This means we had to leave Lago di Garda! What a pitty! But ok there was some dam good roads ride. First to Lago di Valvestino…
You couldn’t much see the lake because it’s so far away below… and the walls are steep! We also stopped for awhile in the beach of Lago d’Idro. This is smaller than Garda but it looked very beautiful!! We also saw the small boat taking passengers from the pier so we only hoped there was time to go onboard! But we had to go on riding! First here’s a Finnish language joke: (Kuvassa on Kauko -niminen kaveri rannalla eli se on Kaukoranta!)
In Lago d’Idro: From the north corner of this lake started the first mountain pass: Croce Domini. This is one of the best mountain passes for me ever! I really liked it!
After this 40 km’s of mountain road we took the SS42 in the valley to get us to Bormio but there was one more mountain road to ride before this “famous city”. Passo del Mortirolo.
The hairpins in the southside of this road are very steep and tight, you can see it in the video from 06:00! We had a short break enjoying the mountainviews and atmosphere in the cafeteria up in the summit of Mortirolo. This was like wisiting someone’s home! Very nice cafeteria!
I also enjoyed the road down from Mortirolo… there was some pretty nice views!
After Mortirolo it was time for Stelvio!
Up in the Summit of Stelvio it was still like +20… So we’re lucky to have this very nice weather today!! But we were not the first Finns here this summer!! Here is “Prätkällä Töihin 2017” Sticker in Stelvio!
Then down with “Umbrail Pass” to Val Mustair and Ofenpass.
And finally for the end of the day the beautiful and fast Flüela Pass.
There’s not too many hairpincorners when you ride up to Fluela… It’s more about having fun and enjoying riding!
Our hotel was in Davos. We had the dinner in one of the most fine hotel-restaurants in the centrum of Davos: Hotel Seehof Davos. The service (and food) was excellent! This was one of the best days in our trip…. Thank You Kauko, Salla, Marko and Maria for sharing it with me!! Here’s the route for day 11:
Ducati
This was about to come one of the hottest days in our tour so it was definately right decision to ride north via Autostrada! And after 2 hours of riding we’re already northside of Milano and riding the shores of Lago di Garda!
In Autostrada we only took short breaks to fill the tanks and riders…
In Garda we had 1 route to ride… The very special “Caveroad of Tremosine” in the westside of the lake. This was amazing short route where the road was sweeping inside the mountain. Here you can see the video of the ride:
And one photo too:
We needed to ride few more miles before our destination…
The Hotel is very much recommended by me and the whole group! (Hotel Residence Panorama di Forca)
The weather was so hot that you couldn’t see the Garda Lake… only some blurry/ foggy view.
But in the night the situation was better!
Also the restaurant in this hotel is very good!
Route for day 10 was like his:
We would leave this beautiful island… oh yes. It would be wise to stay for example 1 week but we want to spend more time those roads in Europe! So early in the morning it’s time to choose same route back to Bastia -harbour. And then take the boat-trip to the mainland (Savona this time). One last picture from Corsica:
This is from this here. We’re riding so early we actually had time to have some kind of breakfast in the cafe near the harbour before the check-in to the boat.
But the trip takes more than 6 hours this time… so definately if you don’t want to put all day to your boat trip it’s better to choose Livorno – Bastia route.
We will be in Italy mainland about 6 a’clock in the afternoon… And the food is not cheap i the boat!
Then from Savona we had a nice ride through countryside… Lots of nice twisty small roads with nice scenery every now and then.
The hotel was in Ovada… Pretty nice hotel with garage but without restaurant.
This day is impossible to show in the map! Googlemap doesn’t simply show any routes that follows D81b (From Galeria to Calvi) but this is the route we took and we really enjoyed it!!
First we stopped for a swim in the lonely beach! There were other people too but really not too many! Then we kind of separated… I found a castle that was very interesting!
There was a group of tourists listening on a guy who was talking and talking… But finally I got some information that this was a castle of Pierre Bonaparte who was a “ruler” of a Corsica for awhile.
Little bit north from this castle there was also a Chapel in a very beautiful area. There was also a beautiful road to this chapel with a huge helmet!
Besides these the road D81b offered very beautiful views to the sea in many places!!
In Calvi we chose pizzeria to eat something -it was one of the best pizzas is this tour. In the evening we choose a restaurant near our hotel -it was a beautiful place but for me the salad was very bad choice! (Restaurant Grill Ponte Vecchiu is recommended by my friends but not by me!)
We’re in the paradise island. What should we do? Go to the beach? Go to have some summer activities? Jet Ski maybe? No… Lets go ride a motorcycle!
