Finland has delighted with its smooth roads, bike paths, gentle gradients, ubiquitous coffee shops and warm welcoming people. From the bike loving city of Oulu we track the Euro Velo Route 10 (mostly) southwards through the cultural hub and ‘second-city’ of Turku then on to Helsinki to complete the northern part of this particular bicycling trip, declaring one’s self Conqueror-of-the-North.
With 2,000 km now in the record book the legs are now pretty well back into some sort of touring condition. Hopefully by the time I reach the mountains of Slovakia and Slovenia I will be ready to churn out some hill climbs.
Close to the village of Ahlainen, Jyrki and Kirsi are gracious enough to invite me to their magnificent island hide-away cabin complete with sauna. They have a beautiful and secluded cabin on the water’s edge, surrounded by forest nestled next to the water where you can birdwatch and gaze out over the Baltic. Or if the mood takes you, sit in a steamy little hot room and slap yourself with birch branches. Lovely people all and we cruise back along the estuary channel to the village in their small boat. There are so many places that are pretty along this coast-line it is difficult to single any out. However, this little cabin in the woods is a sublime retreat. Thanks Jyrki!
Vaasa has a sterile vibe in the centre but it does have an apartment after a few days of camping.
Came across this in a supermarket up the way. Surely somebody should have said something; anything.
Fried up fresh fish and beer. Quite popular in this part of the world.
Buff3ysbicyclingblog.info is now further enhanced with the addition of drone footage of….a guy on a bike. Some people like to put videos of me cycling through the Finnish countryside on loop as it reportedly helps them with anxiety and stress levels.
In Turku you can relax by the Aura River and watch the industrious little ferry ply back and forth. The whole trip takes about a minute, for pedestrians and cyclists only. Then it goes back, as it has done since 1903.
Managed to leave my camp flip flops somewhere. Sad. *Pictured here with insufficiently sized-mug. Oh crumbs!
Enhancement to the camping set up with the addition of a proper large (650ml) Titanium mug.
Some might claim that the purchase of a camp seat/cushion is an admission of a softening of the core.
I prefer to interpret it as evidence of a firming of the buttocks from miles of cycling, requiring compensatory cushioning. I’m going with that.
Fresh Perch in the small village of Molpe, up on the Baltic coast of Finland. Quite delicious.
Day One in Helsinki resting up prior to the ride south through the Baltic states. The city is going off with gay pride day with people leaping about the place, frantically including and shouting.
In Helsinki there are cafes aplenty so a bit of a coffee theme developing I’m afraid. The thing to do here is sit, sip and people-watch. This cafe served up good coffee and a more than adequate strawberry tart thing.
Not difficult to stay on a coffee theme in Helsinki. At the magnificently housed (and pleasantly named) ‘Robert’s Coffee’ the credit card machine is not working. I’m not carrying cash so I tell them I am a ‘Robert‘ and touring the world looking for Robert’s Coffee to drink as my hundreds of thousands of followers are anxious to know about Robert’s coffee. So charmed are the girls on the counter that they give me a coffee. Could it just have been pity.? (*We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section. *Actually, in this case, please no.)
This city is something of a trap for your innocent touring cyclist coming off days of consuming barely edible camp slop and highway petrol station lunch buffets, when they put these delicious cakes in front of you. Not fair really.
Just keep in mind, however, if someone walks up an open air microphone during your perambulations in the city centre and utters the phrase, “I’d like to introduce Otso and his folk-pop fusion band”, grab your gear and run.
To Helsinki, it’s cafes and its quaint predilection for middle-aged heavy metal band T-shirt wearing, I say thanks for a great time. To Finland, it’s been great. Tomorrow I bid a fond HyvästiI to Finland (and thanks for the fish! and cakes), and load the bike into the a roll-on hold of a giant Viking ferry for a gentle two-hour cruise southwards across the Gulf of Finland to the Estonian capital of Tallinn.
Now that the north has succumbed to my pedalling fury, it is the turn of the Baltic states to crumble under the onslaught of my bicycle touring might. Almost half distance now, with 2,200 km approximately to Trieste in Italy and the Adriatic Sea wheel dip! On we go.
![Buff3y Blasts Through The Baltics: Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania [July 2026]](https://buff3ysbicyclingblog.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Strawberries.jpeg)
![Swamped in Sweden to Biking Paradise in Oulu [June 2026]](https://buff3ysbicyclingblog.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Penny-Farthing.jpeg)
Leave a Reply