I'm Starting The EUROPEAN DIVIDE TRAIL At The Russian Border
This is the European Divide Trail. A newly created bikepacking route that is the longest off-road bike packing route in the world. It's an epic crossing of Europe traversing nine countries by using a collection of endless dirt roads single track and traffic free roads. So far only only 32 Riders have officially completed the whole route, and my plan this time around isn't to become number 33. Instead I plan to ride the Arctic part of the route and document ride in a way that will hopefully make you feel like you're right there riding with me. Over the next 10 days or so my journey will take me from the cold and frozen shores
of the Barents Sea through the vast wilderness of Finland ,all the way down to the deep forests of Sweden. This part of the European Divide Trail is characterized by wonderful desolate roads, long distances between towns and last but not least the Midnight Sun. It will allow me to ride my bike long into the night and experience the region in a whole different way. Since the only ones active during this time of the day are reindeer, foxes and the odd cyclist, trying to make that extra little bit of distance at the end of a long day. In all of these three countries wild camping is allow and even encouraged, which makes finding campsites, shelters and drinking water along lakes and rivers easy. But the journey isn't all sunshine and rainbows,
it's just as much about overcoming obstacles that occur along the road, in the form of gates, bad weather and somewhat gnarly trails. But in my mind those things only add to the adventure. So join me in this first installment in this series, as I make my way south along the European Divide Trail. Hi there, it's Bike Touring Mike here, and welcome back after a couple of months of hiatus. I'm starting a new adventure today I'm at this place called Grense Jakobselv, in the northeastern most part of Europe. Way up in Norway, almost at the same latitude as the North Cape, that I ended my
tour in a couple of years ago. So what am I doing here at the end of the world basically. Well, I'm starting my tour along the European Divide Trail, and the starting point for that is here in Northern Norway and it goes all the way down to Southern Portugal. It's about 7,600 km long but I'm only doing a section of the trail and I'm planning to do the Arctic part of the EDT. So over the next 10 days or so I plan to make it down to the Arctic Circle in Sweden somewhere. So, I actually started cycling yesterday. I landed in the nearbyy town of Kirkenes,
and rode the 60 km over here. So, I landed at Kirkenes Airport at around 9 p.m. in the evening and after watching the returning flight leaving the airport I found myself reassembling my bike at the deserted airport before rolling on to the almost as the started roads at 10 p.m. in the evening. In almost every other part of the world this would mean that I would have to
put on my bike lights in order to ride through the night. But since this was well above the Arctic Circle and late June, the Midnight Sun would help me guide my way through the night. I saw this as an unique opportunity to be able to ride under the Midnight Sun. A thing I've only been able to do a couple of times before in in my life. And man did it pay off. Imagine riding through beautiful roads surrounded by some of the world's oldest mountains. The plan was to make a part of the journey over to the starting point of the European Divide Trail, that was located about 60 km away from the airport. I finally called it
night after about 45 km and put up my tent by a frozen lake and rode the remaining 15 km over to the starting point the morning thereafter. It was pretty tough to get there, I had to climb a lot of hills and mountains to make my way over here. But this marks the official start of my journey along the EDT. So now I just have to make those 60 km back into town where I'll pick up some supplies that I'm going to need for the next couple of days here along the trail. [Music] [Music] [Music] So this place Grense Jakobselv isn't really a town, it's more a place that marks the end of the road for Western Europe. But there are a couple of houses scattered all over the place here,
and they even have a very nice church, as you can see behind me here. T his church is called King Oscar Den Andres Chapel or King Oscar II's Chapel. And it's named after the Swedish King Oscar II, who made his way here way back in the time. [Applause] So the name Grense Jakobselv basically means Grense is border in English, and elv is river.
