Different country, same bicycle. This year I moved a bit further to the south and decided to cycle in Tuscany. Yesterday I cycled 70 km from Florence towards the Chianti area, and I realised that around here the problem is not the distance, but the altitude. From Florence to Monteriggioni there are three hills and [...]
No, I haven't started a new cycling tour in the land of Chianti wine. But yes, I couldn't stop myself from borrowing a bike during my stay in Tuscany and hang around Florence. As a matter of fact, coming back to the places where I grew up, I just figured out that 15 years ago, [...]
Go to the Tour de Finlande 2010 main page No, there's no mistake in the title. This stage of my Tour de Finlande has been exactly the Tour the Helsinki, which is a community ride of 140 km around the Helsinki metropolitan area. I knew about the race already the last year, but I was [...]
The history of Ruotsinpyhtää, literally Pyhtää of Sweden, traces back to 1743 when the Kingdom of Sweden – having back then the sovereignty all over Finland – lost the Russo-Swedish War, and had to cede to Russia the part of south-eastern Finland up to the river Kymijoki. This meant that the town of Pyhtää was [...]
As I did for the mosquitoes, I won't comment anymore on the hardness of a punched air mattress. Can't do anything about it in the middle of the forest. Can't even put it in the water to find the hole, as that's one of the few things I try hard to keep dry. Funnily enough, [...]
Big changes in just a few days. First of all it seems the hot weather has gone for good. I just took back the long johns that I used in Lapland, as the temperature went down to 14-15 degrees the last week. One month ago it was 35, so the different is not that small. [...]
Watch the full roadmap of the tour And with today's leg I reached 4000 km. I admit I really can't explain the feeling, it is a bit like living in a different dimension. Just to make things clear: the amount of km is really a lot, but this is not an extreme sport, nor a [...]
Watch the full roadmap of the tour It's unbelievable how many people I have met in the Midnight Sun Film Festival: today my big thanks go to Kaisa who saved me from another hard night on a punctured air mattress giving me shelter at hers in Kustavi. I definitely should get a new mattress, no [...]
Watch the full roadmap of the tour I had a wonderful sleep last night: a very quite forest next to a not so trafficked road. But maybe I would have slept anyway as yesterday I've been awake for 18 hours. This basically means that I woke up quite late and had everything packed only around [...]
Watch the full roadmap of the tour The sea break didn't really affect my muscles, as today's leg ended after 130 km. I have to admit anyway that the wind was very good; can't say the same for the weather, though. The day started very early, as the rest of the crew on the boat [...]
