This season I started later than in a long long time! But there’s quite obvious reason: Covid-19.
Last week there was already quite nice days but finally when I made the decision to go out on sunday it was quite cold! +3 (celsius) was the highest and -1 was the lowest. But at least we had sunshine!
The route for this day was something like this:
I visit this beautiful city quite often -mostly with motorcycle. There are nice cafeterias and restaurants by the river & on the boats that are floating on the river.
This time we drove there by car and it was beautiful sunny day!
Porvoo is the third oldest city in Finland (or second oldest depending how to count) and it’s only 30 minutes drive from Helsinki. With motorcycle it takes longer because there are nice roads on the way!
It was almost 3 months that I didn’t ride with my XR! I didn’t even ride too much Enduro but at least few times… Now it was finally time to do some streetriding and because it was sunday I took also my wife with me! We checked our favorite places Fagervik and Mustio Castle.
The autumn colors are simply amazing at the moment so I took lot of pictures and I also had my drone with me.
In Fagervik we made the walk through the beautiful area up to the church.
Then we stopped in a small hill beside the road to take some pictures. I took the pictures with my drone. The place where we made our stop was about here.
Then the last place to admire autumn colors was in Mustio. This beautiful garden aroung old buildings is simply amazing!
This autumn has been very nice with all the colors in the nature!
Because we didn’t ride far enough on previous day I made the reservation for the ferry From Tallinn to Helsinki for the next day. I was thinking to ride to Pärnu today and spend nice evening there and then ride to Tallinn next morning. The ferry was about to start 1PM.
After 60 km’s of riding west from Jēkabpils the rain had stopped and the road was dry enough to take of rainsuits.
The riding was doing well! The road was in very good condition and there wasn’t too much traffic. Maybe about 100km’s later we’re already on the north side of Riga and I asked my wife that maybe we should ride all the way to Tallinn?? Se said “lets do it!” And it was only about to change the ferry tickets to this evening… and it was ok! So we had ferry already today from Tallinn to Helsinki!
I was filling the tank somewhere before Pärnu and it started raining there! But luckily it was just a short shower and we got even another somewhere in the middle between Pärnu-Tallinn. But when it wasn’t raining it was nice weather and the clothes were drying fast!
We took a little bit of shopping in Tallinn and we even had time to enjoy dinner at our favorite restaurant Sevan before getting to the ferry.
And we got very nice sunset on the way to Helsinki!
We were home a little bit after 10PM… Quite late, quite tired and exhausted! The whole trip was very successful and full of nice moments and incredible places! I really can’t say what was the best place or moment… There was so many of them! I’m remembering very well the Hungarian roads -they were very nice! Slovenia -I really need to go again!! And Cesky Krumlov was very special also…
My wife is answering: Krk island in Croatia and Grossglockner were the best places/ moments.
The total route was about 5900 kilometers. We visited 12 countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic and Germany). In 2 of these we didn’t spend night (Slovenia and Germany). The best accommodation was in Croatia and the worst was in Hotel Luiize/ Latvia (last night).
The 520km’s route for the last day was like this:
The idea was to ride from the south parts of Lithuania to Riga, Jurmala or Sigulda. But the weather forecast didn’t agree with my idea! There was crazy thuderstorm in that area and it wasn’t moving anywhere!!
So I choose the route more east.. and the whole day was about trying to avoid the rain! So almost all day we had dark clouds on our left side…
It seemed that we would finally enter the Daugavpils (again) and I wasn’t too excited about this! -I didn’t wanna spend the afternoon and night in a same town where we were before! Just before we crossed the Latvian border we at least saw something nice! But this windmill was pretty much ruined already -what a pitty.
There was a chance to choose the road straight north… And we were also talking that maybe we could ride in the rain also to get further… And when we arrived to Jēkabpils I had to stop and fill the tank. This was perfect timing!! While I was in the gas-station it started raining (like crazy)!
So me and my wife decided to stay here if there was a hotel or a nice guesthouse. And there was! Unfortunately this place was the worst in our trip!! It was very old house where they had made somekind of renovation but it wasn’t very good quality! The door was hanging about 1cm and it was difficult to close it. The worst part was the bed… It didn’t have any mattress pad… And in the morning when we wake up we both had some pain in the back!
Luckily there was at least something to see in this town and the restaurant was very nice!
The 330km’s route fot this day was like this:
Few more photos here!
So we were already by the same sea where we live and it really felt like home is close. Today we were riding small countryside roads of North Poland. Some of the roads were not in good condition at all!! After one road we had to keep 10 minutes break just to give some rest to our butts!!!
The northern parts of Poland is beautiful! And also if the road is in good condition it can be very nice ride!
Then we also crossed the border to Lithuania and it really started to feel that we are going home… Except the weather forecast didn’t look too good for next day!
We took a guesthouse in Marijampole town and after quite nice dinner we made a short walk in local city park.
The 406km’s route for this day was like this:
The day started with a beautiful sunrise from hotel window!
