BMW motorrad

Ride to Hiiumaa & Saaremaa

Posted by gozamite on 15.6.2019

Posted in: adventure, BMW, BMW motorrad, Make life a ride!, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, motorrad, S1000XR. Tagged: BMW S1000XR, Estonia, Hiiumaa, Saaremaa, Saarenmaa. Leave a comment

We took the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn on wednesday 29th of may. This was my first time with Eckeröline M/S Finlandia.

The ferry arrived to Tallinn 5.30PM so we didn’t have time to visit many places or ride too far. But we did check something…

First was this viewing platform only about 23 kilometers west from harbour. Quite nice views to the Gulf of Finland!

Then we stopped at Keila Waterfall. There is very nice park in this area and you can easily spend 1 hour or more there. We enjoyed it very much!

We arrived to our place for the night around eight PM, so we still had time to check the restaurant nearby. We will not recommend this Günther kohvik to anyone!

Second day started with a ride to Paldiski city… Or actually we wanted to see the Pakri lighthouse and the cliffs behind the city.

We continued riding west and soon were filling the tank near Haapsalu town. I noticed that I didn’t have my wallet in my pocket and also that someone was trying to call me… I called back and it was the owner of the previous BnB and she told that my wallet was there! First I was little bit in panic -I thought we needed to go back to get the wallet but then we tried my wifes Debit card if it was working in Estonia… and it was perfectly ok. She also said that she had some cash so we could easily get along next 2-3 days and we could go back to get my wallet on saturday evening when we were already coming back.
So now with full tank of 95 octane gasoline we checked the Haapsalu castle.

Quite a lot of renovation going on in the castle

After about 20 minutes walk around the area we continued to the airport:

This is old military airport and it is not in use anymore. Sometimes they are having some dragraces for cars or for bikes… but mostly it’s empty and you can easily try how fast your bike can go! I didn’t take my bags off so I did only 150km/h.
Just beside the airport is quite nice ruins of old manor (Ungru manor). The owner started to build the house for his loved one…. But then she died and soon the owner died too and house was never finished!

Then we rode to the Port of Rohuküla to wait for the ferry to Hiiumaa. It gave is nicely about 40 minutes time to relax while the ferry was sailing to the port of Heltermaa. But already berore 3pm we were checking the next place: The abandoned church of Paluküla.

Church was abandoned during WW II but nowadays it has new roof!

Then we took the road “Tahkuna Tee” or road number 113. This is definitely the best ride in Hiiumaa island. It takes you to Tahkuna lighthouse and behind this lighthouse there is memorial monument of M/S Estonia accident that happened in September 28, 1994. This memorial is especially for the children who died in this tragic disaster.

Very nice location for a simple memorial!

Next we checked some kind of adventure park (?!)

…and the EIffel Tower, size is 10x smaller than original

This park is built by one person and it is kind of private place. But after he built this Eiffel everyone wanted to see the place and climb to the tower!
We didn’t climb there because we had another tower to climb!

Kõpu lighthouse is probably the third oldest lighthouse in the world that is still operational! It is 36 meters high and the first staircase is about 22 meters straight climb. 1 stair is about 40 cm’s high so it is quite difficult climb for a small person.
The railling on the top is totally too low (for me) -I was pretty much only sitting beside the tower and not going close to the edge. I think I could faint if I would go there!

To Imatra and Back

Posted by gozamite on 25.4.2019

Posted in: BMW motorrad, DJI Mavic, Drone, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycling. Tagged: Huuhanranta, Imatra, IRRC, Jäppilänniemi, Miehikkälä. Leave a comment

Easter we spent in Imatra. Riding there was like this:

The nicest place to stop and look around was in Taavetti. There is an old fortress that was originally built in the end of 18th century.

In Imatra I had to take the picture of the famous “Valtionhotelli”
(State Hotel)

Next day we did some riding near Imatra but also to the middle of Saimaa (The biggest lake of Finland)

This is from IRRC track. The Imatra IRRC is in June 14-16th

Very nice (and old) Belltower in Ruokolahti

This is from Jäppilänniemi -very beautiful lake views!

