I chose to stay in this Holiday resort for 2 nights. It was a very nice price and there was almost no one else and the apartment I had was huge!! I also realized that the weather forecast promised some crazy rain in the afternoon so if I wanted to ride around I needed to go early in the morning. And I did!
Here’s the 96 km’s ride of the day 4 I din’t have anything planned so I was just looking at the map while I was riding hoping I would find some nice forest roads. And I certainly did! I found also some abandoned buildings.
This is the bridge between the Võru town and Roosisaare (island?) area where my place to stay was. The bridge was only for pedestrians. It was 12 km ride around the lake to go to my accommodation. From the eastside of the town I found some very muddy forest tracks! (Check the video!)
This day was about to ride back to Estonia. I didn’t know where I would end up… Where I would be sleeping the next night? Right outside of the town I was following the TET Latvia and for my big surprise there was a river crossing!! And the stream was so strong in the river so I had to put my feet down… and I got a lot of water inside my boots! But it didn’t feel too bad so I ride all the way to Valmiera where I stopped in some gas station and changed my socks and tried to make the boots dryer with some paper… It maybe helped a little!
I was still choosing the roads from the map just as I was riding towards Valga and Estonia and I did find some amazing small roads and tracks (Check the Video at the end of this post!)
I didn’t take too many pictures on this day because the riding was so super nice and the roads and tracks were so super cool. The last break I had in a small village of Sõmerpalu and there I made my decision about the next place to stay the night. That would be in Võru town.
This is a big deal for me! I’m almost crying here at home as I sit down for the last night before my trip. The last time I was on a long mc-trip with my ex-wife was in summer 2019. Then we’ drove’re riding 3 weeks to Croatia and back. It was a very good trip and I definitely thought even then that I should go again! Now I can. Last summer I was trying but didn’t make it. That trip had to last at least a few more days than it did. And it ended due to technical problems with the bike. And when I finally got that rear shock working properly last fall so that it could handle longer trips, I started thinking and planning a longer trip in the winter. At first it was in my mind that if it would be north again… But then I started to think all these places and things that are close to Finland. And made them as a bucket list for myself. So it turned into the plan and tomorrow morning I’m leaving to make this plan to come true. For the first time in 6 years, a long bike ride is coming (Baltic Edge Adventure)! (Hopefully there will be no problems with the bike)
It feels like the days are exremely long and time is passing by very slowly for me. But luckily I have few things I need to do for my bike before the midsummer festival and the monday after that weekend. Early morning on that day I will start my Adventure! I will call it “Baltic Edge Adventure” and I even made my own introduction for the videos that I will publish from that trip. Here’s the intro video:
The weather forecast was saying that it will rain today but we desided to go anyway. And the plan was to ride north first to Enontekiö, then to Kautokeino (Norway) and from there we took the “Old Postroad” to Alta. In Hetta (Enontekiö) we filled the tanks and in Norway border we took few pictures. For my friend Lauri it was his first time out from Finland with the motorcycle! After 3 hours of riding we reached Kautokeino and we enjoyed lunch in Pit Stop Café & Restaurant. It was simple grillfood with very reasonable price. Here we got few drops of rain but other than that we had pretty nice weather all day!
Then 15km north from Kautokeino starts the challenge!
The Alta Old Post Road is very well known route for adventure riders! It had been my dream for many years and now I was here! The south part is about 60km and it is the more challenging one. There’s actually no really hard parts but after 10-15 km of riding started the puddles and more rocky parts. I started to count how many big puddles there was but after 30 (something) I got confused in the calculations.
The last picture is from Mázejohka old bridge and it’s definitely on of the best-preserved bridges on the route! But soon after this comes the place where one Norwegian couple crashed badly few years ago. The north part of the Old Post Road is almost like a normal road. You can drive there nicely with a normal car or with street motorcycle. And the scenery there is simply amazing!
The route for today was about 300km and it looked like this:
My friends Eero & Lauri took a different direction from Alta so after this day I was riding alone again. I found very nice cabin from Strand Camping with 51€.
The 30 minutes video of the day you can watch here:
When I was planning the routes and sections of TET Finland I definitely wasn’t thinking that we would end up being the second longest TET route in Europe!! But here we are: 1. France 13,300 km (29 sections) 2. Finland 9700 km (20 sections) 3. Poland 9600 km (14 sections) 4. Spain 8400 km (27 sections) 5. Turkey 6500 km (20 sections) 6. UK 6400 km (21 sections) 7. Georgia 4900 km (29 sections) 8. Greece 4600 km (15 sections) 9. Italy 3900 km (17 sections) 10. Estonia 3300 km (10 sections) 11. Sweden 3300 km (6 sections) 12. Hungary 3250 km (11 sections) 13. Bulgaria 3000 km (11 sections) 14. North Macedonia 2400 km (11 sections) 15. Norway 2250 km (4 sections)
Total length of all tracks is 100,039 km (September 2023)
My own summer holiday started in the beginning of July. I had a plan to go and check TransEuroTrail section that was planned ready and route was made but it needed to be checked before it can be live. This section is East-West Section Parikkala – Jyväskylä. And I also wanted to do more TET-riding all together. -To finally see all that I’m responsible of! So on the 3rd day of my holiday I started. Route for Day 1 looked like this:
From the west it was first Section 5 until it reaches section 1 in Siuntio. Then only the “beginning part” of Section 1 until I could continue Section 41 going around Helsinki and ride further east…
Hopom Lake & Magic Beach
Then after Hopom Lake I turned away from TET to ride to Loviisa and meet a friend who lives there. I was also offered to sleep the night… Here’s the video of the Day 1:
There’s alrady new routes (sections) made… but we need to check everything before anything will be published. Here are the plans:
So there will be these new sections – Tikkakoski to Juva and from Juva (via Savonlinna) to Parikkala – Porvoo (via Juva) to Suonenjoki – Section 2 will have new route going from the westside of Tampere – From Siikainen to Kyröskoski (between sections 2 and 3) – From Yli-Ii to Taivalkoski (Between 2 and 3) – From Tornio to Muonio (Final part of section 3)
At the moment TET Finland looks like this. It is impossible to say when these will be published but we will start checking them pretty soon after all the snow is gone! At the moment it looks like it’s going to be before march!?!
Thew web page for this years MAD is now open. Only in few days more than half of the bookings is already made! Today 6th of January there is 90 free places -so I’m guessing it will be sold out very soon! Make you reservation here!
Check some pictures from last years event Here! and my story in this blog you check Here!
GoZa Mite 