Totally awesome video! Thank you Guillaume Nery.
Matkustus
I made reservation for this trip in August. I was thinking it would be nice to spend some time with my wife when we’ve been married about 1 year… And even in foreign countries! (In the summer we couldn’t go abroad because the residence permit wasn’t ready yet) -So the destination for this trip would be Nice (Nizza).
We took the plane from Helsinki to Nice very early on Sunday morning.
We landed to this mediterranean city about 10.30 am. Then we took the bus to the city center. It was still raining when we arrived (But rain stopped right after we started walking from the bus stop to the hotel).
This day we dedicated for getting to know the city. And there is one place particularly that gives you very good idea about what is this beautiful city all about: The Castle Hill (Colline du Château). There used to be also a castle but King Louis XIV asked it to be destroyed in 1706. In 19th century they started to design the park and fountain on the top of the hill. Also some parts of the olf castle has been renovated.
We walked up to the hill from the east side. This side is not so steep and there are a lot of trees so the park looks kind of wild from this side.
Restored parts of the old castle. This was maybe the inner yard or patio.
But when you finally reach the to of the hill the views are simply amazing!
View to the east. It’s the harbour of Nice.
And here’s the “famous view” to the beach boulevard of Nice. The mediterranean sea and the waves are very beautiful!
Ofcourse we took a walk also there…
We had small but very cozy hotel almost in the heart of the city (Vieille Ville). This area has very narrow alleys with many many restaurants and shops.
And our hotel room was in the 7th floor with the view to the Tête carrée (Cubic head in the modern art museum)
I was restlessly already waiting for the next day!
You can check the video my wife made about this first day:
The staright road home would be about 500 km’s -but not yet. We will still ride the small roads and explore this beautiful country.
On the southside of Pietarsaari is one of the most “Swedish” areas in Finland. Here we saw this:
This “Klacken” is a big party place in “Lillby” (Small village). Most of these kind of places have died in Finland but this seems to be quite active!
Right beside this partyplace was the local shop. Seemed like an ordinary “K-Market” but actually it was more like a mall!
They had clothes, tools and almost everything you can imagine you will need while living in the countryside -even agricultural machinery!
Soon after this “Lillby” we stopped at “Ilveskivi”. This is one of the biggest boulders in Finland. To get to the stone you have to walk almost 1 km and we didn’t change any clothes. It was still quite hot day so walking in riding gear was not a good idea!
Luckily the place is very beautiful and the stone is huge! It rises 16 meters up from the groundlevel and they’ve even built the stairs there so you can climb to the top of the stone!
After this stone we found nice beach to take a swim in Lappajärvi. And soon after the refreshing swim we checked the area full of war-machinery and trench in Menkijärvi.
This area is not actually a museum, but still it gives a good point of view how it was 75 years ago!
Just before we arrived to our next accommodation in Töysä village it was raining. Luckily it was just a short shower so we didn’t get totally wet. We just removed the bags from the bike to our room and changed to a little bit lighter clothing (it was still very hot after the rain) and we went to the small village shop… We did some shopping and enjoyed the dinner in one of their restaurants.
In the evening it started raining again but luckily it wasn’t heavy so we could take a short walk in totally dead Töysä-village. We saw maybe 10 people in the village (saturday evening 8pm).
Töysä beach is in Lake Ponnenjärvi.
Video from my wife about this day:
The route for the day 15 was like this:
This was another very hot day. But I was thinking that the gravelroads here are not that bad so I took one in the beginning. This road was actually very nice ride because it was in very good condition.
The first stop we made at interesting cafeteria in Yli-Ii (Wife pronounced this as “ULI-LEE” and I was laughing about it!)
This cafeteria was an old gas station but the gasbumps were already empty…
Then we checked two dams and powerplants. There was also a fireplace (laavu) near the Pahkakoski dam. But this fireplace was in very bad condition. At least there was quite nice place for swimming…
Then finally after 12 days of riding around Finland I found a place to wash my bike! This was in Oulu! And now I had a clean and shiny bike again!
Picture was taken somewhere southside of Oulu. I really don’t have any idea what is this “thing” behind my bike??
We found a place to stay the night from Pyhäjoki, but not from the “city”. It was a bed n breakfast place 7kms away from the village (Puttaan Kartano)
Ok… Pyhäjoki village is not very big, we found only 1 pizzeria where we could have something to eat. And after eating we went to the beach to check how sea looks up here.
Sea was quite ordinary but my wife is very special and beautiful!
And this is a video that she made of this day 13:
The route for the day 13 was like this:
Weather was again very warm. This is not at all typical in Lapland that the temperature stays over +30 long time and even the nights are warmer than +20.
We started soon after 9am and it was already stifling hot. I had plans for some gravelroad in the beginning of the day but I choose the paved road because I could ride faster and get some refreshment from the wind.
I didn’t fill the tank in Kittilä which was a big mistake. I soon realized that there’s no big citys or even villages between Kittilä and Rovaniemi -it looked like there’s no places to add gasoline!! But finally there was one!
This place was 57km’s south from Kittilä and the gasoline pumps was still working! Many these kind of places don’t have gasoline anymore because the regulations are more tight about spoiling the enviroment.
Quite soon after this we found a place for a break and swimming. There was this big river Ounasjoki and our route was following it until Rovaniemi but the rivers are not so obvious places for swimming…
This was a place to put the boat to the river and it was ok for us to make a quick refreshment. About 1 hour later we were in Rovaniemi and there’s one place my wife wanted to see! The Arctic Circle and the Santa Claus village!
Even in a very hot summer day you can hear at least Japanese, Russian, German, English and few other languages here. I hope these people didn’t come here to find the winter wonderland… We almost went to visit Santa Claus!
