Samuli's bikes, off-road touring in Lapland and other rides

I've only ever really ridden road in Poland (unless you count Accidental Gravel™) so I'm not much use to you I'm afraid. Anywhere down south though in the Beskidz towards the Tatras is gonna throw up some good stuff though - the small roads there are quite good fun and it was lovely weather the other week when we were there (my first visit in 5 years) . The traffic seems to have got a lot busier though so I'd avoid the bigger roads as connectors as they tend to lack shoulders, although the drivers are generally better than UK.

Have a look through RWGPS or Komoot and it'll throw up stuff like this which might be a starting point: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/37938775

Yeah I already found this gravel race in that direction https://pgr.kolo-ultra.pl/pgr2022-route/

Nice. Added that to my list :)

We were mostly riding near Babia Góra. It's further NW from Zakopane.
Last time I was there I was going a lot further south but the bikes weren't running that well and we lack spares and time to do any bigger rides.

Cheers!

Here's the route I ended up taking to Ljubljana https://ridewithgps.com/trips/94093949

A ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn as riding around the bay via Russia isn't an option now, lots of gravel roads through the Baltics, several natural parks, many of which are bogs, then mostly small paved roads and touring routes like Eurovelo in Poland to make quicker progress, over the mountains to Slovakia, through the heat in the Hungarian plains and bad bicycle infrastructure, finishing with the best part over the mountains from Austria to Slovenia, with some scenic gravel roads on top of them.

4 Attachments

Here's the bike.

2 Attachments

Just went through this thread. Great bikes and great adventures. Thanks for sharing!

I hadn't got to writing a recap of the Silk road until now, but now I did, https://samulimaekinen.wordpress.com/2022/08/10/silk-road-mountain-race-2021/

It's in Finnish though so you'd need to use translator, but there's lots of pictures to get you in the mood to dotwatch this year's race that's about to start in a couple of days, though I won't be there.

Just read trough this whole thread. Very inspiring. Looking forward to seeing what kind of routes you find on Åland, If the weather gets cold enough I've read about trips from the mainland over the ice (maybe with the occasional ferry). Maybe a packraft is in you're future?

Also a quick question, you don´t happen to have any tips for routes around Vaasa?

Kiitos!

Stunning scenery, thanks for posting. Really enjoyed scrolling through your pics.

Yeah it will be interesting to see what the winter is like here. Longer distances on ice and not just along the coast do sound good.

I did aninteresting trip from Helsinki to Vaasa following what was one of the first proper roads in Finland something like 700 years ago, which is now mostly a gravel road. I could really only find the middle part of it and closer to Vaasa rode just on some nice roads roughly following the old maps. This was my route
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/40556818

And in Vaasa, riding around the lake Pilvilampi is a nice short gravel ride, the Botnia Cyklingen route is a good road ride. When I used to live there, I often rode to the island called Raippaluoto, there's a nice cafe in Svedjehamn and it's a Unesco world heritage site.

Thanks man, I really appreciated it - I'll try the routes next summer! Svedjehamn and Kvarken archipelago is really stunning nature.

If someone wants to go for a chill tour, short days on flat roads, Åland/Ahvenanmaa would be a good destination. We lived there for a year, a rather weird year. The islands are swedish speaking and I'm not too fluent in that. And outside of the holiday season there's not that many people in there, usually the only tyre tracks I'd see on the mud were my own from the previous days. Spent time in the woods on most days, was nice to become so familiar with the trails, trees and everything. We lived in the town, but often I'd see more deer than humans. In July the place changes though, the town is full of tourists and the island(s) gets filled with guest harbours and accompanying services and camping grounds. The place is somewhat famous as an easy and idyllic bike touring destination, the distances are short as the whole place is small and the paved roads are flat. And you get to go on a ferry ride every now and then. There's lots of gravel roads and hills that are something like 60-90 m above sea level, but you have to go looking for them if that's what you want. There's also over 200 km of hiking trails that are mostly ridable on a mountain bike and that's mostly what I did for the winter, as I'd already ridden all of the roads during the summer. Outside of July and maybe August the guest harbours and similar services are closed, so better bring your own snacks, but it also means there's almost no traffic on the roads or hikers on the trails. You can often see eagles, swans and geese. In the spring there was a seal hanging out at the beach.

5 Attachments

More

5 Attachments

Back in Helsinki, I built the Steamroller up again as a flat bar fixed gear. Wasn't sure if I'd ride it much but it's been surprisingly entertaining and I've been mostly using this for commuting and put thicker tyres on it for some gravel rides too. I took part in a small gravel event on this and did some other longer mixed terrain rides too while the Stavanger was waiting for a rim as the old one had cracked.

3 Attachments

In May I needed to get to Leipzig, Germany, for a conference. I rode the Stavanger and took ferries to get there through Sweden, Denmark and Germany, about 1300 km in five or six days. Saw several interesting natural parks with big old leafy trees and lots of birds and deer. It wasn't too warm yet, the weather forecast even mentioned snow depth for one of the days in Sweden, but good enough and really enjoyed being on the road for days. After a few days in Leipzig I rode to Travemunde and took a cargo ship back home.

5 Attachments

Nice update! Interesting rides:)

Pöörirando was also one of the more interesting rides, a 24 hour long distance alleycat type of a thing with checkpoints all over northeastern Estonia, often requiring to ride a bit or a lot of small gravel roads to get to them. The northern coast is nice, views are nice as you can see the open sea, there's no archipelago blocking the view like you have in Finland and Sweden. The old abandoned mining town of Viivikonna was interesting, as was the city of Sillamäe that used to be only accessible to certain individuals during the soviet era and so secret it didn't have a name, it was just called number seven. Really liked the roads too, especially the unpaved ones that felt kind of remote, even though you were never that far from a city. The route ended up being 453 km of enjoyable riding but probably wasn't the most efficient way to gather the points, we pretty much went with the plan we had before they told how many points you'd get from each CP.

5 Attachments

The Stavanger is in more of a gravel bike setup now with a half frame bag, it had the full frame bag with bottle cages on the fork until recently.

2 Attachments

The Stanton Sherpa has basically stayed as it is, but I did replace the old Sid with a Pike, which rides a bit smoother and fits bigger tyres. And I chopped a bit off the seat tube to fit a 150 mm dropper. And dropper the bar a bit with a Syntace Flatforce stem. A fun bike. Just put a new cassette and 2.6" Barzos on it so it's ready to spend most of July in Lapland following hiking trails and the ATV tracks of the reindeer herders.

1 Attachment

Oh yeah and the winter/rainy day commuter got steel mudguards, the same ones that were on the Sibbo. The Son dynamo qr hub that used to be on the Sibbo doesn't have a bike now so it'll go on this at some point.

1 Attachment

how often do you use the TT extensions?

I only have them on the bike on the longer rides, on those I use them a lot, like half of the time, more if it's on smooth roads and I want to be fast.

Any races planned we can follow? :)

Are these bags all self made? They look brilliant.