After very nice breakfast we chose the road that goes over Kuurna dam.
There’s not too many places in Finland where you can ride over the dam that’s why it’s quite nice to ride here. Then we continued to the north and we were riding on the westside of Lake Pielinen until we stopped at Pirunkirkko (Devils Church). These caves are 34 meters deep and even 7 meters high (but actually it’s not a cave -it’s just a crack in the rock).
Very close to this cave is one of the most famous views in Finland: Koli!
Koli is a hill just beside the lake and the elevation is more than 200 meters from the lake surface to the top of the hill. Luckily we had perfect clear weather to check these views!
This is called “The National landscape” but I think it’s little bit misleading. I would understand that The National landscape means something very typical Finnish view… But this is quite special and NOT typical at all! But on the other hand I feel quite proud standing up there and I’m thinking “This is my home country!” So maybe it is a good thing that we call it “The National Landscape”!
Then there was quite a lot of riding to Nurmes and to the house of Bomba.
Here we had a short break and we continued riding to Kuhmo and still to Iivantiira.
On the southside of Kuhmo there is many places in the forest (and beside the road) that are kind of museum about “Winter war” in Kuhmo. We stopped at one of them and walked around a little bit.
About 10km’s north from Iivantiira I had a flat rear tire! It was a gravelroad but quite in good condition… It seems that I just had very bad luck that one sharp stone found its way to make hole in my tire!!! This happened about here!
I had the repair kit to fix the tire but I was suspicious -it will not hold! There was one local guy who stopped and said he has the kompressor at his home (with Pressure gauge) and he can pick it up. I had only 3 small bottles of pressure air in this repair kit so I was sure I will need more air to have the correct pressure! These 3 bottles make only about 0,5 bar so I was very lucky that I got this air kompressor and I could fill the tire! After maybe 45 minutes of fixing we were riding again…
But not for a long! Maybe after 20 km’s and the tire was flat again!
I fixed it again and I got “normal hand pump” from another local guy.
This one didn’t have a pressure gauge… But I think I got the pressure quite ok just by checking it with my “sensitive hands”!
After 30 minutes we were riding again… But not for long!
I felt how the tire was getting empty all the time! The bike felt like it was “wobbling” all over the road and I had already made the decision that we will leave the bike there and we will take a taxi to the nearest camping area… So I stopped the bike, took the bags away from the bike and ordered the taxi. We were about 28 kilometers away from Suomussalmi.
While we were waiting for the taxi my wife started to listen to the tire… If there was this quiet sound of air coming out from the tire? But there wasn’t! And there was still some air in the tire! I checked how the bike felt without the bags… and it wasn’t so terrible!
So very fast decision: Cancel the taxi-order, put the bags back to the bike and try to ride as far as we can… And we did all this 28 kilometers!!! I step out from the bike, walked inside to the reception-house (in the camping area) and while I was there paying for the cabin the tire finally gave up! With a loud “farting-sound” all the air came out from the tire and ofcourse the bike fell to the right side…
Luckily I had my new bags (SW Motech Trax) and they are aluminium. So no holes to the bags and no marks of any kind in my bike!
I only needed to hit the small dents away with the hammer. This I did few days later…
I didn’t take any stress about finding a new tire, The camping area was so beautiful so We just enjoyed the sunset in The Campingarea of Kiantajärvi.
And my bike was waiting for the next day:
Wife made a video about this day. This time it was in 2 parts, part 1:
And part 2:
The route for the day 4 was like this:
gravel road
The day started with a littlebit of rain. The road was wet and there were clouds in the sky. We stopped anyway in the museum bridge of Virransalmi.
From Tuustaipale to north we had first gravelroad about 19 kilometers and because of rain there were parts with soft surface… almost like mud. In the video you can see how it can be…
Kissakoski was the place where we stopped and walked around.
Then we stopped for a short break in Hirvensalmi.
And for a little bit longer break in Mikkeli to check the observation tower of Naisvuori.
It had already stopped raining and the roads were already dry. So the rest of the day it was cloudy and warm. From Mikkeli we took the roads to east. And from the gravelroad near Anttola we found nice quarry.