But we chose the motorcycle ride to the city… and we didn’t want to ride there too long. It was simply too hot! Our final stop was at Ranua -about 110 kilometers south from Rovaniemi. Just behind our hotel there was a beach so we could relax for awhile and ofcourse go swimmig.
Later in the evening we had a dinner in our hotel but to stay the night here we had chosen the “economy room” which meant a room with very poor air ventilation upstairs of… police office!
Luckily we could keep the window open all night so at least after midnight it was already almost ok to fall asleep.
Here’s video about the day (made by my wife):
The route for the day 12 was like this:
We had an idea to do some hiking today. But first we needed to ride to the place where we wanted to hike… So we started quite early, we rode only about 190 kilometers to reach out destionation in Kilpisjärvi. On this ride we only made short stop at Enontekiö/ Hetta to fill the tank and in Muotkatakka which is the highest point of the road in Finland.
After midday we were already changing clothes and shoes and starting our Hike up to the Saana mountain. The motorcycle was parked behind Kilpisjärvi hotel, the elevation was about 500 meters there.
And we had about 4 kilometers walk up to the mountain where the maximum elevation is 1029 meters. So at the same time when we were walking 4 kilometers to the top we also had to climb about 530 meters up!
After first kilometer the trees are gone. This was the easiest part. The path was very rocky and we had to use also hands few times when the hill was very steep.
The landscape was simply incredible! It was difficult to concentrate to climbing when you have these amazing views all around you!
Can you see my bike?? It’s waiting there…
After 2 hours and 10 minutes we were at the top! 1029 meters above sea level and 550 meters above the lake Kilpisjärvi!
On our way down the weather was even better and more clear. We got some amazing pictures!
We had a nice apartment with sauna to spend the night. This was maybe the most amazing day of our holiday trip!
My wife made a video about this day:
The route of the day was like this:
It’s been quite many years since we had a real winter here in south Finland. Now we have! The snow came finally in the end of January… and now we have about 30-40 cm’s of snow. You can do cross-country skiing almost anywhere and the lakes and the sea has a thick layer of ice.
First picture from Hirsala (Väransby) is taken in 31st of January
Here I also made quite nice Droneflight:
8th of february we visited on the ice in the near lake. Took this picture:
And this video:
It was a long time when temperature was around -5° centigrade and when it was sunny it felt quite nice!
This picture is taken in 18th of february. So is this next one:
Video was taken in 17th of february:
Last week the temperature went down! -24° centigrade was the lowest we had. But it was very nice that we had better weather in the weekend… So again I got some very cool pictures:
On sunday we took a walk around the lake nearby (Meiko lake). It wasn’t totally sunny day but quite nice anyway. My wife was shooting a video in many places… Now we can enjoy these snowy landscapes:
Motorcycling in Denmark? Yes -we are going to do it!! There are no hills or corners here… Or at least we think this is how it will be. First in morning it was raining a bit. We had the rainsuits on until the halfway… After 2 hours we reached “Tørskind Grusgrav” -it’s a sculpture park with massive pieces of art made of iron, concrete and wood.
I was here before 19 years ago and still I think these are amazing works!
Quite soon after this we started climbing to the 3rd highest mountain of Denmark! There are no steep uphills, no hairpin corners, no views to the mountains… Maybe you just noticed that there was a low uphill while you were riding… and there it was! Quite nice place to climb to the tower and see the countryside all around you (The tower of “Ejer Bavnehøj” is only 13 meters high)
Then later in the afternoon we had one ferry (again!). This it was over the fjord that goes through all Northern Denmark and makes the northern part of this country kind of island!
We arrived to our hotel in Fredrikshavn quite early so we had some time to walk around the beautiful city and eat the dinner.
The route for the day 16 was like this:
I’ve visited Kopparnäs many times, it’s one of my favorites places to grill sausages! This time I decided to make a visit to the area that is on the south-east side of Kopparnäs -it’s called Klobbacka.
It’s almost like an island but you can walk there throught a narrow neck of land. I actually made a shortcut by walking through the ice. The weather was very nice and on the other side of Klobbacka there was a lot of beautiful places to take pictures!
The weather was getting better and better and the views also were greater all the time!
It took 3 hours to walk about 4 kilometers! The route was like this:
Made few mistakes! Planned a long route with 2 times crossing the Russian border… Ooops! But I’ll tell you later about it.
First there was a ride from Plinkses to Klaipeda harbour, and from there we took a ferry to Curonian Spit. Ferry costs 3,35€. And after we arrived the spit there was a roadtoll (5€/ bike). And we also had to pay the toll again in Russian side (that was a little bit more than 4€). The road in Curonian Spit is beautiful, it even has some corners and uphills-downhills.
We stopped in one beach to take some pictures of the Baltic ocean. We also stopped in Nida to buy something from the shop.
After Nida it was time for the first border check-Ins! These first check-Ins took about 1h 30mins! Then we’re in Russia!!
This is Amber museum in the center of Kaliningrad.
And this is the worlds biggest castle in Malbork Poland.
But before we could ride in Poland we had to cross the border again! The Russian side of the border was ok, (quite fast) but then the Poland side of the border-check was with a very long line!!! We had to wait more than 2 hours!!! What a catastrophe! We were so late in our accommodation! It was 9,30 pm and we started 8.30 am and there in the middle we moved from timezone to another…. so it was more than 14 hours of ride!!!
Note to myself:
– If you’re about to ride Curonian Spit, you better have 1 whole day to do it!
– If you’re about to cross the Russian border twice a day, don’t ever think it’d take 2-3 hours! It will take more!
GoZa Mite 