GoZa Mite

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 12

Posted by gozamite on 15.8.2019

Posted in: BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, Mountain Road, S1000XR. Tagged: grossglockner, Lago di Misurina, Passo di Giau. Leave a comment

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.

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 11

Posted by gozamite on 11.8.2019

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling. Tagged: Dolomites, Italy, Monte Zoncolan, Raccolana, Staulanza. Leave a comment

Luckily in the morning when we woke up it didn’t rain anymore. In the evening and during the night the rain was very heavy. So when we started to ride the road was wet and air was fresh…

The road in Raccolana valley starts from about 1300 meters in the east and it goes all the way down to Chiusaforte village (or town) in 391 meters! From there I wanted to ride north and check Passo del Cason di Lanza. But when I turned to that road there was a sign that it was closed. The alternative road SP112 from Pontebba to Moggio di Sotto was very nice too!

One of the many bridges over Torrente Aupa river

Then we were riding little bit north again. The route was about to climb to Monte Zoncolan from east. But I didn’t have routepoints in my GPS so it chose “the shortest possible” road to the top. This shortcut is not even a full road in google maps! But I did the whole road… with many rocks, fallen trees and lots of stuff and holes in the pavement! XR was totally ok with this road too. The actual road that climbs up to the mountain is not much wider. It makes the curves and corners in the middle of the skiing hill and it’s very steep in many places. At the top we had still cloudy weather and even few drops of rain fallin so we didn’t get nice pictures.

We made a short break in Ampezzo village. Found very small local shop and bought something to drink.

Took a small mountain Pass called Cibiana. It climbs “only” to 1530 meters and there are restaurants and trees on the top so not much about nice views there.
Then finally started the climb to Passo Staulanza. This I did back in 2017 but it was raining like hell then. Now the weather was nice and I could nicely enjoy the road and the power of S1000XR!
I didn’t have any booking made for the night because I knew how it is around here. You can easily find guesthouses from every village! I made my first stop in Santa Fosca village in a small guesthouse called ” Albergo La Rondine” and they had a room for us. Plus there was a nice car parked outside -never seen it before!

The 230km route for today was like this:

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 10

Posted by gozamite on 9.8.2019

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, Mountain Road, S1000XR, Video. Tagged: Croatia, Italy, Mangart, Mountain Road, Slovenia. Leave a comment

And day 9 when we didn’t ride at all. After breakfast we took a walk to the local cross-hill. It was about 2 kilometers walk to this place and the air was already very hot! After few hundred meters I fell… Just took a wrong step and I was on my knees in the pavement. Luckily I was able to take the hit to the pavement mostly with my hands but I got this anyway to my knee:

Here’s the cross that we saw on the hill. It’s about 10-12 meters high!

We planned to visit one cave but there was a risk of thunder… So we went only to the beach to enjoy the clear water of Adriatic sea!

Day 10 we started the ride back home (kind of)…
First we took the curvy road up to the mountains and closer to Slovenia. This road has long history as the Lousiana -one of the most significant roads in Austria-Hungary already back in 19th century. The highest point was near Mrzle Vodice village at 928 meters.

Then we were in Slovenia! The temperature was much cooler since we were quite high -maybe about 500 meters above sea level. The road was quite nice ride until we rode under the Highway that goes southwest from Ljublana. After that the road was totally amazing!! Our route reached the road 102 and after Godovič there was totally crazy part where the road was following the canyon river and the walls were climbing high on both sides.

Under this Viaduct we took few pictures but mostly we were totally amazed by the views (and didn’t take any pictures!)
Then our route turned to the northeast and we were following the Soca river until we turned to Mangart.

Mangart

After this rainy experience we’re again in Italy and we stayed in skiresort hotel in Sella Nevea village. The views were totally amazing and luckily we just took a short walk after the dinner before it started raining.

