Bicycle touring in Finland - now with my hairy leg

[The Monkeysphere]

Hello, I am Monkey and I am going to spend two weeks wearing spandex and sleeping in a tent with two other dudes.


So yeah, I'm planning on doing a cycling trip in Finland - around 14 days, around 1400 km, in early August. Will be a first for me, while the guys I'm doing it with have done slightly shorter trips every summer for 3-4 years.

We'll be starting from Helsinki, working our way towards Turku, after which we'll be hitting northwest towards Vaasa (oh god, Swedes) through Pori. This is the first week, most likely.
After that we're going to go East for ages, getting to Kuopio in a couple of days if all goes well and we don't get eaten alive by mosquitoes, which will probably happen. After eating a reindeer burger (because god damn it I'm going to eat reindeer burger) it's down south towards Helsinki again - not really sure about the specifics of this route apart frm the fact that we'll be between lakes no matter what way we decide to go.
We'll be staying in tents; you can legally pitch your tent anywhere you want in Finland, it's really hot. Also you can set up a tent everywhere and it's not against property laws.

What should more or less be the route - will obv. change during the ride to accomodate swim stops, searches for accomodation etc:
http://goo.gl/maps/OW4J

Goals:
- cycle about 100km a day - doable
- eat a shitton of good food along the way - is this doable in Finland?
- not develop crochitis - most likely not doable; will develop acute ball ache
- no not having fun
- put yo stunna shades on
- NO FOOLS
NO BITCHES
NO FATTIES
NO NOT BELIEVIN IN YOURSELF



So: tips?

Finnish people - any ideas on bettering the route? Any amazing places we should seriously stop at? Marvel at Finnish beauty? Eat someplace/something specific? Swim in a certain lake? Keep away from any certain shitty city?
Obviously we wish to avoid the highways; but while we'll be all driving mountain bikes (buying a Cube Acid 29er in a couple of days 8)), we'd rather avoid shit roads. That should be easily doable Suomessa; after having a look around on Streetview the roads look nice.



I have fully immersed myself in the Suomi mindset:

[pratell]

sounds fun, but sleeping in a tent after a few days of cycling on mountain bikes sounds like shit.

kind of envious though.

[The Monkeysphere]

sounds fun, but sleeping in a tent after a few days of cycling on mountain bikes sounds like shit.

kind of envious though.

Have you seen just how much of Finland is comprised of water? Going to be swimming every day most likely :v


But yeah, sextuple ball sweat, triple taint sweat

[AmaNutin]

Looks cool. I personally want to take a trip out to finland due to one half of my family having emigrated from there.

[Timaios]

Looks pretty fun. I can't really comment exactly on the route, but once you stray away from the coast (Helsinki - Turku - Vaasa), the places will be far and between and in smaller places you'll struggle to find good food and people who can understand English. The more you head towards the east, the more likely that becomes. The trip from Vaasa to Kuopio looks dreadfully boring, but hey ho.

Personally, I'd suggest going from Kuopio to Jyväskylä (city with an university, really nice lake and nice pedestrian center with bars and (gasp) young people, and continuing from there to Heinola -> Lahti -> Mäntsälä -> Porvoo (again, a really nice city) -> Helsinki. The eastern towns (e.g. Varkaus) are just small cities built around paper mills and the only noticeable thing there is the smell from the mill. Mikkeli is not so bad, though.

But just my 0.02€. Have a nice trip.

[F18]

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[pratell]

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selle italia makes pretty nice seats. i picked up a man saddle for my tricross, would prefer something with a bit more shape to it. on a tricross i spend 75% of the time up and maybe 25% down but the seat doesn't conform very well when i am down. that glider looks real nice though.

[Smuggo]

sounds fun, but sleeping in a tent after a few days of cycling on mountain bikes sounds like shit.

kind of envious though.

Me and 3 friends rode from London to Land's End over four days, sleeping in tents at various stops along the way (we had a support driver carrying all our stuff). And yeah, it was pretty brutal. By the last day, having hardly slept properly, eaten an absolute fuckton of shit every meal (it was always stop at a pub, eat as much burgers and other junk food as possible as quick as we could then get moving again) I felt awful for a week or so afterwards. The horrible horrible pain of riding at nearly midnight on the final leg was only exceeded by the pain of waking up the next morning and attempting to get out of my hotel bed and failing miserably, instead having to crawl into the bathroom and curl up in a ball in the shower.

[FatFreddy]

Who would have thought that a trip was bad if you were bent to make it bad

[IceBlock]

Why Finland? Isn't it cold up there? Shouldn't we be following those faggot steroid users down in the south?

[tekai]

... in smaller places you'll struggle to find good food and people who can understand English. The more you head towards the east, the more likely that becomes.

that will be a huge problem for them ... not

[Daneel Trevize]

Sounds awesome dude, but ensure you do as F18 hints and bring prevention + cure.

Also, pics/FRAPS or it didn't happen.

[sahtila]

You should try to include trip to Ahvenanmaa (Åland), maybe even drop Kuopio and middle finland from route if time is problem. Could be more expensive/slower though and needs more planning. But Ahvenanmaa is the place to go for cycling in Finland. Its more complicated to get there though, either gotta take boat from Turku, or travel through islands which could mean waiting ferries sometimes.
http://www.visitaland.com/en/do/bicycle_mc
Or if Åland is too far, there is also some very nice roundtrip route going in Turku archipelage, could be worth going that anyway:
http://www.polkupyoraily.net/wiki/Saariston_rengastie
http://www.saaristonrengastie.fi/index.php?page=8

[The Monkeysphere]

I've been to Ahvenanmaa, though it was a while ago. When I hinted at going there, the other guys were like "meh too tiny"; apparently it's not as torturous as one would come to expect from a trip of this kind.

One very important question: they do make poro burgers, right? Right?


+ Thanks Timaios. I was kind of hoping to include Jyväskylä as well due to :uni town: and all that jazz.

[Pacefalm]

Gay

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Finland is p cool though

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try to eat reindeer steak somewhere along the way

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that stuff tastes godly when prepared well

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btw you just opened a spoiler where the post said 'gay'

[Destoration]

I hope you have a good time on your trip. What the fuck is that video about a vcr collection?

[The Monkeysphere]

MY LITTLE PRECIOUS

(MY NEW BIKE)




The 29er is obviously a perfect choice for Finland's amazing roads.



Re: reindeer
yeah, it's obviously accessible as a steak, but I want it in burger form too, since I've eaten so amazing wild boar burgers (made from Estonian FOREST PIGS obv) this year and I wish to complement that.


And why wouldn't I open the spoiler :V

[The Monkeysphere]

MY LITTLE PRECIOUS

(MY NEW BIKE)




The 29er is obviously a perfect choice for Finland's amazing roads.



Re: reindeer
yeah, it's obviously accessible as a steak, but I want it in burger form too, since I've eaten so amazing wild boar burgers (made from Estonian FOREST PIGS obv) this year and I wish to complement that.


And why wouldn't I open the spoiler :V

[Destoration]

That is a great looking bike. Bet it rides nice too.

[Timaios]

One very important question: they do make poro burgers, right? Right?

I sadly must admit that I do not know of a single place where you could get those. I've seen tourists asking for them in Helsinki, but IIRC waiters/waitresses haven't known either.

That being said, there are a few google hits on places offering those, so I suppose they must exist. It may be that you get those mostly in Lapland, unfortunately. But ask around when you're in Finland, it may be that someone actually knows.