I happened to have a week on my hands and thought I’d take a ride. I was originally planning on heading south, to the Baltic and from there to where ever, but the call of the great empty lured me into heading north.
I love the extreme northern parts of Europe. Especially Finland. I mean the Norwegian and Swedish mountains are great, but there’s just something magical in Finnish Lapland. The clean air, the harsh climate and the ultimate feeling of freedom and smallness.
I’ve added a rough map of the route. It’s actually very inaccurate, as I stayed on very small roads for most of the time. I did everything I could to avoid the highways, sometimes resulting in sketchy riding on loose gravel. 3969km in total.


View GSX1400 Arctic 2012 in a larger map

I thoroughly enjoyed riding the GSX1400, but this trip was probably the game changer for me. I know I will never head up to Lapland with a street bike again. All in all I would say my attitude has changed a lot and I’m now very interested in adventure riding. Proper adventure riding, not with a very heavy bike. I’m sure this remark will come back to haunt me.

The trip went smoothly. I stayed on the road, didn’t hit anything and the bike worked well. I overnighted at Joensuu, Kemijärvi, Sevettijärvi, Karigasniemi, Rovaniemi and Oulu.

Anyhow, here are some pics from the road.