Fine Ride to Finland…

The Sedish town of Lulea's adopted symbol... No idea...!!

Entering Finland, or Suomi, as it is traditionally known...

My ride out of Sweden and into Finland started well enough in fine weather, and ended 600 km later, in a very stiff “breeze” in the little town of Inari, on the far western edge of Lake Inarijarvi…

I say “fine weather” only because the sun was shining and there was not a cloud about… It was however quite cold, and after just a few minutes out on the highway, I had to pull over and put my rain-jacket on, to keep the cold wind from turning my internal organs to ice…

It still turned out to be one of the most enjoyable rides I have made in Europe. The scenery up here is so different from anything I have experienced, and this together with the knowledge that I was almost in reach of the place that had been on my mind since crossing over from Africa into Spain, combined to keep me in the best of moods all day…

Heading for Rovaniemi and a date with Santa...

My original plan was to make the 875 km run in one day, and then look for a place to stay in the town of Nordkapp itself… The very tip of the “Cape” lies 30 km north of the town by the same name… Rudi’s advice changed all that, and in order to take in some of the sights he had seen, my run to Nordkapp would now involve a 1 130 km trip…

At 580 km from Lulea, Inari was almost exactly halfway, and that is what I had set my sights on… As it turned out, this was far and away a better plan, as I would have struggled with the long ride in the unfriendly weather conditions…

I refueled at Kalix, before riding due east, on to Haparanda near the Swedish Border with Finland… By 10.00 am, I had crossed into the 35^th country on my tour, and a short while later turned off the main highway and rode northeast to Rovaniemi…

I had been warned by a number of Swedes that the Finnish Police held nothing back when it came to dealing with folk who broke the speed limit in their country, so I tootled along the heavily forested E75, expecting to see any number of police hiding out, waiting for their chance to ticket speedsters…

Despite having had breakfast in Lulea, I stopped at this little roadside diner for a bite to eat...

All good and healthy...!! Coffee and a few Danish Pastries...

After half an hour of nudging about 10 km over the speed limit of 90km/h, and seeing not a single Traffic Officer, I went back to my wicked ways, and booted the Big Fella up to the speed he was far happier with… I tend to see speed limits as a “guide” only, you see, designed in the most part for the elderly and infirm, and I much prefer to ride at a pace that I deem to be safe according to the prevailing conditions… This tends to be about 25 or 30 km above the “recommended” limit…

I have places to go and things to do, Dudes…!! I can’t be hanging about…!! There’s a whole world waiting out there…!! And as we all know, it ends in 2012…!!

Knowing that I had plenty of time to spare (we are currently on 20 hours of daylight up here…!!) and a relatively short ride when compared to the last dozen big rides I had made, I stopped at a little roadside diner in the middle of nowhere, to have a cup of coffee and few Danish pastries… Folks back home are mumbling about my eating habits, so I decided to pack on a few pounds to satisfy them…

Finland has adopted the Euro as an official currency, so there was no need for mental gymnastics each time I had to pay for stuff…

If you’ve ever driven in Finland, you will have noted that the names of some of the towns are impossibly long… Personally, I think the Finns are taking the piss…!! I am pretty sure that even the locals can’t pronounce some of these place-names…!!

The Finns love their vowels... Go easy on the "A"'S people...!!

Taking the piss... The Finns complicate matters for visitors...

I can just see Ole saying to Gunnar:

“Ok, I’m off to that town that starts with a “C” and ends in an “E”…you know, the one with the little yellow house on the left as you enter…!”

“Aah, yes… See you later, Ole…!! I’ll be at the Invisible Moose Bar in that town that starts with an “S” and ends with an “I”, the one near the lake with the long bridge…!”

“Sorry, can’t make it… Gotta take the missus to visit her mother in the town with six “A”s and four “S”s…”

Your little game is up guys, so you can stop it with the long names….!! I’m spreading the word…!!

Outskirts of Rovaniemi, and a right turns takes you to Santa...!! Just like that...!!

So why the detour to Rovaniemi…? Well, not only does this town mark the entry into the Arctic Circle, 9and if that doesn’t send a cold shiver down your South African spine, then nothing will…!!) but this is also the home of that chubby fella who has a penchant for red clothing and reindeer…

Map showing just where Rovaniemi is located, right on the line that demarcates the Arctic Circle... And 680 km above it, Nordkapp...

Santa's House, filled with wallet-emptying goodies...!!

The Finns have claimed Santa Claus (and his wife, Merry, I presume…!) as their own, and have established a massive tourist industry in and around Roveniemi to celebrate this… Even adverts for furniture and cars bear the emblem of Santa Claus…!

Just north of the town is a complex known as Santa Land, and if you take a short ride through the trees just off the highway, there is even a Santa Village, where you can see where he and all his elves live…

Big Fella makes it to the Arctic Circle...

