Miscellaneous Ramblings: European Travels
Ahh…more travel. With out more than a short break at home in beautiful Sydney, I was off again this time to Helsinki, Finland en-route to… Iceland!
This column I’ll just be sharing my European adventures and motorcycling impressions while travelling through Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Holland.
FINLAND
The bikes in Finland are really restricted by high sales taxes and prohibitive insurance premiums, plus realistically can only be ridden about four months in a year because of ice, snow and freezing temperatures. I only saw two types, sports and adventure.
The four sports bikes were in a group bailed up by an unmarked Police car and as I passed, a serious chat was happening. This was the very reason I sold my Gixxer last year across the globe in Australia – due to paranoia suffered by me and police harassment of sports bikes.
There were more Adventure bikes, with mostly BMW GS’s but I seriously ask where the adventure is as the biggest hill is 140 meters high in Joensuu, 500km north. So riders are restricted to marked roads of mostly bitumen, with no hills? Sounds boring.
Also cobblestones in the Helsinki streets would be an issue especially with rain, wet snow and ice.
ICELAND
Picture a rugged New Zealand and you’d be close. Amazing scenery, ice caps, glaziers, fast flowing rivers, waterfalls and steam rising across the landscape, hundreds of square kilometres of lava moonscape, beautiful with a pioneering feeling of a young country finding its feet.
I ached to go and hire a KTM enduro and indeed saw quite a few of them on utes as wel travelled around.
There are numerous paddocks all over Iceland simply covered in lava which would be a formidable obstacle for anything with wheel. Riding would likely result in broken bike or broken bones if you crashed onto the razor sharp lava, so I would call it impassable. Apparently NASA even used Iceland to develop its Rover for the Moon landings.
While there is plenty of normal terrain with some huge mountains, my enquiry indicated that like Finland you can only ride on sealed or gravel roads and tracks but not in the wilderness which is about 95 per cent of the country.
Of course if you knew a farmer or owned private property you could ride but in an active week I never saw that.
The bitumen roads are in good condition and windy but with more traffic than I expected and with maximum speed limit of 90km/h. While there are only 330,000 residents, there were 1.7 million tourists last year.
I did see a few road bikes and some adventure bikes but the same caveat about weather that applies to Finland applies even more here with more snow and a longer winter.
In Akureiry five hours to the north, on coast of Iceland I saw a few big cruisers and hotted up American cars just driving around and around revving their engines and showing off, stupid!
In January the average temperature is a high of 2C and a minimum of -3C.
SWEDEN
Next was back to Scandinavia, or in this case Stockholm which was a total change but I was there in summertime. It reminds me of Sydney with a collection of all types of bikes ridden around frequently and with a buzz of excitement despite fuel prices, long winters and cobblestones.
HOLLAND
I finished off in Amsterdam, which was a total shock! The “world of bicycles” would be a good title with some minor concessions for pedestrians, motorcycles, cars and trucks!
Because city parking is so limited and the terrain is dead flat, bicycle lanes are on every street fully occupied by fast ridden bicycles without helmets in use.
They roar through intersections, pedestrian crossings and heavy pedestrian activity like museums and other points of interest despite a large tourist population who have no concept of the “cyclists rule” philosophy!
To add spice, blue number plate scooters and unregistered disability micro cars are also allowed to use them albeit limited to 25kph.
In reality the scooters overtake cycles everywhere and mostly ride much faster than 25km/h… It is amazing to watch…
On the road with yellow plates and helmets the motorcycle situation is normal like Sydney, with a lot of different motorcycles around and better weather conditions than further north. Petrol was also over $2AUD a litre.
It really reinforces that Australia has the size, variety, freedom, climate and economy to be one of the best places to own a motorcycle. We are lucky indeed so take advantage of it!
Let’s live the dream and meet on the winding road or single track… and you can always contact me on mark@lawstop.com.au– 0405 064 087
Mark Stenberg
Solicitor
SYDNEY