So what you seeing behind me here is the border, that's basically this small river that goes between Norway and Russia, on the other side. In basically 20 meters or so over there is Russia, and the river gets even more narrow as we go along it up here. And with the tensions between Russia and Western Europe this place is a pretty interesting place to visit at the moment [Music] The whole idea of the European Divide Trail is to follow these small gravel roads all throughout Europe. But as you can see behind me I'm already hitting some paved roads. And
after the first 10 kilm on the trail basically the next 250 km is going to be on paved roads. And the reason for that is that up here in the north there aren't that many roads to choose from. So the guy that came up with the European Divide Trail didn't have too many roads to use from. So now we're looking forward to about 250 KMS of pave roads ahead of us. Just in a couple of kilom here the big climb over this mountain pass begins, and I've already done that last night and this morning so I know what I'm in for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I've just made it to the Russian Norwegian Border Station as you can see behind me. Even though the the gates are open it's pretty closed for people not living in this area or people that have permits to to cross in these troublesome times. There's a sign back there saying that you're not
allowed to cross the border on foot, so as you're going to see a couple of 100 meters up along this road. Some people that try to make it into the EU or Shengen area actually go through Russia, and they pick up some old bikes there and take bikes across, because you are allowed to ride your bike across. Usually there are quite a few bikes just thrown into the woods up here along the road The road that we're following right now, the E6, that's one of Europe's main highway. And
it starts up here in Kirkenes and goes all the way down to Greece. It passes through most of Scandinavia and then on to Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and further on down to Greece [Music] [Music] Just made a little detour to Kirkenes, the city center here to pick up some gas for my stove. According to the weather forecast it's supposed to be a big thunderstorm now in about 20 minutes time. So I'm aiming for the next town, which is about 5 km away from here. And hope I make it there in time before the worst of the rain. And then I'll try to see if I can find a supermarket or something to pick up some food for for later on while I wait out the rain. The thunderstorm
passed pretty quickly and after I had my combined supermarket and snack stop I left the small town and headed out onto the road again. One might imagine having to ride on the highway might not be the most fun start to an adventure like this. But it was the total opposite. Wonderful views along the way and the traffic was pretty chill as well. There aren't that many people living up here and the number of tourists that find their way up to this corner of the world are pretty few and far between. Most people go to either North Cape or the Lofoten Islands instead [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] About two hours later I found a nice little rest stop by river so I decided it was time to stop and have my dinner. The rest stop also marked a fork in the road where the E6 Highway continued North toward the North Cape and the other smaller road would lead me up over a mountain and later toward the Finnish border. Well the sun finally came out again and I was able to enjoy pretty
nice riding here in the late afternoon. I stumbled upon this rest stop by the fork in the road so I thought I'd make myself some dinner. It's about 6:00 p.m. in the afternoon now. I'm probably going to have dinner here and then head out and make a couple of more miles before I call it quits for the day. Today I'm going to enjoy a nice taco stew. I'm just waiting for for the water to boil up and in about 15 minutes time it's dinner time for me Full and ready to hit the road again. Here on the Arctic part of the EDT it's
super important to plan your meals since the supermarkets are far and few between. After leaving Kirkenes the next major town is about 200 km away. The only supermarket that seems to be open is in a couple of hours away from here. I basically have half of a bag just with food, so that I'm ready for these kind of situations as I go along the EDT. I think I have like five of these freeze dried meals. That might be overdoing it a bit, but I rather have food at the end of the day than be left without. I'm probably going to look at
eating at a restaurant or so as I pass through a bigger towns. But on evenings like this one a freeze dried meal will have to do. I'm about 100 km from the start of the EDT. I made a 10 km detour into Kirkenes and I also rode about 15 km in the morning and that makes it a total of 115 km. It's about 7:00 PM in the evening right now and as you can see it's pretty light still outside. I'm probably going to go on for an hour or two before I finally hit camp for the evening [Music] I guess I didn't check the map good enough back there when I had my my dinner. I'm approaching the Swedish... I'm approaching the The Finnish/Norwegian border here just in a couple of 100 m or so. But I saw a pretty worrisome sign back there
that said that you're not allowed to pass the border after 700 p.m. in the evening. And the next available time slot is 10:00 in the morning, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed and I'm able to to pass through here without any problems. I'm probably not going to go that far anyway, but it would be nice to be able to cross off Norway in the first day. This is the border here and it looks like it's open so hope I'm able to go through here Soumi Finland! So I made it to Finland woohoo! Checked off Norway in the first day, and it's always sad to leave Norway since it's such a super destination for bikepacking. So if you haven't come here yet make sure to look up Norway for your next