I made a route almost 300km’s long and we started riding that. First south from Galeria: These parts are so nice ride with magnificant views to the sea almost all the time. And finally the Col de Palmarella with sensational views to the both sides of the island! Southside from Golfe de Porto we found the the rock-formations of Les Calanques de Piana. But as excepted this area is quite full of people!
We only stopped for awhile to take some pictures and we continued more south towards Col de Vergio. This is the highest mountain pass in Corsica island (With altitude of 1477m).
It was very funny to ride these areas of Corsica! The road was sweeping nicely through Pinetree-forest and the forest was full of pigs! For some reason you don’t see the pigs in my video because they stay at the shadows but here is one pic…
The eastside of Vergio is actually a very beautiful (and dangerous) Canyonroad with very narrow places and tight/ steep corners!
In Ponte Leccia we tried to find a place to eat…. But not a very good success! We found only Panini and waitress dropped one of them to my lapp and then she pushed her fingers to Maria’s (or Salla’s) Cola! Not a very good day for her I guess? Here’s the route for day 7:
Unfortunately we didn’t have time to get to know the city of Ravenna -I bet it would’ve been beautiful!
We took the big road to south and San Marino. The streets of San Marino are full with very expensive cars! We stopped on the “Other side of the mountain” when we saw some possible places to park the bikes. But there was no cafe or even a grocery store!
The roads on the westside of San Marino… OMG! They are nice! There’s a corner after corner, twist after twist and some very nice views all the time!
Ducati Monster went straight to Ducati service in Ravenna. They couldn’t fix the starter but they did fix the rear brake! (Not the brakedisc though…)
From motocaching we marked “as found” these:
San Marino from southwest, Passo dei Mandrioli and SR70 Consuma
But the whole route from San Marino to Livorno is excellent riding!! There’s not much traffic, the scenery and views are great and you will certainly enjoy riding! I really recommend these roads!
The pink decorations are there because it was the 100th Giro d’Italia this may.
Video compilation of the day 5:
This was the route for the day 5:
Now we’re getting in the business! We’re in the middle of the mountains and at least half of the days route is mountain passes! Videocamera was on many times. First time was already from the yard of our guesthouse… this was very narrow and twisty road down to Tristach village like this:
After few kilometers there was also police checking the speed before we were in Italy and one of us got the ticket (35€ for speeding 94@80)! Then after the country changed to Italy we had nothing but mountains ahaed!
Lake Misurina, Passo Tri Croci, Passo Giau… Here’s compilation of these rides:
Ducati Monster rearbrakes are getting quite hot… in 02:30 -Check it!
Finally in the top of Passo Giau we had some time to enjoy the views:
We still had some very nice rides to do! Passo Staulanza (it was raining while we’re riding this) and Passo Duran.
Up in Duran there was a bar with a fireplace inside… We could make ourselves cozy and warm!
The previous video ends in a roadwork that we couldn’t ride through. But after waiting few minutes the workingmen said that there is detour so we can continue without waiting… And we found this detour (or a shortcut)!
Then we had only the very beautiful route of Lago di Mis and then mountains were gone… and our day had just begun!
Couple hours later in the village of Castagnole the Ducati Monster didn’t start anymore!! The starter engine was broken! Also my BMW had problems with the temperature, it went easily over 105-107 degrees and that is not ok!!
We try to figure out what to do with Ducati and there was some local who called to some guy who had a mc-service. And finally Ducati was pushed to start it and it went alone to this service.
My BMW’s overheating was worse all the time since it was about 5 in the afternoon and the traffic in Italy is very slow! If you really don’t have to ride the small roads in the north side of Venice… it’s better to choose autostrada!!
Soon I said that lets go straight to autostrada so we will not waist more time… I also said that everyone can ride their own speed and tempo but I saw other bikes many times in the way to Ravenna (except the Monster wich was in the service).
Finally about 9pm I was in the hotel in Ravenna (about 12 hours of riding!) and in 5 minutes all the other bikes were there too! Also the Monster arrived because it had chosen the fastest possible route to Ravenna. After this evening we had to push to start the Monster everytime! (They couldn’t fix the starter in the service)
The route for the day was supposed to be like this… But depending on a bike it was probably different.
There was one more rider waiting for us in the Schwerin accomodation and then we were 5 riders to conquer the Europe! The last bike to the group is black Triumph Street Triple.
We checked the Schwerin castle already early in the morning!
This is the castle itself.
