Sisällysluettelo
The structure of this travel journal has
been designed
so that to start
with there is the common part, followed by each travel day and a
postscript to finish it off. In this translation all parts are in one
package. To navigate to the beginning of page you can use the
Beginning-link at the end. Another link on the right takes you back to
Laura’s Travels- home page.
Common
Dates of travel 4.-21.6.2004.
The goal was to travel around Scotland specially according to
Laura’s wishes (Edinburgh, castles..) in that year. It was
easily chosen as the best alternative as Irma had not been there either.
Total driving distance
Just under 3500km, of which 1700 km in Scotland and 1800 km between
Imatra-Gothenburg-Imatra.
Motorbikes
Yamaha Diversion 600 (2002) and Suzuki GSF1200/S (2003).
Passengers
Four people (youngest being Jaana, 10-years-old, and Laura
11-years-old, on their second long motorcyckle trip outside of Finland).
Luggage
Two tank, two back and two plus two side bags. Each had their own side
bag of approx. 40-litres which had to be enough for personal items.
Tank and back bags were reserverd for the essentials (windproof camping
stove Trangia, gas bottle for that, camera, battery charger, tools,
maps, bike locking chains and heavy locks etc.).
Locks
Two of the newest locks were from Abloy’s "341"-series meant
for connecting loose chains (around a bike and some solid structure
nearby) and four older for break discs and to be attached also to the
bikes existing chains.
The loose chains were sold by some lock stores and for example by
Maritim located in Itäkeskus (Helsinki). They were triple
hardened (substance strenght 10 x 10mm, size of the loop being roughly
38x60mm) and protected by blue shrink tube – good but rather
heavy solution. I heard triple hardened chain manufactured by Gunnebo,
Sweden has a good reputation, but I wasn’t able to get it
prior to our trip. It is very hard stuff to cut off without noise.
Driving Gear
Everyone had either Gore- or some other xxxtex suit and all other gear
suitable for a long drip. Therefore the weather (rain especially) had
little impact on our progress.
Voyages
(Turku-Stockholm) was done by SeaWind and
(Gothenburg-Kristiansand-Newcastle) with DFDS boats. The voyages were
booked from DFDS in February-March and from SeaWind a tad later.
SMOTO-club membership was definitely worth it financially. Also it pays
to book early to ensure lower prices. Comment 10.3.2007: DFDS seems to
have stopped the route from Gothenburg to Newcastle Upon Tyne? If I was
to go to England again, instead of the route from Stavanger or Bergen
(Norway) to Newcastle, I would consider Denmark/Esbjerk-Harwich/England.
More info can be found from here:
[http://www.dfdsseaways.co.uk/ferry-routes] (link checked at 18.7.2016).
Accommodation
We always stayed in hostels by Scotland Youth Hostel Association and
YHA England, so we needed a valid hostel card for both. The only
hostels booked beforehand were Torrekulla in Gothenburg and a similar
one in Bellingham, England.
Online booking was a bit dearer than booking on site. Other SYHA
accommodation was booked and paid for the night before from the
previous hostel with the help of staff. Booking with YHA was similar
apart from payment being made on site. It worked wonders especially
when we needed family rooms in a wider area. Already, quite a bit had
been booked south of Inverness and Arran, as well are in Bellingham
area. By collecting stamps onto everyones membership cards every eight
night was for free.
Other
In bigger cities Kari drove first, Irma taking the lead in more
peaceful areas. It’s worth swapping every once in a while as
the second driver has more time to enjoy the surroundings compared to
the first one responsible of reading the map.
Trace-log was saved daily onto Magellan Meridian Gold-gps memory card
(256 MB) so it was easy to document the trip later.
For electronic maps we used MapSend World Wide Basemap 1.0 and MapSend
Streets Europe 4.10d, of which we had saved relevant parts onto the gps
sd cards. Normally gps showed our place within 3-10 meter circle, well
enough for our needs.
The personal comments have been captured according to everyones wishes.
The route has been saved on following formats:
1) Stockholm - Newcastle Upon Tyne - Newcastle Upon Tyne (approx. size
7kB, Route66/2003)
2) Stockholm - Stockholm (approx. 210 kB, MS AutoRoute/2003)
3) 75 route points will be found here (compressed, approx. 60 kB,
GoogleEarth)
More information was found for example via websites of the companies /
cities we were to visit. Here are some of the ones we found (those
links are tested at 18.7.2016):
http://www.dfdsseaways.co.uk/dsw/en
http://www.syha.org.uk
http://www.yha.org.uk/
http://www.iltalehti.fi/tsau/matkakohteet/EUROOPPA/edinburgh.shtml
http://www.castleuk.net/castle_lists_scotland/66/edinburghcastle.htm
http://www.castleuk.net/castle_lists_scotland/45/dunnottercastle.htm
http://www.bagpipe.co.uk
Day 1. From Imatra to Turku and Baltic Sea (4.6.2004)
Imatra – Hämeenlinna – Turku, 398,33km
Laura: We set off at around 2.30pm and stopped four times along the way
as the ship didn’t leave until 9.45pm. The good things of the
day were having meatballs and mashed potato for dinner, and the fact we
made it to the harbour in time. Yet the downsides were definitely the
facts that my dad snores at night and after the long drive we realized
we had forgotten to bring a dictionary, towels and coffee with us from
home…
Jaana: So today we left for Scotland. The drive was okay, the weather
was decent and so on, but my knees and butt started already hurting
from the long drive... It was nice to make it to the ship in the end.
Me and Laura waited while mum and dad tied down the motorcycles, then
time to buy some candy and dinner and then off to bed. The best part of
today was the fact the holiday just started!
