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:
From Karjaa to Lahti
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:
From Orimattila to Mankala and from There back to Karjaa
The best picture of the weekend is from sunday. This really made me smile!
Alive Children
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):
Good Ride on Good Friday
Second ride was on saturday:
Saturday with some more OffRoad parts
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?
Helsinki Motorcycle Exhibition first time in 3 years!!
There was 3 bikes that were extremely interesting for me: Aprilia Tuareg 660, Honda XL 750 TransAlp and Ducati Desert X But lots of other nice bikes too!
Aprilia Tuareg is lighter than Yamaha Tenere 700 (187kg dry weight) but the engine delivers about same power than Yamaha. It seems to have more offroad capabilities and surprisingly low seat (86cm).
To the same “middle weight adventure bikes” comes Honda XL750 Transalp. It’s about same weight than Yamaha Tenere 700 but the engine delivers more power (90hp!) Seat is also quite low in this (86cm).
Ducati Desert X is bigger than those “middle weight” bikes. It has 900 cubic engine with 110hp! And it weights only little bit more than 200kg’s. This would be very very interesting bike to ride TET Finland all around!
It’s not very difficult to guess that New Honda Transalp will be on top of the list about sold new bikes. Let’s hope it is trustworthy bike for the new owners!
There’s alrady new routes (sections) made… but we need to check everything before anything will be published. Here are the plans:
So there will be these new sections – Tikkakoski to Juva and from Juva (via Savonlinna) to Parikkala – Porvoo (via Juva) to Suonenjoki – Section 2 will have new route going from the westside of Tampere – From Siikainen to Kyröskoski (between sections 2 and 3) – From Yli-Ii to Taivalkoski (Between 2 and 3) – From Tornio to Muonio (Final part of section 3)
At the moment TET Finland looks like this. It is impossible to say when these will be published but we will start checking them pretty soon after all the snow is gone! At the moment it looks like it’s going to be before march!?!
Thew web page for this years MAD is now open. Only in few days more than half of the bookings is already made! Today 6th of January there is 90 free places -so I’m guessing it will be sold out very soon! Make you reservation here!
Check some pictures from last years event Here! and my story in this blog you check Here!
We’re actually going back in time to September 25th when I was riding with my friend Lauri from Karjalohja to Muurla direction. This was one of the best rides this year!
Here’s the video of that days ride!
But after about 150km’s My bike wasn’t running properly anymore! The idle running was ok but when I tried to twist the gas it started banging and didn’t take more rpm’s. My friend behind me said that there is gas smelling. We had some tools and we opened my airbox to check if the problem is there? It wasn’t… So I decided to give it a try and that was the correct decision because after few km’s I was able to ride normally…
Trying to give more GAS!
So we were able to ride the whole day but the problem didn’t disappear! One friend of mine took the bike and I asked the he would do “full service” in the same time as he was trying to find what was the problem. He had the the error reader so he just plugged the tablet that was connected to my bike and we got this:
The Speed sensor (RPM) is actually the same than so called crankshaft position sensor that gives the signal to the ignition. So it was no wonder that the engine didn’t run properly anymore. But was the sensor broken? Or was the problem somewhere else? After the engine cover was taken off from the right side it was easy to see what was the problem! The whole sensor was covered with some small parts of metal or metal dust. I had done the last oil-change already more than 2 years ago (and 8000 km’s) so it was a good warning about what happens if you don’t do service often enough! After new oil (Motul 5100 4T 15W-50), new oil-filter, new spark plugs, new air-filter and new coolant water my bike was running perfectly again! So no sensors were broken.
I’ve been the Linesman of Finland now little bit over a year. When I started I didn’t have anything else in my mind except to add more nice routes to TET Finland but during this summer 2022 I finally realized the “Goal” to reach: Finland can be or should be one of the main adventure countries in Europe! Until now we have only been the “ride-through” area on the way to Nordkapp. There’s been too much shortcuts and not riding the whole marked route because we are not interesting enough! This has to end… Finland definitely has more to offer to all adventure motorcycle riders in Europe (and the rest of the world!)
New Section 4
There will be new update coming soon: Section 4 will follow the Russian border very close and it goes all the way to the Raate road and connects with section 1 there. That most southern part between Helsinki – Vaalimaa we already have in TET. After this next update TET Finland will have 4 mainroutes from south to north:
Section 1 This is the main route that starts from Helsinki West Harbour. It goes west from Helsinki until it starts to go north from Siuntio. Like this:
Section 1
Section 2 Was released already before I came as a Linesman. And this is very nice addition to TET Finland because I think I wouldn’t have been thinking this kind of route through Finland myself! This section I will probably update so that it will start already from the south side of Hämeenlinna and the route would go from the west side of Tampere. But this is the section 2 now:
Section 2
Section 3 This was published few weeks ago. The section starts from the north side of Naantali and it pretty much follows the west coast of Finland. At the moment this section ends in Tornio but in the future it will go all the way up to Muonio and connect with Section 1 there. This is section 3 now:
Section 3
The main goal is to make Finland Great again… I mean it could be the main area to reach for the adventure riders to make THE adventure. We have so much to offer! So I really hope more and more adventure riders will find our beautiful country!
Surprisingly june and july were moths (in the middle of the summer) and there was almost no riding at all. But when august came… It was on again! August started with “Tour de Karis” -kind of ride around this village where I live.
28 minutes video of riding in Karjaa – Snappertuna area
And quite soon again I was riding. This time to the north side of Raseborg city. I was especially interested about this road: Malmitie – Malmvägen. It looked interesting on the map and it turned out to be even better!! (in the video it’s from 4:45 to 09:15)
Malmvägen and some offroad
Then on 7th of august I did a ride with friend. That turned out to be excellent tour from Veikkola all the way to Kisko. Best parts were in Fiskars forest and then on the north side of Kärkelä Ironworks area. First Järventaustantie then Ruonankorventie and then Ahvenlammintie. Great Roads! And I made my longest riding video so far (38 minutes!).
Long ridingvideo!
Next week we’ll have MAD (Moto Adventure Days). It’s now second time this event is happening in Finland and I’m one of the guys riding in front of some group, doing so called “punainen tekninen” routes. These are mainly big and small gravel roads added with some challenging tracks and trails. Here is the description in Finnish: Harvaan liikennöityjä metsäautoteitä, polkuja ja kapeita yksityisteitä, joille ei välttämättä kannattaisi lähteä henkilöautolla yrittämään. Vastaan voi tulla pehmeetä hiekkaa, sepeliä, helppoja vesistöylityksiä ja muuta hauskaa. Toki välillä ajetaan nopeampia sorateitä. Sopii jo kokemusta omaaville kuskeille. Kuivalla kelillä pärjää hienosti karkeakuvioisilla kumeilla, mutta kostealla suosituksena nappulat. See you there!
GoZa Mite 