On the day when we had to ride back it was quite cold so we chose mainly the big road when we started to feel too chilly. The way back to Helsinki was something like this:

At least I took 1 picture of 1 church (in Miehikkälä)

Here is the video compilation of the drone flights I made in Easter:

MP Messut 2019

Posted by gozamite on 2.2.2019

Posted in: BMW motorrad, enduro, Honda, KTM, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycle, motorcycling. Tagged: Adventure bikes, BMW, ktm, Motorcycle exhibition, motorcycles, mp-messut, suzuki, Triumph, yamaha. Leave a comment

Helsinki Motorcycle exhibition 2019

This time it was very interesting! There was so many new models it felt like there’s no time enough to get to know all of them. Luckily I’m not a big fan of sportbikes… So few bikes wasn’t so interesting to me.

1. KTM 790 Adventure
Maybe the biggest group of interested viewers was around this bike. It’s no wonder. The bike looks very good! It has hew parallel twin engine that KTM introduced last year. The engine has little bit less power than in 790 Duke but of course the torque is better is all rpm’s. Bike has almost all possible electronics: traction control, cornering abs, offroad abs, ridemodes and so on. It has 20 litres tank that gives the bike easily more than 400 km’s range on the road. Tank is placed around the engine so the center of gravity is very low. Price for this bike is 18500€ in Finland!

It was difficult to take pictures of this bike! There was so much people all around it all the time.

2. Yamaha 700 Tenere
Another adventurebike but totally different kind of idea! This is simple, not too much electronics and it looks more ready for an OffRoad ride! It’s almost 6000€ cheaper than KTM! The final price is still open but they said it will not be more than 12800€! 200mm travel is not much but they’ve tested this bike quite long time so I guess they think it’s enough. 16 liters tank gives this bike more than 300 km’s range.

It should’ve been white-red bike in the show!

But this look very good! It calls me to make an offroad ride right now!

3. BMW R1250GS
And here is another adventurebike but yet again totally different kind of thinking. This is legend of all touring/ adventurebikes but now it has bigger engine, more power and torque and it’s again more expensive. It has simply everything you can ever imagine the bike could have… -Ok, no reverse gear or automatic gearbox but anyway.
The price for adventure version is more than 31000€ in Finland

4. Suzuki Katana
Suzuki makes a nice return to interesting and “modern” bikes. But the funny thing is that the design is very retro when it is based on 80’s Katana.
The engine they take from GSX-S1000F so it delivers very nice power and easy riding. And the way it looks it will always give strong feelings to all pure motorcyclists!

5. Triumph 1200 SpeedTwin
Triumph presents new line with 1200 Twin engine. The bike still looks totally retro but the engine is now more like modern and sporty. It delivers 96 hp with 112Nm torque in 4950rpm. Compare this with T100 engine: 64hp and 80Nm in 3800rpm -you can say that there is a big difference.

You can see more pictures here.

Nice Trip (Day 4)

Posted by gozamite on 28.11.2018

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Make life a ride!, Moottoripyöräily, Serpentine, Travel, Video. Tagged: Col de Braus, La Turbie, Menton, Monaco, Peille, Trophy of Augustus. Leave a comment

Again they promised rain! But it didn’t look too bad when we started riding. Short stop to take a picture in Col de Eze:

We were riding around in Monaco and checked few places there. But didn’t take any nice pictures. And after Menton we continued to Italy… but there it was raining!

View from Sant’Antonio to Latte village and Mediterranean

So we didn’t stay there too long. We came back to La Turbie and decided to go and check the Trophy of Augustus. Just beside the entrance there is a nice viewing point and a perfect view to Monaco!

Then with the fee of 6€ we checked this Trophy that was built 6BC!!!
Read more about the trophy here.

Trophy is just a “small” building with balcony for the Emperor Augustus

Then it was already quite nice weather and we continued riding to the mountains. Right from the La Turbie village starts nice road to Peille village and we chose this one!

After Peille it was time for Col de Braus.

And right after this Col de l’Ablé.

