by Our trip to Rota started this year on Wednesday 2nd of July at 21:30 with new Viking Line XPRS from Helsinki To Tallinn where we arrived a bit late at 00:15.
Our first drawback was when we tried to leave ship: My BMW K1200LT bike did not respond to remote control when trying to remove ant-theft from! I also tried the other remove I had with me, but no luck!
I was already starting to push my bike out from the ship when one guy from personnel came to me and said that it might be the radio transmitter of the remote controlled door they have on the ship. Couple of minutes later after last car left the ship he turned that thing off and when trying again my remote it suddenly worked! So next time you are traveling with this Viking Line XPRS ship be aware of this *feature* and in case of issues, ask them to turn off this thing.
But, we got out from the ship, rode to the nearest gas station to fill our tanks and get the starting ticket for our next SS1000 ride.
We started our drive at 00:48 from Tallinn.
Here’s our stops and kilometers driven according to my bike:
| Time | Start / Stop | Km | Fuel, L |
Consumption, L / 100 km |
| 0:48 | Tallinn | 30635 | 2.08 | |
| 2:20 | Sauga? | 30760 | – | |
| 4:34 | Riga | 30937 | 15.24 | 5.04 |
| 8:09 | Kaunas | 31205 | 14.9 | 5.55 |
| 12:51 | Podlaski | 31507 | 9:21 | 4.10 |
| 16:23 | Krasnik | 31757 | ? | |
| 21:34 | Kosece | 32077 | 14.09 | 4.40 |
| 0:12 | Budapest | 32329 | 14.31 | 5.67 |
| 1694 |
On one stop I did not fill my tank and on one at Krasnik the receipt does not tell how many liters I got, only the amount charged…
On our journey we had one incident with the local police in Lithuania we I drove to the local village at 94 km/h where the speed limit was 50 km/h. Stupid me for not seeing the city name sign… Anyway, police came to me and started stating the speed numbers and asking for the drivers license and papers from my bike and off we went to his car. After small discussions which started from 90 EUR I ended up paying 40 EUR to him (how cheap!) without getting any receipt from it. You can think where that money was going into… Cannot really see this kind of bargaining done in Finland…
But, we continued driving further, nothing really big things on the way except many road works in Poland, never ending waiting in traffic lights, de-tours, bad roads etc. etc.
This was the route recorded in TomTom we drove:
We ended our drive at 00:12 Finnish time in Budapest, which was one hour ahead of Hungary time.
As a summary, don’t choose this route when driving SS1000 or any other Iron Butt ride. Roads in Poland are too bad on this route, many turns, bumps and speed limit is most of time max 90 km/h so your stops need to be at the minimum.
We shall today continue towards Austria and the Alps. Next 4-5 days (at least) are just for pleasure, not timetable for us, no hotels reserved, we just sit back and enjoy the ride!
