It was getting softer and softer and all the time there was oil especially under the absorber reservoir and that happened to be the spring of my sidestand. It was soon totally black and wet from the oil that was coming out from the Öhlins! At the moment my bike is in Biketeam Raisio and they are trying to solve some other problems with my bike. I should be removing the Öhlins from my bike and send it maybe to Estonia (I bought it from there) or to TTM Factory. It’s not clear yet if they accept in that company in Estonia from where I bought it that the Öhlins would be serviced here in Finland?? But I’m quite positive that it will be ok!! I also got the message finally from the Touratech thet they sent my shock back to me (fixed!) so I should have it next week! Edit: I got it already today (16th of May)! Quite a show!
The Motorcycle In this case I will talk about the most common (or the best?) possible bikes with couple of examples. There is always many many other possibilities to choose. You should choose the bike that is best for you! A good one would be Yamaha Tenere 700 or Honda CRF300 Rally. The bike should be able to do gravelroads, forestroads and some offroad parts easily. It should be able to do 300km (or more?) of riding without filling the tank. It should carry the rider and all his stuff easily in the motorcycle bags. It should have at least 50/ 50 tyres (Mitas E07, Heidenau K60) but even more offroad oriented are a very good choice!
Motorcycle riding gear Helmet is a must! Enduro or adventure helmet has more airspace in front of the mouth so you will not feel like totally out of breath when you have to do some lifting of the bike.
Other than a helmet I really recommend to have adventure boots (or enduro boots), motorcycle pants with knee and hip protection -the more protection pads the better the pants! Same goes with the jacket! Quite many riders nowadays are rather using a whole protection west/ shirt that you keep closer to your body and the outer jacket/ shirt itself can be very light. I have LS2 MX436 helmet, Forma Terra Evo Low boots, Adventure Spec Supershirt, Rukka motorcycle pants (and few other pants) and Adventure Spec Linesman Jacket.
The GPS device A GPS device to ride TransEuroTrail has to have one certain function. You have to be able to see gpx-track on your map view and your own location. The ordinary car gps or Tomtom doesn’t do this. Here it is explained in TransEuroTrail web page what it could be or should be. You have these options: 1. Cheap android phone with OsmAnd or Locus app (or some other). This phone you will connect to your bike somehow so you can see the screen while you are riding. Problem might be that the brightness of the screen is not enough. This way you can keep your own phone in your pocket and take pictures with it whenever you need. 2. Your own mobile phone attached to the bike with some app to follow the TET track. Nowadays the phones are very expensive and very easily breakable. I’m not recommending this. 3. A tablet with some app to follow GPX track. For example Samsung Active Tab 2. 4. Garmin gps device you can buy a cheap used gps for example here in Finland this morning there was one Garmin gpsmap device with 120€ in tori webpage. The screen is very small in all gpsmap devices so I would recommend Garmin Montana. I was using Garmin Montana 700 for one year. Now I’m using Garmin Zumo XT2.
Now you have everything that you actually need to start riding. But ofcourse then we will start to talk about how long you are going to ride the TET route? What kind of weather it will be? Will you be sleeping in a tent? In the Lean-To? Or in some accommodation? Lets talk about these little bit: Accommodation: I prefer booking.com but airbnb.com or hotels.com are also ok. Lean-To: from the webpage laavu.org you can download the gpx file where you will see pretty much all lean-to shelters and free cabins to stay for the night! (Choose from the menu “Lataa (gpx) – kaikki”) and you will have all these in your gps device. Wild Camping: You can put your tent up pretty much everywhere! Except to someone’s private yard or nearby, to nature preserve or National Park area. National parks usually have only few places where it is ok to do wild camping. Also planted fields or parks are out of question. If you do wild camping it means you will do no harm to the nature, you will leave no trace or marks in the place where you were camping and you will make fire only if you have the permit from the landowner (if there is an actual fireplace then you can do it). And you will not make fire at all if there is a warning about grass or forest fires. Here you can read more about “Everyman’s rights” in Finland: Visit Finland
It feels like spring is very late late! But actually i’ts quite normal that only at the end of March the weather is warm enough and the roads are free from ice and snow. I was able to ride gravel roads yesterday (at least here in the most southern parts of Finland) and it felt so good!! The 90km’s route I made was like this:
And ofcourse I had Insta360 Ace Pro attached to my helmet and I made a video!
GoZa Mite 