bikepacking trip. Well Finland is basically the total opposite of Norway. Norway is hilly all the time and Finland is super flat. At least the parts that I've visited before, the sort of Southern Parts. I think it's going to be a bit hilly here in the beginning, but as we make it further down it's going to be very flat. But what I'm not looking forward to when I go into
Finland here is to meet their national bird, the mosquito. I've been pretty lucky with mosquitoes so far. In Norway you always have a sort of a breeze coming from the ocean so there aren't that many mosquitoes. But even though we're just in the last couple of days of May here I still believe that it's going to be some mosquitoes anyway cycling through the woods of Finland One other detail I forgot to mention is that Finland is actually another time zone compared to Sweden and Norway. So my Garmin says that it's half past 8 right now so probably in a couple of minutes it should be switched over to finish time. So it's actually 9:30 PM in the evening
right now. But I guess time on the clock is just a number. And we also have some Finnish friends greeting us as I come into Finland. I'm guessing we're going to see a lot of these guys as well. Yeah the time switched over to 9:30 as I suspected. So we're passing through this little town here which I I'm not going to even try to pronounce. This little town has two small supermarkets but they're they're closed for the evening and they don't open until 9 or 10 or so in the morning. I'm just going to ride through this town. The next supermarket is in 140 km so you can start to see the logistical problems with making these kind of adventures up in Northern Scandinavia. We'll see if I make it all the way to the next town tomorrow,
but I mean I still have a lot of food in my bags, I'm not that worried. A lot of rabbits in the evening now. I think I saw like 40 rabbits just last evening. I'm guessing these two supermarkets are kind of border supermarkets for the Norwegians to go up here and buy some some cheap food from Finland. We have a lot of these in Sweden as well up in the mountains, because the prices are quite steep over in Norway. This place is basically in the middle of nowhere. I'm just going to ride through this town and see if I can find a nice spot for for the tent in maybe half an hour or so. I found one of these roadside maps,
and I really love this because it's a a great way to show you where I'm going in the next couple of days. I'm up here now in this town I think it's called Näätämö. And I'm just going to follow this road all along this lake called Inari Lake. That's Finland's largest lake and that's a pretty big feat, because Finland is the country of 10,000 lakes. I'm going to go down to the town that's also called Inari I'm probably going to stop there to buy some food. Either tomorrow evening or in
the morning on the third day. That's where the real adventure begins because the the paved roads ends here in Inari. So I'm just going to follow some small gravel roads all the way down to Sweden [Music] Okay I lied, so sue me. I told you that I was going to probably stop a couple of kilometers or minutes after the border crossing but it's so fantastic cycling right now as you can see. The Sun sun is very much still up and I've also got a nice tailwind carrying me along the road here so my legs feel pretty fine. It's 10:00 PM right now, Finnish time. I made about
140 km for the day, but I think I'm going to going to carry on for an hour or so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] So I finally called it quits. I found this decent place here. This whole area is characterized by these big boulders, so finding a flat spot wasn't that easy. If I would have gone maybe 10 or 20 km further on there are some nice like uh lakes to camp around. But I had gone like for 150 km for today so I'm pretty satisfied with the day. Now it's about 11 or just after in in the evening here but in Norwegian times, which my mind is still set on, it's about 10:00 in the evening. And as you
can see I'm sitting outside, or almost my tent. There are hardly any mosquitoes so far, fingers crossed I'm not jinxing anything right now. That's kind of why I decided to go on this bike packing trip here in the end of May or beginning of June, to avoid most of the mosquitoes. Since I
knew I was going through probably one of the most mosquito infested areas in Finland I wanted to go really early or really late in the Autumn to avoid most of them. And just as I'm talking about them you can see one right here, but that's still just one mosquito. So this has been a pretty varied day, both with the hills and the lovely scenery in Norway. And once I crossed over the border to
Finland things really changed a lot and it got a lot flatter. And I was able to to do some really relaxed cycling here in the evening. I think I have about 120 km or so to the next town, Inari. So I think I'm going to make it there tomorrow before they close the supermarkets at 6:00 PM.
It's a Saturday tomorrow, so they close a little bit early. Even though supermarkets are still open in Finland on Sundays I still need to stock up on on some food, since there are basically no supermarkets in the next 250 km after the town called Inari. I hope you've enjoyed following along on this the first day on the European Divide Trail and I'll hope you join me next time when I discover Finland some more. And if you enjoyed following along in Norway you might want to watch one of my trips that I did in the Lofoten Islands, which is really spectacular place in Norway. You can do so by clicking the link up in the corner here. Otherwise, until next time have a good one!
2024-07-19 19:55
