Sweet! Let me know when you are nearing Estonia. Basically your only difficulty here would be the Russian visa.

Between Calais and the Russian border, the only stretch of road you need to be even remotely worried about is Poland, just because their freeways don't extend quite to their borders, and you end up jostling for road space with lorries. Unless you are planning to see some of the better Polish cities (Krakow etc), consider taking an overnight ferry from northeast Germany to Latvia or Lithuania. Poland as a transit country is mostly just big and annoying.

You can set a Parking Available flag when searching for hostels on booking.com. Most Polish transit motels have secure parking.

Good plan.

I would say, skip Moscow. Go up via the Baltics into SPb. Then aim for Norway, which you can do in a couple of ways. Either ride across the southern coast of Finland and take a ferry from Helsinki/Turku to Stockholm (well worth a stopover, unlike Helsinki), or up to Vaasa and the ferry to Umea, or just ride north through Russia and cross over near Kirkenes (more adventure, crappier roads). Then head over to the Norwegian coast and follow more or less Route 67 down. Different options to cross over from Oslo/Gothenburg/Malmo.

Luggage wise: the panniers will be fine, I suggest a topbox as well - keep it empty and put your helmet and gloves in there while you're walking off the bike. If this solution is insufficient, you will know this by the time you hit Germany, at which point you can always find a Louis Megastore and get a cheap drybag for the pillion.

Hi,


Your itinerary is on tarmac, so your bike is fine.


Bike security in big towns: try to find a hotel with parking.
Last year in St Pete we spent few days at Guyot Boutique Hotel. Reasonably priced (for St Pete), and they have parking space in the inside courtyard. We left our bikes in front of the reception desk. It was very secured. Bring a lock though, we always do.


Moscow, when we visited, was very expensive. Make sure to book a hotel with parking in advance.


If you ride northern Russia to Scandinavia, stop at Petrozavodsk (lovely town, very popular with the Fins) and make sure to do a day trip to the Island of Kizhi. Well worth the visit.


In the Baltic states there are lots of guesthouses with large houses and gardens or garages. Easy enough to find a place with secured parking.

__________________
Maria

www.franglais-riders.com

Hi Folks

Thanks for the replies. The original plan was to get to Estonia by the route mentioned and then cross from Tallinn to Helsinki, along to Turku, up to Vaasa, cross to Umea, down to Stockholm, across to Oslo via Karlstad, down to Gothenburg, down to Copenhagen, down to Hamburg and find the way back to Calais.

But with needing a Russian visa to visit Kaliningrad as you can't get the 72hr visas anymore, i.e. requiring a full Russian visa - the thought was what the hell, get a double one and do Russia.

I kinda really do want to visit Moscow - in my (odd) mind it's like visiting the UK and skipping London. Not sure if that makes sense. Plus the more time spent in Russia - my Russian will hopefully improve.

Plus, next year I want to go further east to Ekaterinburg on a longer trip.

Poland - the plan is to enter around Szczecin and visit Gdansk and then into Kaliningrad, so hopefully not transiting through Poland a great deal.

With the slight (LOL) change of plan due to the Russian visa - I'm not sure 30-35 days is going to be enough to do Finland - Sweden - Norway - Denmark - Germany as the return loop back, with spending 4-5 nights in both Moscow & St Petersburg.

Thanks

Dibs

Meh. Umea is very pleasant, but not worth the big detour. I've only taken the inland route via Tampere, and between that and Vaasa it is an annoying slog through villages. Once you get to Umea you might as well head across via Arjeplog to the Norwegian coast, which is going to be much more scenic than the Swedish plains. TBH, I'd say either go Tallinn to Stockholm directly (protip: if you get a Louis.de customer card and quote the number in an email to Tallink sales, you only pay for the overnight berth - your bike travels for free; for me the total cost was under 30 euros); or if you want to check off Finland, there are ferries from Turku to Stockholm.

Both Helsinki and Oslo are skippable as tourist destinations, especially on a bike-oriented trip. Helsinki particularly. Instead consider the coastal route via Kalmar down to Malmö, where you can take a selfie with the twisty skyscraper and consider whether you want to overpay for the bragging rights of riding through the Öresund tunnel, or save some cash and go from Helsingborg to Helsingör and visit the castle. (Nothing to do with the historical Hamlet but very nice as castles go.)

Copenhagen is awesome.

It's certainly necessary to get the full Russian experience, yeah.

That sounds like a good plan. On the way out of Kaliningrad, try to go via the Curonian Spit - there's a border crossing so you can get into Lithuania that way, and take a ferry to Klaipeda (not worth a stopover itself but has a decent cheap hostel).

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I was in Stockholm and Helsinki (none bike trip) in June 2015 and explored quite a bit, so not too fussed about missing them this time. It wasn't cheap but hey ho.

In all fairness as time passes the likelihood of "chopping" off the Scandinavian leg is getting quite high - i.e. Tallinn to Narva and then St Petersburg, rather than going over to Helsinki.

I'd love to come back via Belarus but the visa for that makes a Russian visa look tame.

I've had a fair bit of luck finding places tao stay with secure parking - not booked anything yet but at least comfortable in the knowledge that some/many do exist with secure parking.

I'm currently on with working out where I want to be on certain days and doing the "schedule" and working out rough routes\roads. The plan is to go sort out the Russian visa next week and get some sport touring tyres on the bike, then get the bike serviced and pull my thumbs out of my proverbial and sort out the pannier frames.

I remember reading on some posts about the Narva-Ivangorod crossing and their being mentions of stopping by some "hut" on the Russian side and getting some kind of ticket, otherwise a little ways down the road you get hassled for not having one. Anyone recall that? [I have tried searching the forums but can't find the posts.]

Thanks

Dibs

Let me know when/if you get to Finland. If you plan to take a tour in Finland you are welcome to stay at my place about 130km northeast of Helsinki.

Really appreciated!! Will let you know if\when.

Thanks

Dibs

Really? They have a two-day transit visa that should be fairly simple to get.

You might be thinking of the world's shortest toll road just outside the Koidula crossing in South Estonia.

There is a bridge over the river right from downtown Narva, it's congested, so you have to book a time in advance and wait in a staging area outside of town until you are called to go to the queue. Motorcycles have a priority window of 10 minutes in every hour, but still worth booking in advance through https://www.estonianborder.eu/yphis/...uest_locale=en.

PM me when you figure out your schedule for Estonia.

The Belarus website goes on about medical insurance and verified hotel bookings etc.

It does mention that you can get one abroad - so might think about trying in Moscow once I'm there. London and back twice is a bit of a pain in the rear.

It's definitely the Narva-Ivangorod crossing that I've read about folks crossing over, coming to a stop sign and being asked for a ticket and when they didn't have one being asked for "fine". Someone on a (forum somewhere) stated that once you cross over you need to look out for a petrol station and there's a hut where you get one for peanuts and saves the hassle.

I read about the crossing procedure on the Estonian side - booking it online etc., holding area and then going over.

I'll certainly PM you once I've got my schedule sorted.

At the moment - after realising that my current riding gear isn't really going to cut it, i.e. the leather jacket is going to be roasting in a European summer along with my 3 seasons (or I thought so) gloves, which the manufacturers catalogue shows as Winter gloves, LOL - I'm one with finding a textile jacket and some more gloves.

Thankfully found some Ixon summer gloves. Same protection, etc as my current Ixon gloves for 30GBP as opposed to 80-100GBP that I paid for my existing ones.

I think I'll take both pairs along.

Going to check out some mesh textile jackets on tomorrow, so see how that goes.