And soon it was about the time to take the “private” ferry over the Lake Saimaa and I also took my drone up to the sky to make a video when the ferry was about to enter to the pier:
The ride over the lake was so relaxing! The lake was calm without any waves and the beautiful archipelago all around us made us feel that this is a fairytale.
We still had some riding to do after this. First is was this nice paved road in the middle of Lake Saimaa:
We went to Puumala to have a pizza. There was quite interesting tent in the middle of the willage:
There was 1 more quite nice road and a yellow ferry (These yellow ferries are for free in Finland) before we arrived to our destination.
The place we were about to sleep was quite terrible. Luckily it was also cheap.
Here is the video about this day made by my wife:
Here is the route for day 2:
My holiday this year was about making tour around my beautiful home country: Finland.
I haven’t been in in the north part of the country since 2011 so it’s really a time to do this. And I have new tires in my XR so I can try also the gravelroads with my bike. This time I also have my wife with me so it will be very heavy load! (450kg)
This pic is from the first stop that we did in Vanhankylänniemi (this link only in Finnish) and mansion. But it was only a short stop.
Then we stopped at the old ironworks area in Kellokoski. There’s been quite a lot of renovations going on lately and it’s starting to look pretty nice place.
Next stop was at the Tönnö Museum Bridge in Orimattila. This is built/ open in 1911.
Then in the north side of Nastola we stopped at the Cafe of old Mill in Immilä. This is very beautiful place with the rapids just beside the area.
We also checked the old industrial heritage site “Verla”. This was a carbon factory from 1872 until 1952. Now it is a museumarea with very nice buildings and nature.
Verla is also Unesco World Heritage site since 1996.
It started raining a little bit but it was very warm, so still we checked the Elving observation tower which was built in 1907. It is 20m high and the view would be totally amazing if it would be clear weather. Even now it was very nice!
The night we slept in a small cabin at Orilammen majat.
My wife made a video about this first day:
The route for Day 1:
Trans Euro Trail is an epic motorcycle journey through some of Europe’s most remote, diverse and inspirational landscapes. I’m proud to tell that now the TET Finland is updated and I’m the one to blame about the most southern part (From Espoo to Hämeenlinna).
So all you enduro and adventure riders it’s ok to download the track from TET-site and go riding and having fun!
You can find the track here.
It looks like this:
This day was about turning back… But only after we would first ride quite far away north to Raippaluoto. We made a quick visit in Botniaring (racetrack) and rode through Jurva (city or village?). But soon it was time to turn to gravelroad!
At the end of this “offroad” ride there was a nice small observation tower of “Rajavuori”
Then we rode to Vaasa, it’s one of the oldest cities in Finland. There was old church but it burned in 1852 -Now there is only ruins.
From Vaasa we rode to Raippaluoto and to go there you have to ride over this very nice bridge!
Here in Raippaluoto we wanted to check another observation tower in Saltkaret.
This is quite amazing place if it is clear weather and if you will climb to the top of the tower!
From Raippaluoto we rode little bit more east so that we wouldn’t have to ride the same roads back home.
Before we arrived to Seinäjoki we took a short stop at Ylistaro church -the third biggest church in Finland!
And after putting all our stuff to hotelroom we went swimming (Yes it is 11th of May and it is very early for swimming in Finland!)
But it had been so nice weather already many days and the water was actually very warm in Kyrkösjärvi!
The route for day 3 was like this:
In january I sold my KTM. Now I Have new bike that I will use in gravel and dirtroads:
This Triumph Street Twin is going to be also a bike that my wife can (or will) use if she ever will have the licence. We tried quite many bikes and this was the best bike for her.
I thought I can use this same bike in my endurorides if I only will change the tyres.
Now I’m only hoping that the spring will come soon… Now we still have snow on the ground and temperature below zero…
By the way, motocaching.net is growing fast! We have now 3000 caches (rides) to be found. All over the world, all continents, 72 countries and more is coming all the time!
Since my XR is is not with me I had to make the last rides of the season 2017 with my KTM. And since I’m a married man nowadays I needed to add the passengers footpegs and go for a 2-up-ride. It’s quite crazy thing to do with this KTM 690 Enduro -but it wasn’t so bad after all!
