Route

Motivation for this tour

Boundary conditions:

• my grandma lives in Finland
• my girlfriend’s a teacher who had the month of August off from school
• I love cycling
• I had saved up some extra time at work

So when planning for my sabbatical, I had the idea that I could combine all of my interests and cycle from Mannheim (Germany) to Vaasa (Finnland) to see my grandma, and then cycle back through Finland and Sweden with my girlfriend during her summer break.

Equipment on this tour

So, cycling to Finland was my first big cycling trip. I wasn’t sure how I would fare. Maybe I would even hate it and abort the whole thing. So I didn’t want to spend exorbitant amounts for my gear. I did lot’s of reasearch to find gear that was somewhat small and lightweight - but not the top-of-the-range stuff.

So here are some key componets:

• Cycle: Pegasus Sololero SL Disc
• Tent: CAMPZ Lacanau Zelt 2P I was also really satisfied with this tent. Price to weight/size ration is really good. Only downside is that you have to build the inner tent before you can build the outer tent - which could be a downside when putting it up in heavy rain.
• Air mattress: Decathlon Trek 700 XL gelb XL I was so satisfied with sleeping on this. Highly reccomended!
• Sleeping bag: Decathlon Trek 500 10 °C XL
• Robens Pump Sack To inflate my mattress - worked really well.
• Back panniers: 2 x Ortlieb Back Roller - The default panier bags to spot German cycle tourists. ;) Have been happy with these for years.
• Front panniers: 2 x Vaude Aqua Front - I like the Ortlieb QC lock system better than the Vaude System.
• Lowrider: Zefal Raider
• Handlebar Front Bag: Red Cycling Products Front Loader III schwarz
• Hammock: with mosquito net
• Bar ends: ergotec Bar Ends Touring
• Phone Mount: Similar to this I have tried out many phone mounts for my cycle - but this one has lasted forever and never dropped my phone. Highly recommended.
• Cycle2Charge: USB charger connected to my hub dynamo. This didn’t really work well for me. The max. output was only 800 mAh and when you got too slow, the phone detected a voltage change and stopped charging. Then you would need to disconnect the cable and connect it again. But this would be quite bad to start so many charging cycles. I ended up charging using my Solar panels or when I had lunch.

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#preparations for my bike sabbatical in full swing. Now I also have some loading capacity in the front. #lowrider #bike2finland

A post shared by Björn (@bjoernontour) on Jun 8, 2018 at 4:08pm PDT

Learnings

• You can never pack enough zip ties! These things are invaluable!
• Deflate your tires when you are on very sandy stretches.
• Don’t blindly trust the EuroVelo route.

Routing

There is the EuroVelo 10 cycle route going all around the baltic sea. So I figured I just need to make it through Germany to the north east - and then I’d just follow the signs and be golden. It turned out that it wasn’t so easy, and I Poland the cycle routes weren’t that great. But more about that later.

I used an old Android phone (Sony Xperia M2) for navigation and tracking my route. This worked out alright. In the beginning I used Komoot to navigate through Germany, but for long distance routing and re-planning if you’ve strayed away from the route, I didn’t like it so much. Later I switched to OruxMaps and downloaded OSM map files with the EuroVelo 10 route embedded.

Documenting the trip

Originally, I had documented and “blogged” the trip in Instagram. This turned out to be less than ideal, because I learned later that some of my friends didn’t realize that I had posted more than just the daily route summary, and they would have needed to swipe though the other pics.

As I am planning to do another trip this summer, I am now documenting this on my blog and also including the pics and info from my instagram account.

Staying Clean(ish)

Laundry

Keeping clothes clean on the road requires a bit of planning ahead. As I like to stay out in the wild and on the road as much as possible, this is what I did for laundry: I have a dry bag out of rigid PVC material. So for laundry I just need a tap for water and then some sink or toilet to dispose of the dirt water. I brought powdered laundry detergent with me. So I let my clothes soak with the detergent, then work it with my hands, and then did 2 or 3 rinse cycles. Then I hung my clothes all around my bicycle.

Personal Hygiene

• Public Swimming Pools / Beaches
• Gyms
• Golf clubs (they even let us use the sauna for free several times)
• Water taps / wells in the wild

Whenever I found a place to shower, I typically also do some quick laundry as described above.

Finding places to sleep

Germany

I Germany “wild camping” is officially not allowed. Most land in Germany is owned by somebody - so you’d need to ask the landowner for permission to camp. In state owned forests the law states that it is forbidden to sleep in tents (“Zelten verboten”), so there seems to be some legally grey area when you rest/sleep without a “tent”. A hammock, biwak or tarp should be fine.

This is why in Germany I resorted to looking for shelters on OpenStreetMap and slept in a hammock there. As long as you behave, don’t make a fire and pick up after yourself, you should be fine.

Poland

Wild Camping seems to be forbidden here as well. I didn’t want to risk it and slept on camping sites. However in the summer months, it seems like ALL the poles are headed to the seaside, so the beach seems like a walruss colony in the beach towns. The camp sites are also rather big and crowded. What seems to be better is to look for “agritouristica” camp sites.

Sweden

Camping in the wild is allowed in all the nordic countries (“allmansrätten”). However, if you are really in the woods, it’s not so easy to find an even place where you’d pitch up your tent. However, there is a great Facebook group who are putting all the public shelters (Vindskydd) which are free to use on a Google Map: Vindskydd i Svergie Oftentimes including some images and additional info. So many places had a loo, firefood, and a fireplace. However, due to the extremly hot summer, we were only allowed to light a fire on our last night in a shelter. All other days before, there was stricktly prohibited to light a fire.

We found it great to put up the inner tent net inside the shelters to protect from the mosquitos.

Finland

Same goes for Finland. They also have shelters (fi: laavu / se: vindskydd). On this page you can download the gps coorinates for shelters per municipality: All shelters in Finland GPX. I also put these on a custom google map.

Denmark

Even though I didn’t tour through Danmark yet, I also found a nice list of shelters here: naturstyrelsen.dk

All blog entries from this trip