First time making a longer ride with a small group of bikes (in 2025).
All the bikes in this ride are totally different!
1. BMW G650XChallenge (my bike)
2. CF Moto 450 MT
3. Suzuki V-Strom 800DE
4. Husqvarna FE501
And we had a blast!
motorcycling
KTM is doing fine, it’s the biggest motorcycle manufacturer in Europe. BUT…
It just has totally too much of debt! It’s too early to say what will happen for this giant company.
Maybe BMW will buy a part of the factory/ brand? Who knows?
Here’s a video to watch:
“KTM mechanics have been specially trained to remove a few thousand dollars from your wallet…”
Survey on TransEuroTrail Finland
Olen toiminut nyt melkein 4 kesää TransEuroTrail Finland eli TET Suomen reittivastaavana.
Tänä aikana ajettavien reittien määrä on kasvanut kahdesta (2 sections) yhdeksääntoista (19 sections).
Samaan aikaan myös ainakin Viro, Latvia, Puola, Romania, Kroatia ja Kreikka ovat kasvaneet ja uusia maita on liittynyt mukaan (ainakin Saksa, Sveitsi, Luxemburg, Montenegro)
Nyt olisi aika saada vähän lisätietoa teiltä käyttäjiltä? Onko menty oikeaan suuntaan? Mitä odotatte tulevaisuudelta?
Siellä kysytään mm. tämmöstä:
And suddenly Sweden looks the same… Almost like Finland!
14 different sections, Total of 6800 kilometers! Nice work Linesman Jonas Bergh!
Download the latest GPX file from: https://transeurotrail.org/sweden/
The Motorcycle
In this case I will talk about the most common (or the best?) possible bikes with couple of examples. There is always many many other possibilities to choose. You should choose the bike that is best for you!
A good one would be Yamaha Tenere 700 or Honda CRF300 Rally. The bike should be able to do gravelroads, forestroads and some offroad parts easily. It should be able to do 300km (or more?) of riding without filling the tank. It should carry the rider and all his stuff easily in the motorcycle bags.
It should have at least 50/ 50 tyres (Mitas E07, Heidenau K60) but even more offroad oriented are a very good choice!
I’m riding with a little bit older bike BMW G650XChallenge.
Motorcycle riding gear
Helmet is a must! Enduro or adventure helmet has more airspace in front of the mouth so you will not feel like totally out of breath when you have to do some lifting of the bike.
Other than a helmet I really recommend to have adventure boots (or enduro boots), motorcycle pants with knee and hip protection -the more protection pads the better the pants! Same goes with the jacket! Quite many riders nowadays are rather using a whole protection west/ shirt that you keep closer to your body and the outer jacket/ shirt itself can be very light.
I have LS2 MX436 helmet, Forma Terra Evo Low boots, Adventure Spec Supershirt, Rukka motorcycle pants (and few other pants) and Adventure Spec Linesman Jacket.
The GPS device
A GPS device to ride TransEuroTrail has to have one certain function. You have to be able to see gpx-track on your map view and your own location. The ordinary car gps or Tomtom doesn’t do this.
Here it is explained in TransEuroTrail web page what it could be or should be. You have these options:
1. Cheap android phone with OsmAnd or Locus app (or some other). This phone you will connect to your bike somehow so you can see the screen while you are riding. Problem might be that the brightness of the screen is not enough. This way you can keep your own phone in your pocket and take pictures with it whenever you need.
2. Your own mobile phone attached to the bike with some app to follow the TET track. Nowadays the phones are very expensive and very easily breakable. I’m not recommending this.
3. A tablet with some app to follow GPX track. For example Samsung Active Tab 2.
4. Garmin gps device you can buy a cheap used gps for example here in Finland this morning there was one Garmin gpsmap device with 120€ in tori webpage. The screen is very small in all gpsmap devices so I would recommend Garmin Montana. I was using Garmin Montana 700 for one year.
Now I’m using Garmin Zumo XT2.
The Latest TET Finland GPX file
This file you can download ONLY from TransEuroTrail webpage!
File has 21 sections at the moment. (Check my post about different sections here!)
Now you have everything that you actually need to start riding. But ofcourse then we will start to talk about how long you are going to ride the TET route? What kind of weather it will be? Will you be sleeping in a tent? In the Lean-To? Or in some accommodation? Lets talk about these little bit:
Accommodation: I prefer booking.com but airbnb.com or hotels.com are also ok.
Lean-To: from the webpage laavu.org you can download the gpx file where you will see pretty much all lean-to shelters and free cabins to stay for the night! (Choose from the menu “Lataa (gpx) – kaikki”) and you will have all these in your gps device.
Wild Camping: You can put your tent up pretty much everywhere! Except to someone’s private yard or nearby, to nature preserve or National Park area. National parks usually have only few places where it is ok to do wild camping. Also planted fields or parks are out of question.