And because my GPS had a function to make “Interesting adventure” I decided to choose this. And we started riding north…
And even I had the marker “No gravelroads” in my GPS it gave us this:
We found very nice place to stay from the guesthouse just outside the centrum. We left the stuff there and took a ride to one of the most amazing beaches in Europe (or at least in Baltic sea).
Then we spent quite a long time walking around the city. It was sunday afternoon and there was totally too much people!! But we survived…
(Click any of the pictures to make them bigger)
The old town of Gdansk is very beautiful! The area is huge and you can easily get lost there… But the buildings are very nice and the river that goes through the city gives it a little bit more spirit!
The 312km’s route for this day was like this:
You can see some more pictures here.
Day 14
From Cesky Krumlov we were riding straight north to Bechyně village. And I didn’t read the roadsigns well enough… the road was closed! We had to turn back to the big road and from there turn to west and find this bridge:
On the northside of Praha it started raining but only for about 30 kilometers. Then we made a short stop at Želízy village and we were climbing to the sandstone hill where we found these:
Finally we reached the small town of Ceska Lipa and the old town was nice surprise!
You can find some more pictures from here!
The route for this day was like this:
Day 15
This day started very grey and it looked like it will rain very soon! Because of this risk of rain I skipped the famous motorcycle cave. Luckily the sandstone castle was on the way and stopped there to take the picture.
Then we were riding about 60km’s in Germany (12th country in our trip!) and there it started raining. The route for this day was about 310km’s and from that we had the rainsuits on about 170km’s! But we saw at least two nice/ strange buldings on the way!
And when the entered to our destination city Poznan it didn’t rain anymore and we could go walking to the beautiful old town!
And because I had to pay 10€ of parking this hotel was the most expensive on our trip -about 82€. You can see more pictures from this day here.
The route for this day was like this:
This guesthouse was one of the nicest places where we spent the night. Especially the breakfast was very nice!
But after breakfast we were riding again. First we took the road 311 down in the walley and then we turned north following the Dientenbach river. This road is very nice as the river runs deep in the walley but it’s not very long… and then we took the “Hochkönig Road” to east. This road was first climbing to Mühlbach am Hochkönig -skicenter & village and then going down with very nice sweeping corners! Then it was road 159 north following the Salzach river (and A10 Autobahn) and then Lammertal Straße to east towards Postalmstraße. This is a tollroad with 5€ payment. The speedlimit is 40 and it’s almost like going back to middle-age… The phone network wasn’t working and there was cows everywhere!
Right after this panoramic road we had Traunsee…
And then the mountains were gone! I had little bit sad feelings even we had quite nice countryside roads after the mountains. I was thinking: “Ok, we will see Tatra mountains in the north part of Czech republic but that’s about all…” Luckily there was some nice places still to make a short stop…
I had made the route to go over Vltava river in a ferry (Frydava-Frymburk). This was 4€ (Euros were just fine to use as payment!)
Then we arrived at Cesky Krumlov and I had made a booking in the middle of the old town!! It’s not very wice because you can’t ride there at all! But after few tricks we had our stuff in our room and the bike was parked outside the old town… Here’s few pictures of the beautiful old town (Click any of the pics to see them bigger!):
There is absolutely enough of restaurants in this city! We didn’t choose the best one but it wasn’t too bad either… This town I can easily recommend to anyone. You should visit there!
Our 288km route for today was like this:
The most amazing riding day in our tour!
We started by climbing to Passo di Giau From the west.
Passo di Giau is well known about the views at the top!
From Giau we rode down to Cortina d’Ampezzo and from there straight up to Passo tre Croci (at 1809 meters) that doesn’t go down very fast on the east side! There you will have first beautiful Lago di Misurina at 1754 meters and then Lago di Landro at 1400 meters. Beside these lakes there are also many hotels and restaurants. We took a short pause at Misurina with some sweet roll and lemonade.
Then it was time to ride to the next country: Austria!
Almost right after we crossed the border I took the left-turn to a “secret mountain road” that not too many know about! Usually everyone is riding straight from Toblach (Italy) to Lienz (Austria) and then choosing the Grossglockner. But we took this “Pustertaler” first.
Then after riding a quite long way from the city of Lienz to the south-end of Grossglockner -We were finally there! I’ve been here twice before… (almost). 2014 we took the road from south and it was raining until Hochtor tunnel. Luckily from there we made the northside in good weather.
In 2017 we came from north and it was raining too much! We decided to turn back. But now the weather was perfect!! Maybe it was little bit cold (about +10 celsius near the Glacier) but it didn’t bother us at all!! We got many nice pictures there!!
Click any of the pictures to see them bigger!
We found a place to stay from Taxenbach village. The guesthouse was nice but we didn’t find a good restaurant from this small village. Our 240km route for this day was like this:
Edit: Now 4,5 years later I give you the video from Grossglockner!!
I decided not to publish this back then because of the dirt on the camera lens.
But maybe it’s not that bad so you can watch the video anyway.
GoZa Mite 