Purpose of the travel was once again to travel to the Transcontinental race and back in the Green leaderboard(/#lowcarbontcr) category without flying. I’ve written about similar tours from 2015, 2018 and 2023.

There is a separate section for planning and how it went in practice for both parts.

 

 Planning the way to start

The western routes, like the organizer’s bus from Hendaye France or via Paris would be inpractical and I’d just take the fast trains via Valence-Barcelona-Madrid-SdC. Figuring out the Spanish trains and how exactly to buy a ticket was a mess as I hadn’t been traveling there before. Mainly due to various different websites and no clear bicycle booking options.

Basic schedule was that I will have approximately a week to travel and I plan to arrive 2 days early to accommodate for delays. The initial riding plan was pretty much what I actually rode. In 2023 I had visited the Parc Mannerheim in Montreux during the Transcontinental and as I then didn’t bother doing the extra few hundred meters climbing detour, I wanted to visit the Valmont clinic where he spent his last years. Also depending on weather/schedule I’d like to ride Grand and Petit San Bernardo passes.

The very first part was easy to plan. As I live in Helsinki the obvious choice would be to take the ferry to Travemünde. It is a comfortable and practical way to go as you can just ride the bike to ferry and not worry about packing it.

Then, as many times before, ride to Hamburg and take a train south. When start was from Geraardsbergen to around Cologne and this time all the way south to Switzerland where Bern turned out to be the easiest option. I ran into some problems with booking the tickets as the train didn’t show up as expected in searches. In the end I had two tickets to the same train, one for Hamburg-Cologne and another for Cologne-Bern. A few days later a direct booking option was available again.

I also wasted another 66 euros on a Spanish AVLO train ticket that supposedly didn’t allow bicycles, but in the end did allow packed bicycles and I still don’t know why. Even the customer service couldn’t give me proper answer before the travel or tell me how to add a bicycle addon to the ticket.

Overall, in case of minor delays I could ride a shorter route to Valence and use local trains or in case of major delays there would still be option to fly to SdC from Basel airport.

The travel to the start

After a 15 km ride to the harbour and stocking some food and filling water bottles for the ride to Hamburg, I crossed the check in to wait for boarding. There were a few German cyclists who had been to Saimaa cycle tour and also few other cyclists around so there was plenty to talk about.

The ferry itself takes 30 hours and is probably the chillest place around. There are three excellent buffet meals, free gym and sauna, plenty of time to sleep and relaxing atmosphere.

Arriving to Travemünde was just like before. For the frirst time in months there is darkness as in Helsinki there are only about 1-2 dark hours during mid summer. As a sidenote, there had been 0 days above 25 degrees in Helsinki before my departure. Heat acclimatization would be to be done during the trip. A friend from Hamburg met me halfway and we got some food before riding to the Hamburg-Altona train station.

Deutsche bahn train had about an hour to change trains in Basel and we were there about 75 minutes late. I walked to info desk and they just gave me a new ticket to next Swiss train to Bern leaving in about 10 minutes. I explained the situation to the train’s conductor and he just patted me the shoulder and laughed he’s sorry that I had to travel with Deutsche bahn.

I made it to Bern about 30 minutes late from planned and noticed a annoying issue with Rwgps/Garmin. I didn’t want to use roaming as it would’ve cost me 20 euros for less than 12 hours in Switzerland. Even though I had clicked sync my route etc. earlier, it doesn’t actually sync to Garmin without mobile connection when the Garmin is started. So I navigated by map first 20 or so km until I found a cafe with wifi to finally sync my route to the Garmin. I had stored all Tcr routes as gpx files for similar issues, but not the route to Valence.

Ride was a little slower than I’d planned, but I rode the Mannerheim’s daily walk at sunset and a worker at Valmont clinic showed me the way to the memorial plate. With the lag of mobile connectivity I also ran into issues with my hotel in Aosta. They had tried to call me and weren’t able to give me instructions to get in the hotel at night. Luckily I only arrived there at 5 am and they were preparing breakfast around 6 am and woke me up at the terrace. I stayed at the hotel until around 2 pm before continuing to Petit San Bernardo.

My train from Valence wasn’t until 16:56 on next day so I had some 30 hours for 350 km. Most of it downhill and flat. Petit San Bernardo was good weather in Italy and torrential rain in France. Nothing worth noting here. Had a short nap before Grenoble and that part after Grenoble was mostly roads I planned to ride also in the Transcontinental.

