Baltic Warmth
The goal was achieved. I’d ridden as far north as you can get in Europe; way up inside the Arctic Circle to Norway’s tip (71°10' 21" North for geeks). As the trusty Tuono was still running strong despite the cold, I opted to head back south the pretty way — through Finland and the Baltics, not Sweden. It would take longer but I never like going through the same place twice on one journey.
I crossed the Anárjohka River, and entered Lapland. If the literature was to be believed, this was home to hundreds of thousands of reindeer and trillions of stinging mosquitos and midges. I was a bit worried about both, as I knew that mozzies love the taste of my blood and I’d already experienced the impressive stupidity of reindeer as they wandered randomly about on busy roads.
The terrain changed dramatically once I was into Finland proper. Whereas Norway was all wild and jagged vistas beaten by cruel, freezing seas, Finland was endless mellow pine forests, glimpses of sunshine, lakes and undulating dunes. It was still cold though. In my pre-trip reading, many visitors had dismissed Finland as being unprepossessing as it was boringly flat, was covered in boring fir trees and was inhabited by all those flesh-boring mosquitos. I found the forest roads strangely relaxing and hypnotic, and the atmosphere only moderately buggy. I liked it.
Although vehicle traffic in Finland was generally light, it was certainly varied. On the first day I was passed by a couple of hotted up saloons doing close to the speed of light, but the next vehicle I came across was a significant contrast: a bearded gent called Dave, on a Honda C90 with his dog in a basket on the back. He was on his way home to England from Nordkapp so must have already done about 3,500km — at 80kph maximum speed downhill; I think the dog was in a coma when I stopped to say hello.
Shortly after, the skies began to darken so I pulled into a side road with a sign advertising cabins for rent. A swarthy man wearing waders was messing with a boat, although there was no water in sight.
“What kind of hut you want?” he asked as I rolled up. “Any kind,” I answered, “what do you have?” He looked as excited as a piece of cold cod at the prospect of a customer. “Just huts. It’s €50 a night. But we have no food. And no shop for food. And no wifi.” He made it sound so attractive I climbed back on the bike and rode off towards Lemmenjoki (Lover’s Lake) as the rain started.
Lemmenjoki, by contrast, had a cosy attic room for €20, salmon soup, minced reindeer with gravy and mashed potatoes, and a group of mysterious Russians in the next room who tried to creep through my door at about 2am. The rain lasted for two days, so I stayed inside and read, or chatted about travel, the demise of Nokia, and wild animals to the Sami receptionist with impossibly pale blue eyes.
She said she had seen a bear scavenging out the back recently, but not to worry as the mosquitoes were generally much more aggressive than the bigger, four-legged animals. Once the rain had eased I headed out and turned south along more dead straight, empty, pine tree-lined roads.
Seeing a movement under the trees, I slowed down. A group of about 20 reindeer trotted with Christmas card precision across the road in front of me. As they vanished into the forest, I started to speed up again, but then realised the group had a straggler. One which urgently wanted to re-join his group even though I, and my motorbike, were now in his way. Seeing his path blocked, he didn’t stop and wait for us to pass, but instead accelerated up the road, trying to outrun me. Riding up a remote forest road at about 50kph, alongside a fully grown reindeer with its eyes rolling and nostrils snorting phlegm just centimetres away from your right handlebar is a truly unique sensation.
Once it had dived back into the treeline, I laughed to myself, saying that this kind of behaviour could only possibly come from an animal as dumb as a reindeer. But shortly after, I was amazed when a duck did exactly the same thing, racing me at head height up the road at around 70kph. Maybe it’s a Finnish thing.
These entertainments served to keep me awake on the hypnotic, straight roads. Actually, there was another factor that kept me awake. Finland builds its remote roads in short sections, meaning a new slab of tarmac or concrete of about 200m is completed before the next bit is laid. This means there is a join to ride over every few seconds at normal riding speeds. This means (as the joins aren’t very smooth) the suspension gets hammered hundreds of times every hour. This means your luggage bounces off regularly no matter how tightly you strap it on. This means you stay awake.