The day was about riding many kilometers and quite a lot about taking it in Autobahn. In the middle of the day there was some rain too -it surprised us and we got a little bit wet! The route was 650km’s to the southside of the Danube river in Regensburg. It was a nice sunset from the hotel window!
The route was like this:
It was monday the 26th of June when me and 3 friens of mine took the boat from Helsinki to Travemunde (Germany).
We had 4 red bikes (Ducati Monster 695, Ducati Streetfighter 1100, Yamaha MT-09 Tracer and BMW S1000XR) to ride with next three weeks.
The boat trip takes over 1 day and there’s nothing to do (except to eat!) And maybe go outside and take some pictures:
This was 4am in the morning when the sun was getting up from the northeast. One of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever seen! Tuesday 27th of June the boat was almost 1,5 hours late in the harbour of Travemunde and we had 70km’s to ride to our first destination. It was a beautiful city of Schwerin where we had a place to stay for the night. The route was like this:
With motorcycle
This was a dream come true finally for me! I’ve been to Åland few times with a car (last time was 17 years ago!) but now I got there with my motorcycle. This is the 4 days trip to Åland (Swedish)/ Aland (English)/ Ahvenanmaa (Finnish).
Åland is here and to get there with a motorcycle you need to take a ferry from Stockholm, Helsinki or Turku… Or a small ferry from Korppoo (Galtby) or from Kustavi (Vuosnainen). If you use these ferries the idea is to spend the night in some small islands before you go to the main island -and that’s what we did.
But before we took the boat from Korppoo we spent the night there in Faffas. They had a very nice cabin near the sea!
And then 10am it was time for a boat (ferry). This trip (to Föglö island) takes 4 hours!
In Föglö we had lot of time to get to know the island. It’s not very big! There’s actually only 1 road that goes through the island.
But there is also a very beautiful church and quite interesting hiking path in this island. Our accomodation in Föglö was Degerby Mat & Cafe.
Next morning the ferry to the main island left the Föglö at 9am. This was 30min trip.
And the first route was a detour from the mainroad to some villages in Högskär.
Then we rode to the southside of the “capitol of Åland” (Mariehamn), this was a beautiful road through islands.
After this road we rode to the eastside of the main island. First we had this very nice road with some nice bends and then we visited the fire station museum (but it was closed).
Then sun was shining so brightly and weather was too hot (about +13 celsius) so I had to go swimming! Did it here. Water was maybe +8… (You can also see a picture of me going swimming here!) We took a short break in Käringsund.
Then we visited Sålis Batteri, this is some fortifications that Russians built even they should not do it. Åland was a demilitarized already 50-60 years before!
From the east parts of the main island we moved to north with this road.
In the north we visited the Getaberget (and the tower), Havsvidden (with some nice views too) -this place had a great road!
And finally visited the Stallhagen Brewery and I bought 2 bottles of beer.
This was the first day on the main island of Åland, we spent the night is Strandnäs Hotel.
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Next morning I took a short tour in Mariehamn (This city has about 11500 inhabitants).
Then we started the ride of the day. First we rode to north (again) because there was still few places to visit. First there was Road of Tjudö -this is maybe the best road (for motorcycling) in Åland! It’s definately worth riding!
Then we rode to one small harbour again. This was Hamnsundet with small cafeteria (not yet open).
After this we took the most famous cafeteria in the island (Uffe På Berget). The altitude in the top of the tower is more than 50 meters above sealevel!
And then we went to the castle! There is only 1 middleage castle in Åland, it’s called Kastelholma.
This took about 1 hour to walk through the museum and there was some very interesting stories about the people who lived here (or were prisoners). After castle we rode this road: Road of Sund. This was with 2km’s of gravel.
And for the last place we visited Bomarsund fortress. This has very interesting story which ends with Ålands demilitarization in 1856 (In Treaty of Paris).
Then we took the ferry to Kumlinge island at 5pm and we stay the night in Kumlinge Stugor. Next morning we visited Kumlinge church, Kumlinge mountain (Vårholmsböte) and rode the best motorcycle road in Kumlinge…
The ferry took us to Brändö islands (4-5 islands in group) and there you have to ride through these beautiful landscapes of the archipelago sea. What a road this is!
Our trip in Åland ended about 3pm when the ferry arrived in Vuosnainen in the north side of Turku. (But there is still 1 more ferry after this!).
You can ride the most beautiful places in the main island of Åland in 1 day. But I really recommend that you take your time at least in Kastelholma castle and in Bomarsund fortress. So it should be at least 2 days. And if you have the possibility to visit the small islands too… Then you’ll really know what is it all about! ********* (Gotta go there again some day!)
GoZa Mite 