CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
68 km from Vaasa to Vaasa, about 1 h 18 of riding. The stops in between: High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago, The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A, back through The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A and back through High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 37 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Vaasa has the odd distinction of being a city that moved. In 1852 a great fire destroyed the old town, and instead of rebuilding on the same spot, the authorities decided to start again a few kilometres to the north-west on the coast, with a grid of wide streets, a grand esplanade and a new harbour. The old site is now called Korsholm, and you can still find the ruins of the medieval parish church and the old wooden buildings. The newer city is an orderly, airy place, with a long park down the middle, and the sea at its edge.
Read the complete Vaasa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vaasa is where the day begins. Next is High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago.
The Kvarken is a narrow strait in the Gulf of Bothnia, between Finland and Sweden, and a place where you can watch the land rise. At the end of the last ice age, a sheet of ice more than a kilometre thick pressed down on Scandinavia, and when it melted the crust began to rebound, a process that is still going on. Here the uplift is about eight or nine millimetres a year, one of the fastest rates in the world, so the coastline changes within a human lifetime. New islands emerge, bays turn into lakes and then into meadows, and boat channels need to be redrawn. The Finnish Kvarken Archipelago was listed by UNESCO in 2006 and later joined with Sweden's High Coast, which shares the same story.
Read the complete High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A.
Zone A of the Kvarken is the outer world of islands, where the road gives way to boats. The Kvarken Archipelago is a maze of more than five thousand islands and islets, many of them barely a metre above the water, scattered across the shallow Gulf of Bothnia, and only a few are inhabited. The ones with year-round residents are reached by bridge or ferry, and live by fishing, small farming and, increasingly, by visitors who come for the quiet. The landscape here is slow and subtle, with horizons so low that sky and water seem to be the main features, and trees bent by the wind.
Read the complete The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 35 km into the recorded legs you reach The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A. Next is The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone B.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A sits at 123 km, about halfway. Next is back through High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago comes up about 37 km into the recorded legs. Next is Vaasa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vaasa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vaasa closes the day.
Vaasa → High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A → back through The Kvarken Archipelago - Zone A is 1 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through High Coast / Kvarken Archipelago → Vaasa is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.