Looking at the map, I’d estimated I could dodge the regrouping clouds until I got to Oulujärvi, the fifth largest lake in Finland which looked big enough to have places to stay. I made it with minutes to spare, and found a delightful rustic campsite right next to the water. I unloaded my stuff into the cutest little Scandinavian pine-smelling cabin you can imagine, right by the beach and with a wood-fired sauna tucked under the trees nearby. It was idyllic, perfect, and even the sky brightened slightly. I asked the old man at reception if the weather would be as good tomorrow. “Only God knows,” he answered sagely, “and he isn’t telling me.”
Keen to immerse myself in the local culture, I stripped off, stoked the sauna with fresh logs and started sweating out the last few hundred kilometres of road grime in primal, nude, full-on Scandinavian isolation. Then the door opened. Tomas from Germany, another biker it turned out, came in and carelessly flung off his towel. As we sweated naked side by side, we chatted eagerly about riding in remote places, the best motorbike for long journeys, how to keep your chain lubricated, map reading and more. Neither of us glanced anywhere below waist level, but we agreed, in a manly way, it would be good to catch up again sometime on the road.
Next day the weather was still playing tricks, and I dodged threatening storms (and loads of banged up Soviet cars — it was only about 20km to the Russian border) into a sopping Helsinki. There I caught a massive ferry to Tallin, Estonia. Actually massive is an understatement. It had eight decks, room for over 2000 passengers and 650 cars, 200 cabins, two shops, a business class lounge, a conference centre, dozens of bars and pubs, a buffet restaurant, several cafes, three stages with bands, a magician, Latin dancers, and a playground for children. It was bigger than big, and it wafted me across the Baltic to Estonia, which was a world away from damp and expansive Finland.
Estonia was like a picture-book country; ornate churches, lovely old wooden houses, super art deco cafes, Russian manhole covers, narrow twisty back lanes, brutalist communist monuments and loads of cheap bars everywhere for tanked-up Brit tourists to behave badly in, especially in Tallin. I didn’t fancy bar-hopping to the accompaniment of Brummie accents, and as my clothes were by now fearsomely stinky, I instead headed for a four-star seaside campsite in Pärnu, which boasted a laundry. There, I reasoned, I could cleanse my bags-of their whiffy garments.
Wrong. The campsite washing machine was ‘ei tööta’ — not working. Gutted, I asked the manager for a discount as consolation, but she firmly said no. She did however offer to take all my fetid dirty gear home, wash and dry it and bring it back the next day clean and dry — for free!
Freshly kitted out with fragrant shirt and shorts, I stepped out of my tent to enjoy the traditional Estonian summer solstice (longest day) celebrations. The locals had donned bowler hats and tight pants, and were busy performing ethnic songs and dances to live music from an oompah band. Onlookers got complimentary “longest day” tumblers of 60% proof grog, and tiny pots of delicious fresh raspberries and cake too. One man, possibly under the influence of the spirits, got out his 90 year old motorised bicycle and wobbled around the car park. Finnish tourists in the crowd spoke warmly to me of the quality and cheapness of Estonian booze, but warned me to look out for locals stabbing people. I drank plenty, but didn’t get stabbed. I even got a chocolate medal for the visitor from furthest away.
Next day, the receptionist in a beautiful old wooden hotel, when I asked her for directions, printed out a customised Google Maps guide to all the places I wanted to see along with advice on the best places to visit first. Such warm generosity, the sound of leaves rustling in deciduous trees, and the sight of dandelions at the roadside made me realise I had left the frigid Far North way behind.
From here it was goodbye to the crumbling concrete of abandoned Cold War buildings, and south towards the sun-kissed and easy-living Mediterranean, in the tyre-tracks of Gianfranco, the cyclist staying in the next tent to me. Gianfranco was friendly, rugged, wiry, tanned and minimally self-sufficient. He’d already ridden his bicycle with all his worldly goods strapped to it as far as South America, Asia, and most of Europe, and was proud of his simple approach to life.
“I like seeing places. And I have just enough money to not worry about keeping it,” he explained. You meet the best people on the road.
