Trip through Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic States

[shez1]

I will start by thanking Liv for all the information in her Norway thread. All you need is there. In this thread I have tried to give lots of costing’s to help folk decide if the trip is affordable. Scandinavia is expensive, but costs can be kept down to reasonable levels with care.

A few general points. My trip started at the beginning of July 2014. Hotels / Hostel’s, ferries, were booked about two days in advance, sometimes just a day. I never had a problem getting a bed for the night except on two occasions. I intended to visit Lysefjorden on the first day in Norway (this is a highly recommended place in Norway with a great road to it) and stay at Lysebotn at the end of the fiord. Unfortunately all accommodation was booked and with heavy rain forecast I decided against camping and gave it a miss. Secondly, at the Lofoten Islands which were having a very unusual heat wave and many people taking advantage of it. Beds were available, but very expensive. All hostel’s were full). I wild camped.

In Scandinavia I mostly cooked my own food, though most hostel’s included Breakfast. In Norway a Burger with fries and a medium (0.5l) beer cost me £30, my only purchased meal there! Sweden and Finland were more expensive than the UK but not too much so.
Fuel is around UK prices most of the time, though Norway is perhaps 15% dearer. This extra cost is negated by the need to ride to very low speed limits (unless you have very deep pockets to pay fines). I was achieving 65mpg on occasion, I usually run at 45 – 50 mpg when touring.
Distances stated are the most direct route between places using Google Maps. I often deviated to the more scenic routes.

DFDS Seaways Harwich to Esbjerg (£260), this route has now closed and to my knowledge there are no direct routes to Scandinavia.

As a general observation I would say if you are strapped for time, the southern half of Norway is more scenic than the north with the exception of the Lofoten Islands which are spectacular (it reached 30 degrees while I was there!).
Road surfaces in Norway are generally good and many of the roads are very entertaining…….

I initially intended to visit North Cape, but Norwegians I met advised that unless I specifically wanted to achieve the trip, it was less interesting than the rest of Norway, so I gave it a miss.

Lapland, Northern Sweden and Finland. I did not find this part of the trip very interesting, though the space and empty roads have some appeal. After a few hundred Km’s of forest, lakes, gently curving roads and mosquitoes, it becomes a little monotonous. In Finland some of the roads were in poor condition, I think the authorities have given up trying to repair them. The main routes were OK.
Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were flat and the main roads and countryside unremarkable. I liked Riga and Vilnius very much. Tallinn less so. Poland was very nice with some good motorcycling to be found, with a mix of good and bad road surfaces. A place to return to for sure.

Day 1 Denmark. Esbjerg to Hirtshals. 290 kms, 3.5 hours.

Danhostel Hirtshals = 59 DKK B&B. A nice hostal by the beach, 5 minutes from the ferry. Friendly, clean and well run. Off road parking offered. Driving standards in Denmark were very impressive. I travelled along the east coast which was scenic with quite roads and lots of impressive thatched houses.

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Day 2. 4th July. Denmark to Hovden, Norway.

Fiord Line Ferry €61 including buffet meal and comfort lounge.

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Kristiansand to Hovden. Stayed at the Youth Hostel (Lundane Hovden 4755). Cost 350NOK. 200km about 3 hours. Good road but heavy rain. Very slow traffic, a feature I had to adapt to.

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Day 3. 5th July Hovden to Sogndal. Hostel Vandrerhjem, Helgheimsvegen 9. Cost 510 NOK B&B. 350km, 6 hours. Great roads and riding. Cold and wet most of the time. Caught the first of many ferries.

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Day 4 6th July Sognal to Molde. 350km and 6 hours. Hostal Vandrerhjem, Raumavn. 2, Molde, 6411. 550NOK B&B. Hostel would be hard to find without sat navigation.

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Ferries are comparatively cheap and I guess subsidised. Cost averaged about £5 - £7 per ferry.

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Day 5 7th July Molde to Trondheim. 219km, 4 hours.
Hostal Singsaker Sommerhotell, Rogertsgate 1, Trondheim, 7016. Cost 499NOK B&B.
Via the “Atlantic Road”. Nice road and an engineering master piece, but perhaps over hyped and for me not worth adding to the itinerary as it requires a detour to travel it. Trondheim was a very nice city.

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Day 6 8th July Trondheim to Bodo. 700km, 10 hours. Skagen Hotel. Nyholmsgata 11, Bodø, 8005. Cost 650NOK B&B.
The further north I went, the warmer it became. Very odd?

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Day 7 9th July Bodo Ferry to Lofoten Islands.
Wild camping and 24 hours of sunshine made it very difficult to sleep. These islands were the highlight of my trip and are spectacular. Particularly if you get good weather as I did. The connecting road network is a masterpiece of engineering and the Atlantic Road is not comparable IMO.

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This photo of the wild camp site was taken at night!

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Day 8. 10th July Lofoten to Kiruna Sweden. 380kms. 5 hours.
Hostal STF Malmfaltens Folkhogskola. Campingvagen 3. Cost SEK 500. The room had wafer thin curtains, not a help in the land of the midnight sun!

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Day 9. 11th July Kiruna to Oulu, Finland. 490km, 6 hours. Hotel Forenom House. Rautatienkatu 9. Cost €53.

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These things are a real danger and not the sharpest tools in the box.

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These Finnish road works went on for around 20 Km's.

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Moving south out the Arctic Circle.

Day 10. 12th July. Oulu to Helsinki. 600kms, 7 hours. Hotel Anna. Lost hotel details / cost, but bike had secure parking and for Helsinki the hotel was a good price and central.

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Notice anything different between the above two photos? They where taken 200 miles apart and the road was continuously similar.