I arrived to Valence shortly after noon and spent next couple of hours riding around and eating. I packed the bike for the train and everything went smoothly. I had planned to sleep during the train ride to Barcelona, where I had also booked a hotel room, but next to me sat a cyclist from Barcelona and we had a lot to talk about.

After arriving to Barcelona I went to my hotel across the train station, the Sants station where my train to Madrid would also leave next day on the afternoon. I washed my cycling clothes, but nothing would ever get dry in that room so everything I’d washed was still wet in the morning. I ate at McDonalds and went to bed. In the morning I left my packed bicycle to the hotel and had a few hour walk to Sagrada Familia and back. That was all I really saw in Barcelona.

The AVE train to Madrid was nice, but changing trains not so much. Getting from station to station in Madrid turned out to be complicated. I had 50 minutes to change trains. I had initially planned to ride the 10 km trip between Atocha and Chamartin stations, but as there were big signs to Chamartin metro I thought I’d take a metro instead. First metro went while I was still figuring out if I’m buying the right ticket. Then at Chamartin there was first several hundred meters walk, security check where I had to unpack everything, including the bike bag, and then finally running to the boarding area 2 minutes before departure where staff starts wondering if I have the correct kind of bicycle ticket for the AVLO train. After a few minutes they decided there would be enough space and let me travel with the bike without special ticket.

So in the end I was on schedule on every train and was at the start on Friday as planned. Which was good as I spent most of Saturday figuring out how to ship my bicycle bag and hip bag back to Finland. UPS didn’t allow a Finn to send a package from Spain to Finland as sender needed a Spanish phone number. Really strange system. Finally I used Correos to send it home. I had bought the right size cardboard box for the hip bag already in Finland because those have often been hard to find at destinations.

Planning my way home

Getting from Constanta to Helsinki also had many options and had to be considered based on last minute situation on the ground. There was one specific constraint that my friends were having a party at Tallinn on Saturday 23.8. so I’d plan to be arrive there then, regardless of route before that. Hence I had altogether 8 days after Tcr finisher’s party to get there and get on the same ferry back to Helsinki with friends.

The end of the trip would be very obvious. I’d have to get to Warsaw for a bus to Tallinn. There are many daily options with most allowing a bicycle transport.

As it wasn’t really clear how well rested I would be after Transcontinental I hadn’t actually booked anything at all for the return. Also as most of good route options would include travel via Ukraine I’d have to check if there was something unusual going on in the region. I’d talked with a number of people who had been traveling or working there and going back and forth about which borders to use and how to behave.

As it overall is a warzone not recommended for travel, in the western parts my main concern would still be traffic and then simply following curfew times and other orders such as air alarms. As there are right now no flights to or from Ukraine there are lots of busses from nearby airports. From Istanbul, Constanta, Chisinau, Bucharest and Warsaw you can find multiple daily options to all major cities in Ukraine with modern busses.

Hardest part was finding up to date information about crossing Moldova-Ukraine border by bicycle. There were not only local borders, borders for Ukraine and Moldova citizens and international borders, but also opening hours and borders open only for cargo. Add to that conflicting info on websites of each country.

My initial plan was to visit the Struve geodetic arc southern start point in Stara Nekrasivka, Ukraine and Sweden’s king Carolus Rex’s camp in Varnita, Moldova. I kind of also wanted to visit Bender’s fortress, but due to my final route I didn’t bother crossing to Transnistria.

Had there been some unexpected issues during Tcr or in Ukraine I would’ve ridden to Bucharest and taken busses/trains to Budapest and Warsaw. Which probably would’ve been quite crowded during the holiday season.

Travel home

I will start with tv comedy funny story from the day after finisher’s party. We were having late dinner with other finishers when my hotel for the night calls me and says there has been an error with my booking. So I didn’t have a room for the night. Instead I walk to my previous night’s hotel where my bike still was. I knew the hotel was full, but I ask if I can camp in the luggage room with my bicycle. The receptionist says ’of course’ with no further questions. A good night sleep.

So after a day’s rest and another afternoon hanging around at Zoom beach it was time to head north. I booked a hotel at Niculițel 10 kms from Isaccae-Orlivka ferry. It was a nice 140 km ride.

In the morning I checked the latest news and headed for the ferry. At Ukraine side of the border I was finally able to confirm Basarabeasca border crossing is open for bicycles. Nothing unordinary on the crossing. I went to Izmail to change some currency and then rode another 10 km to Stara Nekrasivka. After getting some food from a shop I rode to the Struve memorial. I was happy to have pin pointed it to my route exactly as there was absolutely no signs to it. Memorial just sits between houses in the village.

