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!
Empty shopping mall Zsar This shopping mall was opened in November 2018. Already in december 2020 it was in debt restructuring and in october 2022 the company went bankrupt. Now this amazing building is standing empty just beside the TET Track in the beginning of the section 4. The POI is called “Zsar shopping Mall (empty)”
Kruununpuisto landscape Finland’s first nature reserve Kruununpuisto-park in Imatra is established in 1842. In the same island are the best views of the dam and the old banks of the river/ rapids. The POI in the TET gpx is called “Oldest nature preserve in Finland” or “Imatra Dam”. This park is just beside the TET track.
Parikkala Sculpture park Freak statues! Some even think they are scary… Entrance fee is 7€. The POI in TET gpx is called “Parikkala sculpture park” and it’s just beside the TET track.
Öykköistenvaara Battle Zone This is a perfect place to learn a little about the battles of the Second World War on the Finnish front line. You are free to walk around the area that was built by local volunteers. The POI in TET gpx is called “Öykköistenvaara Battle Zone”.
Most Eastern point of continental EU This would be the most eastern point of the Continental EU. You are now 60km east from St. Petersburg. If you want to go further east in EU you need to visit Cyprus. The POI in TET gpx is called “Most Eastern point of EU”. The TET track takes you as far as you can ride. Then there is still a short hiking trail to the shore of the lake from where you can see the actual point.
Neitikoski/ Ruunaa rapids Ruunaa is a huge area for hiking, fishing or rafting. In the TET gpx file there is one suspension bridge POI but the main place to visit would be the Ruunaa outdoor center and the Neitikoski rapids close to this place. You need to ride 4,5km east from the track and the POI is called “Ruunaa rapids”. You can leave your bike to the parking area beside the outdoor center or somewhere close. The trail to the Neitikoski is very near and easy to find.
Tyrvää medieval church About 100km’s after the section 2 start you will ride through Sastamala city. This church is 3km after the city. POI in TET gpx-file has the same name. You need to ride about 1km away from the track to enter the place. The church is located on an island and it’s very beautiful place! Maybe churches is not your thing? But I recommend this place anyway -especially in the evening/ sunset it can be extremely beautiful.
Haapamäki Steam Locomotive Park About 335km from the start of Section 2 You will enter Haapamäki city where this place is located. The POI is called “Steamtrain park”. It claims to be the biggest Steam locomotive park in the world!
Ähtäri Zoo They don’t have Pandas anymore!! POI has the same name. If you want to visit I think it will be at least 3 hours. Ticket to the Zoo is for 1 day (21-23€).
Tuuri Shopping Mall 28km west from Ähtäri Zoo there is the biggest shopping mall of Finland. The story begins in 1976 when the small grocery store started in Tuuri village.
Hepoköngös Waterfall This waterfall is in Puolanka about 15km west from the TET track. It’s one of the most famous waterfalls in Finland!
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 Tab Active3. 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.
The Latest TET Finland GPX file This file you can download ONLY from TransEuroTrail webpage! File has 21 sections at the moment. (Check my post about different sections here!) But the tracks and the file is updating all the time so you must check that you have the latest update.
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
I bought myself a new GPS device. The main reason was that my Montana couldn’t get the power anymore from the original motorcycle holder. I already removed the wires and I was thinking that I will charge it only with USB wire but that ofcourse brings more problems. And when I realised that I had the opportunity to buy Garmin Zumo XT2 I decided to take it. I hear the XT2 has same kind of problems with the power connection so now I’m waiting to have the same peoblems soon. Hopefully not in this summer yet!
The winter started very early (last november!) And quite many years lately the spring didn’t come early or not even in the ordinary time (around mid march). But this year maby it’s early? At least I was actually doing a proper motorcycle ride already in 24th of February!
My ride was mostly about testing the Sena Spider ST1 helmet phone as the microphone. But I was also testing the remote controller (GPS Preview Remote) which is very easy to use and it gives also the GPS data to your video if you want to use it. A week later I was riding again!
