Probably triggering some of you as it involves a motorhome and push bikes......so there you go, you can ignore it from hereon in....
Went to Finland and Norway via the Baltics…so after visiting the kids and grandkids it was France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg then home.
7 weeks, 9000 miles, 100s of tunnels…Norwegian engineers are staggeringly good at thinking thru ‘problems’. A few hundred miles of cycling, a few tens of miles of walking/hiking.
The 3 small Baltic countries were lovely.
Finland is awesome, the people are incredibly friendly…the further North you get, the more it feels like proper wilderness. We got to 25 yds from Russia…across a river.
Had a natter with Santa at his official home in Rovaniemi on the Arctic circle….which was genuinely great…we had chatted about a few things on the journey so far ‘I wonder how many…’ etc….obviously the same things everyone thinks of and asks him as he told us all the answers without even asking the questions…Santa just knows….. Could have bought photos and a video of our 10 minute chat (no one else there and we had a really good natter..his beard is real as are his eyebrows) but it was a “How much !?” moment.
Saw the midnight sun at Nordkapp at bang on midnight. (together with hundreds of zee Germans off a cruise ship….)
Saw reindeer…gets a bit like seeing sheep in Wales tho…
Saw Moose
Saw many white tailed (sea) eagles…stunning to watch.
Got to 71º N, now back at 45º N
Here’s some pics.
Great trip, felt like an adventure the further North we got (which we far preferred to the more touristy southern bits/fjords…yeah, I know, we’re tourists too)
Some stuff is way overhyped (Nordkapp, Atlantic Road, Lofoten etc)…..other ‘unhyped’ stuff was fabulous (Island of Senja, north of Lofoten….just the common or garden tunnels with roundabouts in them, or bridge to tunnel to bridge etc….
Europe has great cycle paths (Unna, Germany)
Bad Saarow, former East Germany
Other side of the same road…
Lithuania
Latvia
Roadside café on route to Estonia….the owner was a video game nut…well over 100 of them in there….buy some food and get a few tokens…I really could have stayed for hours, it was ace.
Tallinn, Estonia
Lovely city. Great quirky campsite, would be great with kids (we try to stay about 10 miles outside cities, then cycle in or take public transport. Didn’t take long to twig that in many countries you can leave a few ££ of pushbikes locked with a moderate quality lock for hours on end and simply not worry…..
Ferry to Helsinki
Finland
Helsinki is an awesome city, like the Baltic countries and Norway, stuff seems to be done ‘for the people’. So the main library in the city has several different things you can borrow besides books…musical instruments and a room to do some recording/playing, a room (several actually) to ‘game’ in. A couple of full pro kitchens and accompanying table and stuff so that if you live in a pokey flat, you can cook for friends or family and have a dinner party. People just go and chill in the library, grab a coffee in the café there etc….(Norway was similar)
We saw thousands of well sited picnic benches and also little wooden cabins with firepits…for anyone to go and use. We also saw dozens of fish prepping places for those (many Finnish do it) who fish and want to take their catch home (or to the library to cook it)
It is a superb country.
North up through Finland
On the way to see Santa…
Met a lovely couple (he was welsh, wife was Greek) on this 35yr old GS, Camping most of the time….kept seeing them, hundreds of miles away from the last ‘sighting’…so few roads and big distances.
Into NE Norway and its border with Russia. Weird seeing place names I recall from being a kid and the usual East/West stuff….
Chatted to a Norwegian squaddie here. He was doing National service and loved it. Had spent 5 months at this place (an obs point, one half a mile away with the Ruskies doing the same…except for no tourists on the Ruskie side) Coldest in winter was minus 40….plus some wind chill..so minus 55 ish, he had 1 month left then was returning to college to improve his grades and join up for real to be a medic. Bright, cheerful lad. We wished him well.
End of the world feel to it….
Near Vardo…the most Easterly point we went (further East than Istanbul)
These were dotted about the place…yup, it had somewhere to light a fire and a bit of firewood (plus something to light it with)
End of May, still a lot of snow
5 past midnight at Nordkapp….which really is just a tick in a box. The road to get there was stunning, the scenery also, but not the crowds (yup…of which we were two)
Now heading South in Norway (some are out of sync, geographically)
Same bridge….deceptive
The famed Atlantic Road…
Leaving Lofoten for the mainland (another free ferry. We took 9 ferries, 3 were free, the other 6 cost us £36 in total, other tolls came to £35…we incorrectly thought we’d be paying a fortune to travel here….£1.40 a litre fuel..£15 campsites when we stayed on them, otherwise free, food was a bit more expensive…coffee and cake for 2…£15)
Some of the ferries are electric with swivelling twin engine thingies…..very manoeuvrable. They pull in and the cable automatically connects with the ship and adds a bit of juice….ingenious but I now expect nothing less of the Norwegians
Coffee and cake….
Trondheim
One of the few remaining Stave Churches (we passed a few, all looked pretty similar)
Loads of cool bus stops for those bus wankers like us…
We cycled 35 miles of the Navvies road to Flam…stunning.
Geilo Cathedral. Geilo is a wintersports town, quite a nice spot.
Came back via Denmark (boring flatlands), a bit of Germany, Hamlyn…and Luxembourg (nice country, nice capital)
And Toul, in France
Saw a few truck based expedition type campers
And a few nice old cars
Lada owner (a young lad) was genuinely proud as punch of his car (Finnish)
Best thing for a scooby…
[URL='https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54623546148_45b23f0f51_b.jpg%5b/img']https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54623546148_45b23f0f51_b.jpg[/img[/URL]]
(Got home to a dead car battery and a dead septic tank pump…bollox)
Went to Finland and Norway via the Baltics…so after visiting the kids and grandkids it was France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg then home.