It was around noon and I had 165 km to border so I didn’t have to bother about schedule. I visited a cemetery along the way and some parts of the map were a bit outdated, just like some of the pavements. Most of the road blocks just waved me to continue, but at sunset one crew noticed I’m foreign and wanted to check documents and asked where I’m going. They wished me good luck and I said you’ll probably need it more than me.

The border crossing was again very usual. On Moldovan side they were mostly interested if I’m carrying alcohol, cigarettes or medicine. I had a hotel 40 km from the border in Cimislia. And in a usual amateur manner I had booked hotel with extra 50 meters climb and gravel instead of a one in the downtown.

I decided to book a bus from Chisinau to Lviv for next afternoon. So I had all day to ride 160 km to Varnita and Chisinau. The beginning was a modern half highway. The EU funded part of highway that has been built a while ago, but only half of it. I mean half so that all the bridges and groundwork is ready, but only one side has been finished.

Road to Varnita turns just before Transnistria’s border. Again there were very few signs to find the Charles XII’s camp. After losing the battle of Poltava in 1709 he went to exile in Ottoman empire or more precisely the small Varnita village next to Bender from where he ruled the Swedish empire for the next 5 years.

Roads in the countryside of Moldova were mostly in good condition, but the capital Chisinau was a different story. Pretty much every road within the city limits was just complete rubbish.

I had yet another issue with hotels as I had booked hotel near the bus station, but that one had suddenly closed and I was moved to same company’s hotel on the other side of the town. So that was a extra 10 km ride across the capital. On the morning everything was so crowded that just crossing the road would take several minutes. Even the bus eventually had to take that same road, make a u-turn and be back at the bus station going the other way about 20 minutes later.

I had bought cling film to wrap my bike in case it would be necessary for the bus, but they just asked me to put the bike in one of the compartments. The bus had lots of storage space which, of course, was useful as pretty much everyone had big luggage.

The bus to Lviv left around 18 o’clock and arrived to Lviv around 8 o’clock. It had 3 longer stops and some time at the border. For crossing they simply gathered the passports and none had to leave the bus on either border. I managed to sleep much of the time so I was quite refreshed in the morning. Bike back together and towards Medyka-Shehyni border to Poland. Unlike in the south there were no road blocks between Lviv and the border. On the Polish side the queue for non-EU residents was hundreds of meters, but I spent less than 30 minutes at the crossing.

From the border I had about 380 km to Warsaw. It was all the way mostly flat along the sides of river Vistula that crosses through Warsaw. At Przemysl I stopped for McDonalds and booked a hotel at Jozefov, about 200 km from Warsaw, where I arrived at midnight. And another fail with booking. I had been looking for hotels in Warsaw a little earlier and that booking in Jozefov was for the day after. It was a very confusing discussion by Google translated text messages until I realized my mistake. Luckily Booking.com now allows booking for the same night after midnight, a feature that was missing a few years ago, and I continued another 20 km to another hotel.

As I arrived to Warsaw at next sunset, I’d got a message from Flixbus. They had changed my bus, to a bus without bicycle slots. Well that is always funny. I booked a Lux express bus and told Flix to refund my ticket. Which they also did and also reimbursed the extra 9 euros for the new ticket’s price. I wonder when bus companies finally understand that you can’t change a bike ticket to a ticket without a bicycle.

I had never staid in Warsaw for more than half an hour so now I had almost 24 hours to spend there. As in most eastern European cities the modern part is a lot more modern than in the western cities, as almost everything had been built in the past 3 dedaces. Landscape was mostly dominated by cars and while riding towards city there were at least 3 separate serious car accidents being dealt with on the road.

The bus to Tallinn was relaxing and as Tallinn-Helsinki ferries are basically city traffic used for commuting there isn’t much to say about that. As usual there was nowhere to park the bicycle in Tallinn so I had to haggle with a hotel across the ferry terminal to store my bike for the day. Simply no city in the world seems to get this part right.

Altogether I did most of what I had planned for the way home. I had planned a route cycling all the way from Constanta to Warsaw and also visit the Struve point at Rudy, but taking the 600 km bus trip Chisinau-Lviv allowed a bit more relaxed schedule and the day off in Warsaw.

Without the Saturday meeting at Tallinn my travel home likely would’ve been 2 days shorter with a train from Lviv to Warsaw instead of riding.

Thats all for 2025. Soon enough we’ll see where next start and finish are and what kind of errand planning a route there and back may be.