But right on the highway is a large complex where all the tourists stop to have photos taken with Santa and his hordes of little helpers… The staff are all dressed in red and sport pixie hats and caps… Bells jingle in the wind and the place bustles with activity…

There is a large sign on the edge of the complex, marking the entry to the Arctic Circle, where people were having their photos taken to commemorate their arrival. A group of more than a dozen Italian bikers were parked there when I arrived, and I was to interact with them for the next three days, but did not choose to ride with them, as following in the tyre tracks of other bikers is not my idea of fun… A big group such as this also rides at a slower pace, determined by the least capable rider in the group…

And I just happened to be there too...!!

I noticed that none of them were taking their bikes to the sign for photographs, as apparently this is frowned upon… The sign lies behind a row of large flower boxes, designed to keep vehicles away from the sign itself…

“Bugger that…!” said the Big Fella, “I want a photo right under the sign…!! Take me there G.B. …!”

Finding a gap further down in the parking area, I rode through it and doubled back along a cycle track, scattering a few slack-jawed pedestrians, as we barreled our way behind the obstructing flower boxes and parked directly under the sign…

I then saw a number of other bikers pointing in our direction, and preparing to follow suit… For a minute I felt like the Che Guevara of Rovaniemi… I had started a revolution, Dudes…!! Or rather the Big Fella did, I was just following instructions…!

The "Italian Tourers" gather round to admire the Big Fella...

After assisting with some of the photos we took, the Italians bid me farewell and headed north in a long line, followed by their big backup vehicle… I wandered around inside Santa’s House, a huge store crammed with Christmas bric-a-brac, including clothing, stickers, fridge magnets, reindeer hides and antlers, and any other trinket you care to imagine, all marked with the Santa logo… Christmas is big business, even in August…!!

This gentleman was on his immaculate, 23 year old BMW RT1000... He gave me a Vespa Club of Italy badge in admiration of my exploits...

In fact, Santa Land had officially closed the day before, as the tourist season up here in the north had comes to an end… I think the all the pixies had to now start the process of packing all the prezzies, and didn’t have the time to be mucking about with all the tourists…

I asked nicely, and she agreed to let me take a snap of her ches... er, T-shirt...!

I also visited the post office, where folk were posting letter and postcards back home, and children were dropping their “requests” for Christmas present into a large bag near the counter…

It was all very festive, with girls in their pixie hats assisting visitors, stamping their postcards with a special Santa Stamp, and having their photos taken by the hordes of people thronging the post office complex… Outside, all the restaurants were jam-packed, with hardly a seat or table available… I would have hated to see this place in the height of the tourist season… There would be queues for everything…!!

Santa even has his own Post Office...!! Not surprising, considering the amount of mail the old fella gets...!!

The Gypsy Biker visits Santa's H.Q. ....

One more day should do it, methinks...!! A pole out in the parking area show the distances to many major cities...

Sticker on the wall of the Post Office... Love it...!! Can't agree more...!! So bring it on, Dudes... Bring it on...!!

After spending almost an hour there, I decided that I had been Santa-ed out, and got back onto the road, passing the Italian contingent about half an hour later…

The back marker was a large Vespa, who was being shepherded by a GS 1200… I could not think of a worse way to spend my days on a bike… The guy at the back must have been fighting sleep all the way to Inari… Come to think of it, he had been doing this since Rome, and was probably used to it by now…

Glad I was heading for the places with the pronouncable names...

I cruised past them and stopped in Sodankyla to refuel, where the Italians caught up and also made a fuel stop… The Vespa’s range was less than 200 kms, so each time he stopped, the whole group had to stop… One of the GS riders came over and we struck up a conversation… They were heading for the same town of Inari as I was, and would be staying in the same hotel as well… The only hotel in town, as it turned out…!! Promising to share a beer or three later, I left them messing about and headed off to complete the last 220 km of my run to Inari…

Now this is what I call a log home...!!

The countryside was monotonously beautiful… The fields so green, the sky so blue… The trees were beginning to thin out now, and the further north we rode, the colder it became… I had not yet changed to my full riding gloves, and was still using the fingerless ones, in order to operate the camera and video recorder properly…

More taking the mickey...!! When will it stop...??

Even with the heated grips on full, within a few minutes of leaving Sodankyla, I had lost all feeling in the tips of my fingers, and taking photos was as difficult as it was when wearing the bigger and heavier gloves… The blast of cold wind that hit my face whenever I opened my visor, gave me an instant headache…

Tomorrow I would have to pack out the winter gear… Balaclava, long-johns, and double up on the socks… I had lost all feeling in my left foot, and changing gears smoothly had become a thing of the past… I wasn’t doing my clutch any favours either, as my left hand was also numb with cold…

Little red bus stops... Every single one of them deserted...!! Why do they bother...??