The 290km’s route for this day:

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 8

Posted by gozamite on 6.8.2019

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, S1000XR. Tagged: Adriatic Sea, BMW S1000XR, Croatia, Hrvatska, Krk island. Leave a comment

It was going to be very hot day. We were about to ride little bit to Slovenia and then to Croatia. One friend of mine had invited us to visit Zagreb but I was thinkin that it’s not very good idea to go to a big city when it’s very warm weather. We were riding in Slovenia only about 10km! And when we entered the border at Mursko village there was a line… luckily only about 10 minutes of waiting.
They wanted to check all documents and when they saw my wife’s Russian passport they started to look very closely! They were not interested about Residence Permit at all… The were checking all the stamps in the passport and finally they put the stamp there!

After ice cream and drinking break we chose the highway. It was damn hot and in the highway the heat wouldn’t matter too much. Except they have tollgates in the middle of the highway!! The que was at least 15-20 minutes but I was riding on the verge of the road and I rode past quite many cars! Even the local police saw me and they didn’t do anything!
Finally after highway we got at least a little bit of mountain road. It was from Fuzine village to Hreljin village and when we saw the Adriatic sea first time and it was quite nice view! We still had to pay the roadtoll to Krk-island and ride over very nice bridge an then we had only few kilometers to our guesthouse in Porat village!

3 minutes after 4pm I took this picture! My wife is swimming…

We decided to stay at least 2 nights here!

The route for 367km’s today was like this:

OneworldOneXR

Posted by gozamite on 2.8.2019

Posted in: BMW motorrad, S1000XR. Tagged: BMW Motorcycle, BMW S1000XR, OneworldOneXR, S1000XR. Leave a comment

I have instagram account called “OneworldOneXR“. I started the account 29th of January 2018 and I have shared one picture every day since then. Now I have 6411 followers!
This blog will also share the best pictures from this account here!

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 7

Posted by gozamite on 31.7.2019

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, East Europe, Hungary, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, Mountain Road. Tagged: Eurotour, Hungary, Lake Balaton, Lake Heviz, Thermal Lake. Leave a comment

Balaton & Heviz
Decided to take a little bit easier day now. We rode only 170 kilometers: First to the Lake Balaton and then to Lake Heviz.
We came to the lake Balaton straight to the Tihany peninsula (actually I don’t know what the peninsula is called but this Tihany village is there anyway!)

From the south-end of Tihany you can take the ferry to the other side of the lake. It seemed that the ferry was full all the time! (but I didn’t check the price…)
I tried to find the highest possible place (or road) from Badacsony Vulcano to see the the views to the lake.

Where’s the mountain?

There is quite many nice photos that people have been taking from that mountain… But this one is simply the BEST!
In the forest we saw some instructions how to move and behave there in the mountain… Hungarian should be a relative language to Finnish but I didn’t understand anything!!

Because it was quite hot day -maybe something like +32 celsius, we started to think what would be a nice place to cool down a little bit?
We found this nice lake to take a swim:

Lake Heviz is the biggest thermal lake in the world. The water temperature is +32 celsius! We had a hotel room just beside this Lake/ Spa… In out holiday this was maybe one of the “biggest tourist attractions” with such a many people everywhere.
The route for this day was like this:

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 6

Posted by gozamite on 30.7.2019

Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, Mountain Road. Tagged: BMW S1000XR, Danube, Ferry, Hrad Somoska, Hungary, Slovakia. Leave a comment

Riding south from Poprad over the Lower Tatra mountains was great! The road had some very nice corners all the time. After the “big road” 66 we took the “smaller road” 531 and that was a little bit bumpy -but still a great ride for a motorcycle.

Chmarošský Viadukt was just before we took the road 531

After mountains our route was more about small road from one village to another. But then we rode through this:

And soon we had another border to cross… We entered Hungary (6th country).

We took the small roads after the border to this castle. We left the bike to Hungary and we walked all the way back to Slovakia (!!!) to this castle. That was about 200 meters…
Then we still had one river to cross… The Danube river! And we did it with a ferry. We took the ferry from Nagymaros to Visegrad and the price was 1000 (!!!) -local currency and it’s about 3€.

After 344 kilometers riding we took the nice room from a guesthouse in a small Csakvar village. They had also very nice restaurant but they made a BIG mistake with breakfast! Here is the route for day 6:

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 5

Posted by gozamite on 28.7.2019

Posted in: motorcycling. Leave a comment

Riding south from Kazimierz Dolny wasn’t very exciting until there was one road closed on the north side of Nowy Sącz. I have the route for this day down there but actually here we’re riding like this!

