New update of TransEuroTrail Finland was published on tuesday 5th of december. And surprise! There was 1 totally new section added. This would be the section 21 on the north side of Tulppio and quite many Finnish adventure riders have heard about this “Kemihaaran huoltotie” or the service road of Kemihaara. It is mainly for snowmobiles and ATV’s but ofcourse adventure and enduroriders have found it too… Not so long ago it wasn’t very easy to ride through:
But last summer they built new bridges to those most difficult river crossings and now it should be fairly easy… Unless… We don’t know what will happen this winter and next spring when all the snow and ice is melting! How many bridges will be gone?
New section 21 is 60 kilometers and the east side is the official road to Kemihaara and the west side is the “OffRoad” part -so called “Service Road of Kemihaara”
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:
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!
It’s been a long time since I called other riders to join my ride. But now I did it. 12 bikes started from Veikkola and interesting detail was that there was no more bike models than 1 of each! We had: 2 x BMW, 2 x Husqvarna, 3 x Honda, 2 x KTM and 3 x Yamaha.
The group of “Pohjolan Kurapyöräilijät” (Nordic Dirt Riders) had so much! Here’s the video:
This summer was third time for this amazing AdventureBike event in Himos! I’m lucky and very happy I can be one of the Team Leaders -This time for red – black routes (Team 13). Here’s the video how I made it to the event:
Then after one day of resting and chilling out at Himos it was time for some action! Thursday was the first day for riding!
That first ride on thursday was very fun!! On the next day I did it with the group and it was much more difficult! We made 25 kilometers in 2 hours! That episode is here:
When I was planning the routes and sections of TET Finland I definitely wasn’t thinking that we would end up being the second longest TET route in Europe!! But here we are: 1. France 13,300 km (29 sections) 2. Finland 9700 km (20 sections) 3. Poland 9600 km (14 sections) 4. Spain 8400 km (27 sections) 5. Turkey 6500 km (20 sections) 6. UK 6400 km (21 sections) 7. Georgia 4900 km (29 sections) 8. Greece 4600 km (15 sections) 9. Italy 3900 km (17 sections) 10. Estonia 3300 km (10 sections) 11. Sweden 3300 km (6 sections) 12. Hungary 3250 km (11 sections) 13. Bulgaria 3000 km (11 sections) 14. North Macedonia 2400 km (11 sections) 15. Norway 2250 km (4 sections)
Total length of all tracks is 100,039 km (September 2023)
Day started with morning swim, breakfast and packing the bike. Before 9 AM I was ready to start riding!
Weather forecast looked quite bad fot the afternoon so I wanted to ride as far as possible before the rain. After Savonlinna there was a long challenging part. In the video this starts at 06:00. I took 1 picture in that part:
Luckily that wasn’t so hard because I was able to go around! After Juva there was quite long and little bit boring part with ordinary Finnish countryside roads and I got my first raindrops… I decided to put on the rainsuit. But while I was putting the rain gear I noticed the front wheel! There was 2 new spokes broken and they were just beside the previous ones. So now I had 4 spokes missing from a very short part of the rim. I was thinking right away that I can’t continue riding with this bike! My holiday adventure ended there… About 150km’s before Jyväskylä. Called a towing car and got a ride to Mikkeli and took the train back home…
This was the route for the day:
And the entire adventure looked like this on the map:
On saturday I hade a meeting in Lahti so I started planning the route to ride there. The spring was already so far that there was no ice and snow anymore except in few places. But I could ride through from all the places and I didn’t turn back anywhere. Here was my route to Lahti:
It was all together almost 300 kilometers for saturday. And it was really nice route and very enjoyable ride! I visited one friend in Orimattila to sleep the night there. Here’s the video from Day 1:
On sunday I first did a ride to Mankala Power Plant and from there I turned “back home”. But the route was about checking the Section 6 of TransEuroTrail Finland that I will share later. That turned out to be very nice route also!! Even less ice and snow than on saturday. I’m sorry but I’m not sharing the picture of the route because it will be published later in TET. Here’s the video from Day 2:
The best picture of the weekend is from sunday. This really made me smile!
I hope I will have a chance to do more these kind of longer trips this year!! I really enjoyed this so much.
YES! Spring is NOT around the corner, it’s here finally! So many plans made and so many routes to check. TET Finland will be even better soon! But lets start with the local roads and tracks. First ride was on Good Friday (Pitkäperjantai):
Second ride was on saturday:
And on that ride we had a good laugh (I fell with the bike)!
Notice: Insta360 selfie stick is not made for enduro riding! Ihave now had it 3 times in my bike and it’s now bended. I can hardly open it or close it. I wonder is there any better ones?