If you do wild camping it means you will do no harm to the nature, you will leave no trace or marks in the place where you were camping and you will make fire only if you have the permit from the landowner (if there is an actual fireplace then you can do it). And you will not make fire at all if there is a warning about grass or forest fires.
Here you can read more about “Everyman’s rights” in Finland: Visit Finland
I still have some of my old action cameras and I had this idea quite long time! I wanted to compare the old ones to the new ones I am using now. Finally I did it.
The old cameras that I have:
JVC GC-FM1 (pocket camera), but for this one I didn’t find the correct wire to charge it.
Sony HDR-AS30V Quite good camera already! It has even digital Steady Shot stabilizer.
My video of this camera here!
Sony FDR-X1000V was my first 4K camera, and I was so happy with this camera!
My video of this camera here!
And then I’m also showing (testing) the video quality of
Insta360 One RS 4K Boost lens, video is here!
Insta360 One X3, video is here!
I did also a short flight with my drone because they are also kind of action cameras…
Nobody had a drone 10 years ago!
DJI Air 2S, and my flight video is here!
The full video I made you can check here:
I made also another video where I’m shooting the video with Insta360 One RS 4K boost lens.
That video you can see here:
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 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…
Biketeam Finland was helping me in a difficult situation. I got a loaner bike for one week since I had some interesting things to do (with motorcycle)!
This was before I got my own bike back.
It’s 2009 model and it has 52000km’s in it. And there’s quite many additional parts (windshield, head lamp protectors, crash bars and skid plate and extra lights to mention a few).
On the first day I went riding with a friend who makes stories about cars and motorcycles to Finnish magazine Kauppalehti. This time he had new Suzuki V-Strom 800DE in the test. Here’s the story he wrote to the magazine: https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/suzukin-keskikokoinen-seikkailee-asfaltilla-ja-maastossa/19eb1bf4-94b3-4d12-8bbd-3aabf38d4fa5
It was an interesting ride! To realize that Suzuki is very capable of doing pretty much same things than BMW GS. The ground clearance is little bit shorter and factory tires wouldn’t be ok in muddy conditions but otherwise the difference to GS is almost zero. We did also some “OffRoad” riding! Here’s the video:
The next day I did already pretty much same kind of riding with this GS than I usually do! Checking TransEuroTrail Tracks. And also some offroad tracks. GS feels heavier than my own XChallenge especially in the tricky parts. But other than that the 800GS is very “Adventurous”! Here’s the video:
I would enjoy more riding with GS compare to my own bike if I would do many days long trip. In the paved road this bike feels pretty much like any other road bike and when you come to the gravel roads and smaller forest tracks it is still very capable doing all you want.
The big Touratech screen I would change to smaller right away -I didn’t like it!
This bike is for sale in Biketeam (Sold!)
Same week I had also presentation about TransEuroTrail Finland. Check the presentation video
(Finnish language) here.
Officially you can check the different section numbers from TET Atlas.
https://atlas.transeurotrail.org/
Remember these previews are not necessarily correct.
The Sections will have updates after this!
Section 01
Our “Main Section” That goes from Helsinki to Norway. This Section has the most variation in landscape and in different road types.
Section 02
This section starts from Renko and connects back to section 1 in Kuusamo. Section 2 has some interesting historical landmarks and nice technical part in the north before Kuusamo.
Section 03
Section 3 is from Turku to Enontekiö goes in the most western parts Of the country. There are some nice technical parts between Raahe and Oulu.
Section 04
Section from Vaalimaa to Raate road. This section goes very close to Russian border and you will probably meet the border patrol. You need to be careful that you have enough gasoline after Lieksa.
Section 05
Section in southwest Finland. Has some nice technical parts.
Section 06
Section from the eastside of Helsinki to north.
Section 07
Section starts from the westside of Taivalkoski and it ends to the most northern point of EU.
Section 08
Section in the “Middle of Finland”. Some nice technical parts and soft sand.
Section 09
Section between sections 01 & 02 (from the lake Ala-Luosta to the Lake Oulu)
Section 10
From East to west with Thousands of lakes…
Section 11
Section to Niekka Hill
Section 12
Section between sections 03 & 02 (Pudasjärvi, Taivalkoski). It has one manual ferry!
Section 13
Section “Lättis”. The most famous motocafe.
Section 14
Section from Helsinki to Vaalimaa.
Section 15
Section between 3 and 2 (from Siikainen to Hämeenkyrö)
Section 16
Section between sections 02 & 03 (from Kinnula to Eskola)
Section 17
The sections has updates all the time so remember to Download the latest GPX before you go to the TET. The right place to download the GPX file is transeurotrail.org/finland
GoZa Mite 