Tampere, Finland 300 km

We are not tourists. We are adventurers! These were the words we heard many times from Primoz, one of our guides on our Balkan’s motorcycle tour last year. Well, we are doing this adventure ourselves. No support vehicle taking our luggage. If it doesn’t fit on the bike it stays home. No one to interpret but we are learning to say “Good morning, how are you?.” and people respond in English, if they can. No one to guide us on the right trail. No one to book accommodation and make dinner reservations and no tour guide. Wait a minute. We have Doog (how they pronounce Doug in Finnish). He has an active role in estimating how far we want to go each day, the best route avoiding cities (we have always travelled away from cities if possible) neat accommodation, the Sami village, Christmas village, restored customs house. His evening consists of looking at maps, researching on the computer and yes, grumbling a little about it but his faithful companion does not complain, just gently encourages. The roads we travel take us into people’s back yards, farm lands, water ways, outdoors smells, some not so nice, and travel ways with less traffic. Good job Doog!!

We have been seeing lots of fireweed throughout the trip. At home we only seem to see it in the burned out forest areas but here it trims the highways and frames the farmers’ fields. Wonder if they consider it a weed, like the tansy at home.

Many of the roads we are travelling have bicycle trails parallel to them. They have built tunnels under the main intersections and roundabouts, bridges over the rivers and streams, light posts and even a speed limit on some of them.

Tonight we are in Tampere, Finland and are staying at the hospital. THE HOSPITAL!??

Not really at the hospital but in the hospital hotel. It is a really neat concept where they have built this very nice facility to accommodate people needing to use the hospital but also open to travellers. Both of us have managed to catch a mild cold so the location is appropriate. The sneezes kept turning on the voice actuated helmet to helmet communicator today. . .

View from our hotel window

Can keep an eye on the bike from the 6th floor

Today’s ride to Tampere (pop. 230,000) was over some busier roads than we have been on lately, getting us prepared for the trip into Helsinki tomorrow to catch the ferry to Estonia. Still we saw some lush farm land and, as usual many lakes. Finland is a beautiful country.

Road side rest and cafe