7 weeks, 9000 miles, 100s of tunnels…Norwegian engineers are staggeringly good at thinking thru ‘problems’. A few hundred miles of cycling, a few tens of miles of walking/hiking.
The 3 small Baltic countries were lovely.
Finland is awesome, the people are incredibly friendly…the further North you get, the more it feels like proper wilderness. We got to 25 yds from Russia…across a river.
Had a natter with Santa at his official home in Rovaniemi on the Arctic circle….which was genuinely great…we had chatted about a few things on the journey so far ‘I wonder how many…’ etc….obviously the same things everyone thinks of and asks him as he told us all the answers without even asking the questions…Santa just knows….. Could have bought photos and a video of our 10 minute chat (no one else there and we had a really good natter..his beard is real as are his eyebrows) but it was a “How much !?” moment.
Saw the midnight sun at Nordkapp at bang on midnight. (together with hundreds of zee Germans off a cruise ship….)
Saw reindeer…gets a bit like seeing sheep in Wales tho…
Saw Moose
Saw many white tailed (sea) eagles…stunning to watch.
Got to 71º N, now back at 45º N
Here’s some pics.
Great trip, felt like an adventure the further North we got (which we far preferred to the more touristy southern bits/fjords…yeah, I know, we’re tourists too)
Some stuff is way overhyped (Nordkapp, Atlantic Road, Lofoten etc)…..other ‘unhyped’ stuff was fabulous (Island of Senja, north of Lofoten….just the common or garden tunnels with roundabouts in them, or bridge to tunnel to bridge etc….
Europe has great cycle paths (Unna, Germany)
Bad Saarow, former East Germany
Other side of the same road…
Lithuania
Latvia
Roadside café on route to Estonia….the owner was a video game nut…well over 100 of them in there….buy some food and get a few tokens…I really could have stayed for hours, it was ace.
Tallinn, Estonia
Lovely city. Great quirky campsite, would be great with kids (we try to stay about 10 miles outside cities, then cycle in or take public transport. Didn’t take long to twig that in many countries you can leave a few ££ of pushbikes locked with a moderate quality lock for hours on end and simply not worry…..
Ferry to Helsinki
Finland
Helsinki is an awesome city, like the Baltic countries and Norway, stuff seems to be done ‘for the people’. So the main library in the city has several different things you can borrow besides books…musical instruments and a room to do some recording/playing, a room (several actually) to ‘game’ in. A couple of full pro kitchens and accompanying table and stuff so that if you live in a pokey flat, you can cook for friends or family and have a dinner party. People just go and chill in the library, grab a coffee in the café there etc….(Norway was similar)
We saw thousands of well sited picnic benches and also little wooden cabins with firepits…for anyone to go and use. We also saw dozens of fish prepping places for those (many Finnish do it) who fish and want to take their catch home (or to the library to cook it)
It is a superb country.
North up through Finland
On the way to see Santa…
Met a lovely couple (he was welsh, wife was Greek) on this 35yr old GS, Camping most of the time….kept seeing them, hundreds of miles away from the last ‘sighting’…so few roads and big distances.
Into NE Norway and its border with Russia. Weird seeing place names I recall from being a kid and the usual East/West stuff….
Chatted to a Norwegian squaddie here. He was doing National service and loved it. Had spent 5 months at this place (an obs point, one half a mile away with the Ruskies doing the same…except for no tourists on the Ruskie side) Coldest in winter was minus 40….plus some wind chill..so minus 55 ish, he had 1 month left then was returning to college to improve his grades and join up for real to be a medic. Bright, cheerful lad. We wished him well.
End of the world feel to it….
Near Vardo…the most Easterly point we went (further East than Istanbul)
These were dotted about the place…yup, it had somewhere to light a fire and a bit of firewood (plus something to light it with)
End of May, still a lot of snow
5 past midnight at Nordkapp….which really is just a tick in a box. The road to get there was stunning, the scenery also, but not the crowds (yup…of which we were two)
Now heading South in Norway (some are out of sync, geographically)
Same bridge….deceptive
The famed Atlantic Road…
Leaving Lofoten for the mainland (another free ferry. We took 9 ferries, 3 were free, the other 6 cost us £36 in total, other tolls came to £35…we incorrectly thought we’d be paying a fortune to travel here….£1.40 a litre fuel..£15 campsites when we stayed on them, otherwise free, food was a bit more expensive…coffee and cake for 2…£15)
Some of the ferries are electric with swivelling twin engine thingies…..very manoeuvrable. They pull in and the cable automatically connects with the ship and adds a bit of juice….ingenious but I now expect nothing less of the Norwegians
Coffee and cake….
Trondheim
One of the few remaining Stave Churches (we passed a few, all looked pretty similar)
Loads of cool bus stops for those bus wankers like us…
We cycled 35 miles of the Navvies road to Flam…stunning.
Geilo Cathedral. Geilo is a wintersports town, quite a nice spot.
Came back via Denmark (boring flatlands), a bit of Germany, Hamlyn…and Luxembourg (nice country, nice capital)
And Toul, in France
Saw a few truck based expedition type campers
And a few nice old cars
Lada owner (a young lad) was genuinely proud as punch of his car (Finnish)
Best thing for a scooby…
[URL='https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54623546148_45b23f0f51_b.jpg%5b/img']https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54623546148_45b23f0f51_b.jpg[/img[/URL]]
(Got home to a dead car battery and a dead septic tank pump…bollox)
