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:
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:
“The rainy day”
The weather forecast promised that during the day it would come better, the rain would stop and there would be sunshine. But it didn’t!
So I didn’t stop too many times and I didn’t take too many pictures.
On the north side of Imatra TET Section 4 is following “Niska-Pietilä” museum road and not too far north from this road I turned away from TET.
I was now checking the new possible section 10. And it had right away very nice parts that you can see in the video starting from here. It was amazing roads and tracks all the way to Punkaharju.
And in Punkaharju the route goes of course from the old ridge road that was voted as the most beautiful road in Finland. It’s called now as “Vuosisadan tie” (The road of the century).
Before Savonlinna quite luckily just beside this “new TET-route” there was sport resort Tanhuvaara and I stopped to ask the price for the room. It was a big surprise when they said 55€! And the breakfast was included. I didn’t think too long to choose this! Later in the evening I was riding to Savonlinna to eat something and I found quite good Chinese restaurant.
The video of the day:
Day 2 was about continuing the section 41 to east and then turning to section 4 to noth.
The route for the day was like this:
After I started following the TET route I came almost right away to Strömfors.
And then quite soon the TET route was mostly about very nice forest roads! Just before the route goes to the south side of Highway 7 there is this:
Yes we have toilet for TET riders! Actually I don’t know why they are there in the middle of forest?? The video of the day is here:
My own summer holiday started in the beginning of July. I had a plan to go and check TransEuroTrail section that was planned ready and route was made but it needed to be checked before it can be live.
This section is East-West Section Parikkala – Jyväskylä.
And I also wanted to do more TET-riding all together. -To finally see all that I’m responsible of!
So on the 3rd day of my holiday I started. Route for Day 1 looked like this:
From the west it was first Section 5 until it reaches section 1 in Siuntio. Then only the “beginning part” of Section 1 until I could continue Section 41 going around Helsinki and ride further east…
Then after Hopom Lake I turned away from TET to ride to Loviisa and meet a friend who lives there. I was also offered to sleep the night…
Here’s the video of the Day 1:
Day 2 will follow soon!
DAY 1: Just by random I was checking prices for midsummer night from booking.com.
And from Ylöjärvi I found place to stay… with bed, toilet, shower and basic kitchen stuff with 39€ when all the other places were something like 150-200€. So friday morning I started riding!
This was very early in the morning. First I was heading to Kylmäkoski -to the same place where I started checking TET Finland Section 2 update 1 week ago. But back then I was checking it from Kylmäkoski to south. Now I was planning to take the route north towards Sastamala and Hämeenkyrö.
And of course I made a video of the first day ride!
The route wasn’t as good as the route south from Kylmäkoski but it wasn’t too bad. I accept!
DAY 2: The place where I was sleeping used to be a school “Voionmaan opisto”. The room was pretty perfect with the toilet, shower and basic stuff for kitchen. And yes -the price was 39€ for midsummer night!
There was a slight risk of rain and thunder in the afternoon so I decided to take a shorter and faster route back home. I still saw some amazing places!
I also mad a video of the second day ride!
The routes that I was riding were like this (blue was the one on friday and red on sunday):
Next time I will do wild camping also!! I tried couple years ago and my back didn’t like it. Lets see how it will go now…
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!)
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 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 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:
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!
Early this year I paid my deposit to join this big adventure motorcycle event. But soon I got a phone call from the person who is one of the organizers… And I was asked to join as one of the “group leaders” to make this event possible to happen. And of course I said “Yes!”
Moto Adventure Days is pretty much similar than any other adventure motorcycle event all around the world.
This year it was the second time they arranged it and it was already many times bigger than last year,
There was more than 180 participants and the event was sold out quite early in the spring.
I started my ride on tuesday evening to Jämsä. It would be about 240 kilometers and I was choosing many times smaller roads. So I was in Himos only after it became dark.
After Kuhmoinen I was already riding only the main paved road because it was dark. This was my route:
On wednesday all the teamleaders had some practise at Haaralankangas motocross track.
We were testing quite many different things about riding enduro but it was too hot! After 2 hours I was loosing my concentration and after 3 hours I simply had to stop riding!
We had routes in 5 different categories: Black, Red-Black, Red Technical, Red Tempo and Blue. Balck route was mainly offroad even with swamp and other wet parts and then the categories after were easier and easier. Blue being mainly simple wide gravel road. I was one team leader for Red Technical routes and my team number was 16!
The event itself started on thursday when all the riders started to arrive to Himos. And on thursday afternoon about 15.30 we started the first group ride!
I had one 1250GS Adventure that was stuck in the loose sand part in the beginning. But after that we didn’t have any problems. Route was the best of all three different routes I was riding. It had so many different kind of surface to ride! Second time riding was on friday morning 8.30 AM.
On this ride there was pretty much no problems at all!
Third ride was on friday afternoon after 3PM
From this afternoon ride I remember that it was very hot! And that in the end of the route I made the water crossing… which was very nice experience! I have low adventure boots so I got a little bit of water inside but much. It looked deeper when I was watching the others riding there…
Saturday morning was the next ride. 8.30AM!
On this ride there was mainly quite big bikes. All of them were much bigger than mine!
The last ride of the event was on saturday afternoon. I was changing the route quite a lot… Mainly because I wanted to make it shorter.
The routemasters had been doing excellent work! These routes were super nice and fun to ride. Thank you again from me as a team leader and I think all of the riders are happy and grateful too!
I can only hope I will be a team leader again next year. This was so perfect experience!
I was riding back home (or to Espoo) on sunday with 2 friends. Route was pretty much the same that I was riding few days earlier. Only in EVO area we made a little bit exploring… Like this:
This was Great and Amazing event. I hope to see you all again in 2023!
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.
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)
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!).
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!
Finally after a winter with HUGE amount of snow it was possible to start riding!
And I did it with 4 times riding in one week. The weather was already quite warm -not like I needed to put all possible clothes on me.
First day ride was less than 100km like this:
Second day I was checking one place where was flooding.
Here is the short video of the place where the river was flooding!
I made a riding video of this next days ride.
And then on saturday I got three friends with me and we did already almost 200km!
And here is the video of the ride:
And there is more to come!!
GoZa Mite 