This morning (06th of March 2024) it was -8° so maybe we still need to wait?!
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The winter motorcycling is quite challenging! First you’re collecting the best and warmest clothes to put on you. You get dressed up for 1 hour (or something) and then you go out without even knowing if the bike will start?
I was really waiting this kind of weather! The frozen ground makes the gravel roads little bit slippery (Or too slippery like you will see later in this post!) and the riding is more challenging! I took this kind of route yesterday:
I wanted to ride the forest roads near that Iso-Kisko lake and I wanted to see the swimming place and fire place of that lake. I only saw that place once and that was in the middle of the winter -at least now it would be little bit earlier!
Here was the first crossroads where I found the road that I didn’t ride before.
That road had some beautiful views right under the powerline that has no electric current! The line comes from Inkoo Powerplant that was demolished few years ago.
Then I was in another city (Salo) and district (Varsinais-Suomi). That road was just maintained and plowed so there was loose gravel and stones on the surface and right under this loose surface there was frozen layer… It was very slippery! And even I said to myself many times “Be careful, It’s very slippery!” This happened:
For a second I was little bit frightened that I was hurt! I was winded and it felt like there’s something wrong. But it lasted only few seconds and then I pulled myself up and started to my move my hands and shoulders. It felt like everything was ok! I had to ride to the gas station because I needed to fix the foot peg that was stuck on the “Up position”.
This picture I took little bit later when I was already riding back home. The whole adventure video you can see here:
Last week in Milano was again the biggest motorcycle exhibition in the world: Eicma 2023 This time there were many new models that are interesting and I will introduce few of them here. Honda NX500
CB500X will be NX500 from now on. The technical specs will be pretty much the same than in CB500X. But the look will be very close to it’s bigger brother 750 TransAlp.
Royal Enfield 450 Himalayan
New Himalayan will be much lighter and much more adventure ready! 40 hp, 195kg and 21 inch front wheel tells quite a lot about this bike. But if you really want to know more check ItchyBoots YouTube channel, she’s riding this bike already in India even it’s not in full production yet.
Kove 800X Super Adventure
Kove bikes are hardly sold in Finland yet! But they have a dealer here and it will be very interesing to see these!! It has almost 100hp and it weights 185kg! These specs are pretty much everything that all the adventure riders are expecting about the bike.
Triumph Tiger 900 Rally
This is still one of my favorite bikes! I did only a short test ride with it few years ago. Now they made it even better! It has now 106hp and it weights 228kg. I would say it’s totally ready for long long adventures!
And then 2 bike models that were introduced but only as a street models. And everyone is waiting the adventure model to be revealed very soon or at least next year at EICMA.
Ducati Hypermotard 698 Mono
First time in 30 years Ducati presents one cylinder engine! But what a beast it is! It has 77hp and the bike weights 151kg! There has been already artist drawings about the Enduro model:
I can say I like it very much!!
KTM 990 Duke
KTM has mad adventure models from every street models so it’s pretty obvious that there will be 990 adventure! This has 123hp and the bike weights 180kg (dry weight).
I’ve been riding Adventure and Enduro about 10 years. TET Linesman of Finland I’ve been now 2,5 years. The more I’ve been riding the more it is not clear to me where you can ride and where it is not OK? Finland Roads and Traffic act says that it is OK ride to ride on the road -It is not OK to ride outside the road (OffRoad). But the problem is about the fact “What is the road?” But I also have quite clear thoughts how it should be! What the road owners should do… We have quite many possible traffic signs and they should use more of those! Like I’m saying in the video: The amount of road users is getting bigger and bigger (OffRoad car drivers, ATV riders and adventure motorcycle riders) so it is obvious that the private forest roads cannot stay unused forever. If you don’t want other road users there you need to put the traffic sign to your road!
GoZa Mite 