Crossing The Baltic Sea – Day 1

Finally it`s time for a test drive before Silk Road 2023🙂 We will start with Åland and then see how far we will get. I hope we at least will reach mainland Finland…

The first stage were from Rö (home) to the port of Kapellskär and then further on to Mariehamn (Åland). The ferry took approximately 2,5 hour so there was plenty of time for provisioning ( = buying beer). So far no problems 🙂

The downside with bikeadventure is that it`s a bit more complicated to do sightseeing. It´s not just to put all your valuables in the car and then stroll along 5 km in your shorts Absolutely manageable but it takes time from the road…

So you have to prioritize:) And what place on Åland would be better for sightseeing than the Stallhagen Beer Brewery? The brewery is located in the village Godby at the middle of the island and considering the amount of big tourist buses on the parking it seamed to be more people than us that made the same priority. Except from the brewery there was a restaurant and a quite big beer shop. Nice place and had it not been for the risk of influencing our driving capability we would have stayed:)

There were bigger roads and more traffic than I had anticipated. I thought the rural roads mainly would be unpaved but that was not the case.

Lunch was eaten in a far away windy place that was called Bastö. We learned that it´s matter where you stove the equipment if you want to get it quick without loading everything off first…

My lunch consisted of a Norwegian brand of freeze-dried red curries. I gave it a weak 4 of 10 points. Maybe it was mostly because I used the twice amount of water than what the instruction said…

The only medieval Castle on Åland and there have been several famous residents thru the years. The kings Gustav Vasa of Sweden and Johan XIV and his queen Karin Månsdotter among others. Maybe not residents but they had at least visited the place. Impressive building, well worth visiting.

Kastelholm Castle – Wikipedia

Finding the perfect camping spot proved to be easier on the map than in the real world. On the map it looked like we could find a spot with our own beach everywhere. After some trial and error we learned that the best places was private our impossible to reach with the motorbikes.

My training for driving in sand is not extensive so there were some mishaps but that`s a way to learn to 🙂