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An example of Helsinki's unusual architecture.

 

[David Nimrod]

Excellent RR, looking forward to more...

And those photos bring back memories of my two Scandinavian trips...

 

[shez1]

Continues.

Day 11. 13th July. Helsinki to Tallin Estonia. Ferry Talink Silja Line. 2 hour crossing €49.
Economy Hotel. Kopli tee 2 C. Pohja-Tallin, 10412. Cost €35 B&B . Not a good hotel, but for the price with secure parking you cannot complain. 5 minute walk to the old town.

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It’s hard to say what I didn’t like about Tallin. Its a pretty old town, but no atmosphere I guess? Its so like a tourist chocolate box it doesn’t seem real. They certainly try very hard to extract money from you. Away from the old town modern Tallinn is pretty grim. The cost of eating and drinking came down drastically I am glad to report and I could buy a beer without wincing at last.

Day 12. 14th July. Tallin to Riga, Latvia. 309 kms, 4.5 hours. Hotel Konventa Seta. Kaleju iela 9/11. Centra rajons. LV-1050. Cost €63 B&B.
This hotel was expensive comparatively, but it was an old convent and a series of buildings in a self contained courtyard. (Where they let me put my bike for a small charge). Difficult to find though.
The road to Riga was forgettable and not always in good condition. The driving was very erratic compared to the disciplined driving in Scandinavia.

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A glimpse of the Baltic. Some hardly souls were swimming.

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The medieval city walls did not stand in the way of progress!

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I liked Riga. It had a nice atmosphere, lots of street life and old buildings.

Day 13. 15th July. Riga to Vilnius, Lithuania. 313km. 4.5 hours. Hotel City Gate. Bazillijonu g.3, Senamiestis. LT-01129. Cost €47 B&B. This hotel was in a good location with off road parking.

The road between these two capitals was OK but again the driving was a little hairy on occasion.

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The pre EU border crossing.

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I enjoyed Vilnius, it was well worth a visit.

Day 14. 16th July. Vilnius to Torun Poland. 632km, 9 hours. Hotel Pod Orlem. Ul. Mostowa 17. Torun, 87-100.
Cost 95PLN. (Cheap). B&B. Nice friendly hotel with secure parking.
Once over the Polish border hills and corners started to appear, so I headed off down the small ‘B’ roads which were a delight after the boring roads of the previous countries.

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Torun is apparently the only city in Poland that was not damaged during the second world war and I liked it very much. Good street life, lots of atmosphere and interesting old buildings and city walls. Apparently Galileo lived in this town.

Day 15, 16. 17th, 18th July. Torun to Harz Mountains Germany. 700km, 7 hours. Biker Hostal. Pension Roseneck, Gregory & Jacquie Niven. Wissmannstrasse 5, 37431 Bad Lauterberg.
Nice place to stay, secure parking and a meeting place for mainly Brits, Germans and Danes (when I was there). Friendly atmosphere.
The Harz are in old east Germany and this mountainous area is quite small in size, so the twisty roads that abound are quite short. So while the roads are fantastic to ride, its not long before you are in town again and the slow traffic. That said, it was worth far longer than the two days I gave it.

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Polish cemetery's were all amazingly well cared for.

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Day 17. 19th July. Harz to Vlissingen Holland. 600km, 6 hours. Stayed with friends. Via motorway.

Tunnel back cost £36 (booked two days before).

220 miles and home. The bike ran like clockwork.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.

 

[ebbo]

Fantastic trip Brian, well done!

 

[Haggler]

Good write up. Got to say though I thought the scenary in the north was far nicer and roads much quieter than the south (The road to Honningsvag was absolutely superb). Agree about Sweden and finland though, nice in their way but a bit monotonous

 

[shez1]

Haggler,
I guess we all vary in what we think is nice. One point worth making is that as you move north in Norway the country gets quite narrow and there are very few roads running north / south to choose from. This squeezes and concentrates the traffic, though at no point were the roads busy. When I was in the south the weather was lousy, in the north it was superb, this may have effected traffic levels?

 

[davem]

Looks like a great trip Brian, and your photos bring back some fond memories for me.

 

[shez1]

Yes is was a great trip and I am glad it brought some fond memories back Dave,

 

[Khulu]

Good report! I liked northern Norway but Finland was just all trees! Southern Sweden, camping at the end of a lake, was lovely. I then headed to Oslo but did some river rafting on route (probably not a good idea in hindsight as I was one day away from my ferry but that wa where the campsite was!) Great memories.

 

[LivNorway]

It is so nice to read some find some of my writings useful.
Thank you for telling me, Brian!
-And thank you for the report & pictures!

Liv.

 

[shez1]

Your writings were very useful, so thanks again Liv,

Brian

 

[ThorH]

"In Norway a Burger with fries and a medium (0.5l) beer cost me £30, my only purchased meal there!"

Sorry to hear that you have been fleeced. If you had purchased more meals, you would have found that this is not representative. In fact, I don't think I know of anything this expensive in Oslo. Not even tourist traps like Hard Rock Café et al. Yes, Norway is expensive, but normally not this bad. And it has become better for you; our currency has dropped 20% since this summer and 30% since last January. I hope people are not put off from taking the trip because only extreme examples like this tend to be posted.

 

[shez1]

The Burger and beer was in Trondheim at a place on the waterfront. Perhaps not the place for a cheap meal, but there were lots of Norwegian's being fleeced along with me (very busy). Having said that, I would not let the price of food put me off a return visit, Norway is spectacular.

 

[Camel Toe]

Enjoyed that Brian......every bit helps.
Next time you go globetrotting let me know........

 

[shez1]

Glad you enjoyed it John.

Brian