Heading North!

5:30am the sun blasts through the curtains of my room; wearily I reach for my eye mask and think to myself: just a few more hours…

10:00am I lift my eye mask, casually check my clock and spring out of bed! Bugger. I miss breakfast and am now running late. How did this happen?

By 11:00am I am driving North out of town, unfortunately my route out is blocked at every turn by road works. I soon find the right road out and in no time suburban Helsinki is replaced by more picturesque farmland.

After 60 miles, the scenery changes as I reach the Lake Region. Finland claims to have 187 888 lakes – who counts them? I wonder if they have counted all the trees as well!?

For the rest of the day lakes large and small, and, increasingly, forest dominate the scenery. Whilst petrol stations or small hamlets occasionally punctuate the forest, I am protected from the strong winds that I hear howling. The shelter of the forest is lost when crossing the larger lakes along exposed narrow spits of land. It is all a little unnerving.

My first petrol stop is in Jyväskylä where Tom-Squared asks me a question that I have never been asked before:

What do you think the answer is!?

With the distraction of a major road re-routing across the lake near Kuopio, I miss my only planned touristy stop of the day. I am a little gutted, but not enough to retrace the twenty miles I travelled before stopping to check the map.

As I have said in previous posts, the journey is the destination and I just had one of the most extraordinary days on my motorbike. It was like having my own private roller coaster. I breezed past the heavy traffic without a problem. I love the feel and the exposure to the elements: the weather, the people, the road and the smells!

So I roll into Kajaani with a big smile on my face and hole up for the night in Kartanohotelli Karolineburg. This intriguing place to stay is a refreshing change from the sterile business hotels that line the main route. A family-run converted manor house which, despite being a little rough around the edges, has buckets of charm. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to test my own private sauna…

Distance: 375.9 miles