First we stopped at small pond in the forest. You can’t see it from this picture but it actually has a little bit ice on the surface!
This was in the beginning of november and we already had some snow here and there!
But the nature is still very beautiful and it calms your mind to ride in the middle of Finnish forest.
This is Sjunby Castle and rapids in Siuntio. We visited grocery store hear nearby and bought some sausages to grill them on the Sandfjärden beach in Kopparnäs.
This time of the year there’s no-one else in these places so we really enjoyed our time!
After a couple of hours it was time to ride back home. The darkness comes so early! But we still had some nice places to stop and take pictures!
My wife had 1 very important job while sitting on the backseat of KTM! She had be the rearfender and take all the water-mud-dirt to her back. I think she did quite well!!
And then it was the laundry time!
Yes, after 9 weeks I finally thought I can try. Neck and back didn’t feel too bad and I had my KTM ready and fixed back home so lets go!
This is kind of my favorite place now! It’s very near and you can always take a good picture here (Just beside Espoonkartano).
I had the idea NOT to ride any offroad parts… but when I noticed a new trail in place I didn’t see before I just had to go there…
I can tell now it wasn’t a good idea!! Because next night I had much more pain almost everywhere and I suffered a lot while I was sleeping!
But it is autumn now. I fould a huge stack of pink hay bale and they looked weird.
It was a great day for a ride so it was nice to take pictires in beautiful places!
It is still easy to find place where you don’t see the autumn colours… But then again if you find some mapletrees you can really see the autumn is here!
But after this weekend I can say that maybe it’s not the right time yet. My back still hurts and becouse I can’t stay away from offroad parts it’s better to wait.
I was just returned from my Corsetour Europa trip. I was already working and it was the first weekend… I didn’t feel like riding with BMW, so I called few friends and we took a ride with Endurobikes. This time it was not about hard and wet parts -but mainly about nice and easy gravelroads.
The route was more than 200 km’s and we had some lunch in the Räyskälä airfield.
I had my helmetcamera with me and I did shoot all the “nice parts”:
And about 8km’s after the last video in the paved road it happened!
Green is me, red is the car.
(I don’t have any memory of the accident so I’m telling what my friends have told me!)
I was about to ride forward of the mainroad. I was riding below the speed limit (about 70-75km/h). There was old guy driving a mercedes and he was about to turn left to the small road. He told he didn’t see us coming so he just turned left…
I had about 1-2 seconds to break before I crashed to the right-front corner of the Mercedes. My bike was making fast rotation on the ground after the crash while I was flying over the frontend of the car. After the car there were some mailboxes standing beside the road -I hit those before I crashed to the ground (head first) and stayed there in the bottom of the dike.
Very soon there was people who actually could help! And the ambulance was there after 20 minutes. They took me to the hospital in Espoo and from the x-rays they could see that 2 of my cervical vertebrae (neckbone) was broken.
But very luckily 2 days after the accident I was talking with the doctor and he said that even the bones are fractured, they are all in perfect order and position!!! So nothing is changed in my nerves and I was very much able to walk and do everything else as I was doing before the accident…
Now it’s little bit over 1 month from the accident and my life is almost normal already. I’m very careful with my neck and I am using the headrest almost all the time! But besides the stiffness of the neck I feel pretty normal and I can only wonder that it has been a miracle how lucky I was!
Recovering has been very fast!
This was my last day in the foreign country! But I was still enjoying the riding as much as in the beginning of this trip! We startded riding the nice roads on the north side of Örebrö like this and this.
These were very nice and small countryside roads! But we also had to take some gravelroad -for me it was ok but not for all of us.
We had one short break in a small city of Kolsva… This I remember well because I felt happy and relaxed. Sun was shining, the chat with fellowriders was nice and we were laughing, the nature around us was nice and everyhting was well and perfect!
At the end of the day I remembered to put the video on! It was very nice road… even there was some gravel on the road.
This road is in Rånäs and there are other roads nearby which are kind of same.
We had accommodation very near to Kapellskär harbour.
And next morning I took the boat from this harbour to Naantali -Finland.
And in the evening I took one more ride from Naantali to my home. The tour was over!
This was the route for day 18:
GoZa Mite 