Irma: I started getting everything ready already in the morning, I was
excited so had to find something to do to kill time before leaving. We
took our hamster over to granny’s house and then head off to
Turku. We stopped in every 100-150km and arrived to Turku around 8pm so
we could drive pretty much straight into the ship, SeaWind. It was
small yet great value for money (2 motorcycles, a room with 4 beds and
an own shower/toilet and outdoor view for a total of 114€
return incl. breakfast). There were only around 3 bikes in addition to
ours on the loading deck, so there was definitely plenty of space.
Moreover, I was pretty pleased that we didn’t forget anything
too important at home.
I have to say though that before this trip we had only driven about
1500km, mainly short trips, and that showed. You could really notice
the existence of the biceps and butt after the first long
drive…
Kari: Imatra-Turku drive was pretty tiresome I have to admit, and
definitely required some short breaks along the way. The weather was
good for driving – luckily nowhere near the +35 we
experienced last summer.
It again took some getting used to to the PMR-radios, getting the audio
etc. to sync took its own time again. We had glued some thin rubber
tubes to direct the sounds near the microphones in kids’
helmets, which turned out to be working really nicely as it reduced the
wind disturbance on the background. There was however something off
with Irma’s microphone, I definitely need to adjust it at
some stage as it picked up a lot of background noise.
On a side note, due to having forgotten some key things at home, there
was no use for Trangia during this trip. Might as well leave it at home
next time, and also drop the tent gear as well – depending on
the time of travel and weather conditions of course. Next year
it’s Jaana’s turn to suggest where to go, she
briefly already mentioned wanting to go ”To Spain via
Latvia”.
The drive to Turku was nice, the scenery turned greener and greener as
we drove south. The traffic was okay, but the long drive definitely
required some streching every now and then. As motorcycles can be left
to a relatively small space, we along around five other motorists were
again the first to drive onboard the ship.
SeaWind consists of around 100 cabins, 50 of them with an outside view
like in ours. They were pretty spacious, though even the smallest
member of our family struggled fitting behind the shower
curtain… The cabins were given out based on the arrival time
to the harbour, so we were luckly to get the cabin number 88 with a
nice view. There was also a bar, restaurant, a shop etc. onboard
– it’s not really a competitor to the cruise ships
but for this trip it was more than suitable.
We went to bed pretty soon after dinner, as we know a 500km drive was
waiting the next day.
Day 2. From Stockholm to Gothenburg (5.6.2004)
491km.
Laura: Breakfast was served at 6am and we arrived to Stockholm by
7.30am Swedish time. It was time for a 480km drive to hostel
Torrekulla, Gothenburg – the trip was long but the highlight
of today was definitely getting some decent pizza for dinner and the
hotel was pretty cool. And despite the things we left at home, we did
have a tennis ball we could throw around outside the hotel for
entertainment!
Jaana: My knees and buttwere still hurting. And we couldn’t
even play minigolf on arrival – there were seriously no golf
balls anywhere, not even on the golf course nearby! But the highlight
of today was walking to the dinner place in Gothenburg.
Irma: Breakfast was included in the price so it was quite a nice start
to the day. Stockholm was pretty quiet in the morning so it pleasant to
start driving toward Gothenburg. We mainly drove on the highway,
120-130kmph and stopped when needed. For lunch we went to Granna, the
same place where we stayed at on our way back from Denmark in 2001.
The hostel was 810SEK/night when booking online, and 770SEK for the 2nd
night as we booked it already for the return trip. It was too bad we
didn’t think of stopping at a supermarket as there was no
food available at the hostel – luckily we found a kebab place
nearby. The negatives of today were that the long drive was really
putting pressure on my arms, and also Laura was getting sick with a
cold so I hope she doesn’t start feeling worse.
Kari: The ship stopped on the Åland islands at night, but I
doubt anyone really noticed it. There was an announcement at 6am that
the breakfast was served; it didn’t take us more than a
couple of minutes to find out place on the queu. We arrived to
Stockholm on the marathon day so it was good we were able to get away
from the city in the morning. It was interesting to note all the
decorations and other stuff around the city center in preparation to
the event.
It was nice to start the day and notice that the waterproof
gps-receiver with its pre-downloaded maps and driving routes in Europe
worked well. Definitely a handly device to bring to the trips, but of
course one needs to firstly pay attention to the traffic and
surroundings than rely on the screen.
We stopped around three times on the way as we weren’t really
in any rush. The first official fast food of this trip was eaten in
Granna by lake Vättern. Hamburgers were not exactly a
culinaristic experience as such, but gave us enough energy for the rest
of the drive. Have to point out that the mashed potato +
meatball/sausage combos that we got from a food truck in
Jonköping on the way back totally beat the burgers, one could
actually call them excellent value for €15,75. And have to
admit by this time I started to remember the Swedish language also, a
bit by bit.
There was pretty strong northern wind during the whole trip, which made
the motorcycle lean over much more than what it usually does,
especially now that there was a passenger behind the driver plus the
side bags… Luckily it didn’t rain despite the dark
clouds here and there. Moreover, in Mölndal I noticed the
chains of Suzuki were squeaking so it was good to have some spare oil
with us (and time to do some additional adjustments to the CLS's bike
chain lubricant system, because the right values were not known yet at
that time). Irmas Yamaha had a vacuum controlled made by Scottoiler,
which worked as a childs play because on longer use on that bike.
Now closed Hostel Torrekulla was nice as it was located on a hill near
a large park area. We actually met a Finnish bus driver there also and
there were quite a few Swedish students staying at the hostel as a part
of some school trip. But enough of socializing, after a long day it was
time to get some sleep at 9pm already.