And I also made a video of this short adventure. There is even a short part OffRoad-riding!

Then the mountains were getting closer! And right after the Slovakia border we started to climb up to road 68 but didn’t have any special mountain pass name -or maybe it was “Vabec” at 766 meters? So it wasn’t very high but the view to the highest mountain in Slovakia (Gerlachovský štít 2655m) was stunning!

After Stará Ľubovňa town the road 77 to west and southwest was very nice ride! The pavement was perfect and I was able to keep up nice speed. A big recommendation to this road.
Our day ended in Poprad. We had a room in Hotel Sobota (Hotel Saturday) and their restaurant was very nice! I had one of the best meals there with huge piece of meat (about 4cm thick!)

Our 359km route for this day was almost like this:

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 4

Posted by gozamite on 26.7.2019

Posted in: adventure, BMW, BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling. Tagged: BMW S1000XR, Kazimierz Dolny, poland. Leave a comment

This guesthouse “Azymut” in Stary Folwark was interesting. It was very new but quite many things didn’t work at all. The most disturbing was that when you took a shower the water came also to the bathroom floor. But there was no floor drain from where the water could go out!! So the bathroom was very wet and very slippery!
In the beginning of our day we rode through Grajewo -town. We made a short stop in a small park with few old military “things”.

The route of the day was about going south. We didn’t choose too much big roads and sometimes it felt like we didn’t move at all. But finally we reached the Veiksel river and beautiful Kazimierz Dolny town. We had very big room from the hotel with thick walls. The mobile network was working only if you were reaching out from the window!

In internet! (The hotel WiFi didn’t work)

Of course we went out to check the city! But just to find out that everything costs (even parking!) and cash only! We even walked up to the castle just to find out that no credit card…

Kazimierz Dolny cathedral with nice view to the river

From the market square we found quite many restaurants. But we didn’t find english menu. Yes! I can use google translator but because it seemed that they dodn’t like tourists here we de decided to test their attitude. Finally in one restaurant there was a waitress who was at least smiling nicely and they had the menu partly in english -so we decided to stay there. Unfortunately I got quite terrible food even it was just a pizza. I think they fried a frozen one…

The 408km route for today was like this:

Holiday 2019 Gozamite & Finrin Day 2-3

Posted by gozamite on 20.7.2019

Posted in: motorcycling. Tagged: Baltic countries, Eurotour, Motolife. Leave a comment

I’ve done few times the border from Estonia to Latvia in Valka/ Valga. Now I rode to Möniste and south from there so we were in Latvia. I had chosen “No gravelroads” in my GPS but soon it was gravelroad anyway. We had to do about 20 kilometers detour trying to avoid those terrible gravelroads in Latvia but it wasn’t successful. Finally we checked the old narrowrail in Gulbene. That was a trip back to Soviet-time!

From the same Gulbene city we found also abandoned palace!

After riding through many small villages and incredibly boring roads we arrived in Daugavpils city -the second biggest town in Latvia.
There is Fortress area built by Russians, but the buildings in this area are in very bad condition! At least the main gate is still OK!

Route for day 2 was like this:

Day 3: From the number 1 hotel in Daugavpils it was nice to continue to Lithuania!
Right after crossing the border there a small Zarasai town and there we found this:

The “Loop” viewing platform 17m above Lake Zarasas

The original idea was to ride to Belarus but we didn’t make the travel plan that has to be made 48 hours beforehand!
We visited this nice viewing tower:

The wind was very strong at this point but we didn’t notice yet the rising thunderclouds from the southwest. Then I started to avoid the possible rain by choosing the route more east. Finally it was only a small forestroad…

Riding south from Kulbokiškė village

So we almost made it to Belarus!!
But of course we had to turn back to the big road and route to Vilnius. After the capitol of Lithuania we finally had to change the rainsuits otherwise we’d get wet. But the rain didn’t last long. We ended up to Poland in a small Stary Folwark village near Suwaki. This was the cheapest stay in our trip. Room for 2 with breakfast was about 32€! Here’s the route for day 3: