North Cape Tour Part 9

#9 We continue from the North Cape to Lapland, the northernmost region of Finland

When dreams lead you on a journey, the moment of fulfillment comes at some point.

We have reached our destination, the North Cape, and after the dream comes disillusionment. We are at the top of the cape, the night was cold, damp and stormy. We make ourselves a coffee in the lounge to warm up again.

The weather is bad and we want to drive to Lapland today. The route is via Finland in the direction of Turku.

The weather app predicts stormy times, a storm is heading for Lapland that is slowly approaching from Norway in full width and, according to the route, we are driving right into the storm. But the three of us are all born optimists and so we are in good spirits.

The hardest ride ever, ever, ever!!!

Departure from the North Cape, our next destination is Lapland

It's noon again before we get going, but we weren't in bed until 3:00 am. We wait for a supposedly good moment, take a quick snapshot and off we go. And off we go, heavy fog makes visibility extremely poor, plus unbelievable winds pushing from the side, what's to come is really going to be my toughest tour ever.

You know the distance you have to keep to the car in front when Harley enough reserve for braking, but not too much distance either. Hermann rides in front of me and suddenly he's gone, I can't see him anymore, no tail light, nothing!

Our tents at the North Cape withstood the storm.

I lose Ernst more and more from my rear-view mirror, but I can see him dimly in the mirror from time to time. In addition, the extreme wind forces you into a leaning position, which is quite unusual at a speed of 30 to 40 km/h. The wind keeps pushing you into the oncoming lane. The wind keeps pushing you into the opposite lane and the tourist buses are coming from the front, but you can't see them, which is a close call.

I can only see the road ahead of me on the map from my navigation system. I have to use the Road Glide Ultra catching again and again, when a gust lets up the feeling is quite tricky, it's an insane ride.

Shortly before Honningsvåg it's getting better, for now at the Shell service station in Honningsvåg refuel and collect again. You can imagine how happy we are not to have been hit by one of the buses and to have made the first few kilometers unscathed.

Now it's on to Lapland

Now we continue in the direction of Lapland, we drive through the North Cape Tunnel and in the direction of Olderfjord. That's only 130 kilometers for now, once we've arrived here we want to stay in the Russenes kro Have something to eat first. We're running out of time and so we continue on, our goal is ambitious, we want to ride another 250 kilometers. The weather is really bad, it's raining really hard in places, Hermann and I's boots are getting waterlogged even though they're supposed to be 100% waterproof. 

The story of our waterproof boots

Before we set off on our tour, we invited Ernst to Detlev Louis We all bought the same model, only Ernst has the brown ones, Hermann and I have the black ones. It's unbelievable, our Ernst has dry feet and I don't even have the good socks in anymore because I can't even get the boots dry and I'm already making noises when I walk.

Hermann has exactly the same problem, unbelievable. To start with, Detlev Louis swapped the boots after the tour, there were indeed massive problems with the black boots, they weren't tight and the black ones were taken out of the range.

Only the brown ones are really waterproof, which I can now confirm. However, they have now thrown them both out of the range, even though they are really very good boots. Waterproof. 

Soaked by the rain, we spend the night in a hut in Kautokeino

After hours in the rain we arrive in Kautokeino, now we fill up our supplies and for today we are actually through and only need something to dry, we are not in the mood to pitch the tent in this weather, we need something solid.

The original plan was to drive all the way to Finland, but suddenly we saw cabins on the left at the end of Kautokeino. One of them is now ours, we are really lucky, the heating is immediately turned up to full and the action begins. „Drying boots“ can begin. We couldn't do anything that evening, the rain was getting on our nerves, so we just had to put our feet up and say goodnight.

Another morning and today we cross the border into Finland

A new morning begins, well rested today we want to cross the border to Finland cross. We are even up early today and finally manage to sit on the trestle shortly after 9:00 am.

It's 50 kilometers to the border, after a good half hour we see the signs in front of us and there's even a border guard, it's just stupid that Ernst pulls over to the parking lot on the left in front of him and we do the same. Even the wave from the customs officer didn't help, we were probably going a bit too fast.

The customs officer is coming after us!

The border also looked kind of open, so we're not really worried about that. The only question is, why is he coming after us now? Now it starts, first we are told that we have to stop and can't just drive through, after all he's not here as a joke.

Now it gets rather funny, he was enthusiastic about our Harleys, especially Ernst with his special airbrush. This is a really cool customs officer, he takes photos of the Harley-Davidson Machines and a selfie with us.

Then he tells us that this mighty depression is still heading for Finland and we thought we were already in the middle of it. Without further ado, he draws with his fingers on Ernst's disguise from the E-Glide the weather map to see where the storm is coming from. Totally inspired by the friendly Finn, we've all laughed enough now, we have to see how we get on.

Roadworks! 80 kilometers only a gravel road

We drive on quickly, after about 50 kilometers we come to a construction site and the asphalt road is over. The next endless kilometers are on Ballast, The rain slowly gets heavier again. The E8 down and up Kihlanki It slowly becomes too much, the rain forces us to stop.

It's getting really hot now, we can't drive any further and seek shelter from the mega shower under the roof of a gas station. This has now cost us another half an hour, we continue on to Pello, it's early afternoon and it's time to eat something, we have a Restaurant with a large kitchen.

We are in the Kahvila-Ravintola Granni, There's a buffet and cake too, I'm delighted. But it's no use, we can't stay here forever, we still have 200 kilometers to go.

We want to catch the Silja Line ferry to Stockholm in Turku the next day

We want to Turku which Silja Line ferry according to Stockholm If our timing is right, we could get there tomorrow in the late afternoon. Unfortunately, it's not possible to book the ferry beforehand because of our uncertain schedule, we have no idea whether we'll be able to make it at all, let's hope it works out. 

It goes on, the weather is slowly getting better again, now there are moments when you have one more eye for nature in Finland. The country is just as breathtaking as Norway, only completely different. These expanses that open up in front of you when you drive over a mountain are beautiful.

In a slightly better mood, we arrive in Simo we have seen a river on the map and now we are looking for a place to stay. Wild camping. We drive a few kilometers along the river and see a narrow driveway through a forest, partly it is muddy, it is not so easy to drive with our loaded machines on a forest path.

We can't turn back, there's no opportunity for that here. We reach a clearing right by the river, which looks good. We can only descend if the Checker plate Ernst made the plate especially for each of us so that the Harleys don't sink when the ground is soft.

Trillions of mosquitoes attack us

But for now we are making the acquaintance of a completely different person, the Mosquitoes in Finland are here! You wouldn't believe it, suddenly we are infested with billions of mosquitoes, even the whole Harley is suddenly full of them. Now everything happens very quickly, we're on the Withdrawal, I'm off out of the forest, only my cross-country experience from my youth has saved my ass now. We drive back to the main road and are totally shocked. We really wanted to go wild camping, but we quickly forget about that.

Now the question arises as to whether we should camp at all! Suddenly, behind a bridge, we notice an inconspicuous Campsite We're going there now to check out the situation.

The groundsman is a rather strange guy, he doesn't really seem that enthusiastic. We are offered a pitch right by the water, but we want to have a look at it first, after the experience we've just had, that's obvious. The joke is that there are hardly any mosquitoes here, which is probably because there is no tall grass, we are told by some Finns.

We have a great place, a Fireplace is ready for us here and we can even go fishing. It's perfect and we check in here now.

Ernst loses a pallet of beer and has to go again!

We set up the tents and now it's time for dinner, we've made ourselves really comfortable, we're good at that, we're well organized, everyone has their job. The can of beer at the table and now we discuss the next steps around the campfire.

We had to buy beer twice, dear Ernst lost a whole pallet of the Goldwasser during the trip, just gone, how can something like that even be possible? It was a hard blow to our household budget, and of course we couldn't just ignore it. A tribunal followed, how can a biker lose beer, you can lose anything, but not good beer!

We all agree that the next day we will go to Turku that much is certain, now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that our reservation goes through. We have a really nice evening, the weather is good, not cold and we can fish too, but it's no use.

But that's not so important, the main thing is that the fishing rod has been cast if you've been dragging it along for thousands of kilometers.

Slowly the sun sets and our fire goes out, exhausted from the strenuous day, the sleeping mat in the tent is now waiting for us. The day was another pure adventure for us.

Accommodations:

Midnatsol Camping

Further accommodation at North Cape

Cabin rental Duottar Camp / Viddas Camping in Suomaluodda 12, 9520 Kautokeino

Campsite by the river, Lohitie 12, 95200 Simo, Finland

Many thanks for the kind support of our tour partners, Visit Norway, Color Line, The Rokker Company and the Tallink Silja Line.