Road to Col de l’Ablé is very narrow (from south)

Pitty that it was already afternoon and we had to return the bike to MotorBikeTrip. But we had very nice time riding the roads near to City of Nice! We will be back!
In the evening we were walking in the city and we saw this beautiful Church -Notre-Dame de Nice:

Full name is Basilique Notre-Dame de l’Assomption

Next day it was only about breakfast, packing and flight back to cold Helsinki… And my wife made a nice video of this day:

Here is the route for this day:

Nice Trip (Day 3)

Posted by gozamite on 22.11.2018

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, Mountain Road, Video. Tagged: Alpes Maritima, BMW F700GS, Cote d'Azur, F700GS, French Alps, Verdon Canyon, Verdon Gorge. Leave a comment

We woke up quite early and went to the breakfast. We saw from the News that it had been snowing in France (in northern parts) -There was hundreds of cars stuck in some highway. Weather forecast promised us a beautiful sunny day so I wasn’t worried…
F700GS started after 9am and we were heading west/ northwest. First stop was at Col de Vence. The views to the mediterranean sea were very nice when we were climbing up. But on the top we couldn’t see the sea any more. The nature was interesting -especially the rocks!

Col de Vence has own webpages. It’s because people have seen quite a lot of paranormal activity here. Stories has been collected in coldevence.com.

Soon after this mountain Pass it was time to stop again. This is the beautiful village of Coursegoules.

Even the sun was shining it didn’t feel too warm…

Short stop after Andon, temperature was about +4

Few kilometers before our final destination it was about the time to stop again. There was a beautiful view to the village Trigance.

From here started maybe the most amazing 80km’s of my life!!

7 kilometers from this view was another view. This time the road was on the edge of Verdon Gorge! It was about 250 meters down to the river Verdon… At one spot there was a balcony (viewing place) to look down -There I almost fainted! Last time this happened to me in 2013 in Dalsnibba (Norway).

The Canyon of Verdon is one of the most spectacular river canyons in Europe. On the northside it is 700 meters deep!
On the northside of the canyon there is a looproad starting from the Village La Palud-sur-Verdon. This is about 25km’s of spectacular views -not recommended for those who has the fear of heights!
In one viewing point we even had eagles flying over our heads!!

It took about 3 hours all together to ride both the south and the northside of Verdon Gorge. Then it was time to ride back to Nice!
On the way back we chose the big roads… But it didn’t mean that we didn’t see anything special… Just it wasn’t as good as that Canyon!
Here is the video my wife made about this day:

The route for this day was like this:

Nice Trip (Day 2)

Posted by gozamite on 20.11.2018

Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, Mountain Road. Tagged: BMW F700GS, Cote d'Azur, F700GS, French Alps, GS Adventure. Leave a comment

After very good sleep and breakfast we took a morning walk in a little bit wet streets of Nice. Rue de Rivoli was the direction about 2km’s away. There was MotorBikeTrip store where I had reservation for bike (3 days) -This was the bike:
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BMW F700GS
I didn’t ride this bike too much before and I have to say that the suspension is not good enought for 2. But I tried to adjust the preload tighter so that it wouldn’t hit the bottom all the time… Then we changed the full riding gear and started riding!
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It was still little bit wet in 500 meters high Col d’Eze between Nice and Monaco.
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In Menton the beach Boulevard is called The Sunny Promenade -but we had a little bit of rain…

We were standing in the mediterranean beach for awhile and I made a video there.
From Menton we started to climb up to the Mountains. I have been riding here before but back in 2016 it was too hot! Now it was quite nice weather.
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This bridge is a part of an old tramline between Menton and Sospel. Tram was in use from 1912 to 1930. This bridge is called “Viaduc du Caramel”.
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We stopped at Sospel to take few pictures. This made me think how sad it is when every place is now closed. No open cafeterias or restaurants… These cities and villages live only in the summertime.
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Climbing up to Col de Turini… Beautiful nature everywhere!
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Up on the top of of Turini it was raining quite heavily and we were inside the cloud.
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The visibility wasn’t too good!
Luckily under the clouds we could some more… But the rain didn’t stop.
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The steep mountain walls of this area are amazing… even on a foggy weather! This is Col Saint-Roch.

Route for the day 1 was like this:

My wife made a nice video about this day:

1 night mototrip in September

Posted by gozamite on 10.11.2018

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Make life a ride!, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycling, S1000XR. Tagged: BMW S1000XR, Heinola, Hyvinkää, Kalkkinen, Kalkkisten kanava, Pulkkilanharju. Leave a comment

Me and my wife did a 1 night trip in 7th – 8th of September. I chose a small cabin from Aurantola and then it was only about how to ride there and back.
The first day ride was like this:

Here’s some pictures from Hyvinkää, Pulkkilanharju, Kalkkisten kanava, Heinola and Aurantola resort.
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