Throughout the day, I had seen hundreds of little red bus stops, some of them out in the middle of nowhere, with not a sign of human habitation in the vicinity… I presume that these bus stops serviced the outlying farms which were well off the main road…

The strange thing was, that despite having seen many buses on the route, I had not seen a single person waiting at any of these bus stops…!! And I passed hundreds of them…!!

I realized then that the Finns are a smart lot… Yes…, they know that it is unwise to spend any length of time out in these bus stops, otherwise the only thing they would be catching, is an ambulance to nearest hospital to fight a bout of hypothermia…

How they catch their buses on time remains a mystery to me…

Just north of Ivalo, near the shore of one of the hundreds of lakes that dot the Tundra, I saw my first herd of reindeer… They began crossing the road a few hundred metres in front of me, and I slowed down and cruised up to them in neutral, hoping that this would allow me to get up close before they dashed off… It was not to be… They were fairly skittish, and the herd moved quickly off into a small patch of trees on my right, before I could take any decent shots… The fact that my fingers seemed to belong to someone else, and fumbled with the camera longer than was usual, did not help matters…

Spooked by that bloddy big shadow...!! My first wild reindeer...

Over the shoulder shot... Check out the antlers on these things...!!

I did not know that reindeer come in such a multitude of colours… They ranged from a very dark brown, almost black, through many shades of grey, to pure white… Some of them sported a magnificent head of antlers, and moved back onto the road behind me, just to tease me I think… I was told that I would be seeing more reindeer than I could cope with the further north I rode, so was not too disappointed by not getting any decent pics of the first one I came across…

All together now...!! I'll take the top two, and you guys chime in with the bottom two... Ready...!!

I passed many smaller herds further along the road, and entered a national park, which straddles the route all the way north to Inari… I stopped at a small lay-by and wandered off into the trees to relieve myself, and while I fumbled with Velcro and zippers, I looked around me and noticed that I was well away from the road and out of sight of the bike…

The trees were a bit thin on the ground, so in order to get a little privacy, I had walked further than I thought… I stared through the low branches of the tree I was watering and noticed that a patch of earth had been torn up at the foot of a small bush, a short distance from where I was standing… The word “Bears!” leapt into my brain…!!

I looked around quickly to see if there was a tree big enough to climb, in case I received a wildly unexpected visit from one of these animals, and would have to climb to safety… There was not a tree big enough around me to allow me to get more than four or five feet off the ground… Needless to say, I turned off the plumbing, promising to continue where I left off in the safety of my room later, and made a bee-line for the bike, zipping and velcro-ing as I went…

Damn cold in Inari... Even the Big Fella wanted his blanky...!!

Half an hour later, I rode down the main street of Inari, and stopped at the only hotel in town. It was located on the lake shore, and a very stiff breeze had blown me across the Tundra and into town…

I had battled the wind and the odd shower of rain for most of the afternoon, and was happy to be in my small, but warm room, and out of the arctic like conditions outside…

The temperature was down to 5°, but the wind chill factor had driven it down even further, to below freezing… Not the kind of conditions my African blood was accustomed to…!!

The hotel is mostly built from timber, and the walls between the rooms are plywood on a hollow frame… I could hear the people on both sides of me moving around in their rooms, and at one point, the guy in the room next to mine farted so loudly, that for an instant I thought a bear was loose in the hotel, and had managed to get into his room, and was having it’s way with him… as bears sometimes do…!!

An hour and a half after I had checked in, the Italians finally arrived… I stood shaking my head as I watched them peel off the road and line their bikes up in the parking area below me… Not in a hundred years would I ever ride with so big a group… There would be far too much gnashing of teeth on my part…

I sat poring over my map that Rudi had given me and compared it to the route I had programmed on my computer… The fastest way up was a 400 km ride from Inari, but I wanted to ride further north into the Tundra (Silly Boy…!) to experience a “wilder” and less inhabited part of the country, and chose a different route that would add 150 kms to the ride… I figured that this would still get me to Nordkapp by the early afternoon…

View out over the lake, but I wasn't sitting down to enjoy it...!! No Sirree...!! They would have to peel me off the bench...!!

Nordkapp… The thought of reaching the highest point in Europe, and the highest point where you could safely ride a bike on the planet, had me thinking about how far I had ridden in the last five and a half months… The different weather conditions I had experienced, and all the places I had seen and the wonderful people I had met…

I felt the excitement begin building again… I couldn’t wait to fall asleep and wake up again…

Tomorrow was going to be one of those Big Days in my life…!!

The culmination of the Second Leg of my Journey Around the World…

©GBWT 2010