Crossing the Baltic sea by bicycle

The Franken-Peugeot has rolled onto Swedish soil!

Our recent, multi-wave move from Finland to Sweden involved a single

wave with a rented car to move the bulk of our stuff, and the original

plan called for my disassembled bike to be moved in this wave. This

plan was quickly abanoned when it became clear we had been ludicrously

optimistic about the size of the hire car and/or the amount of stuff

we'd want to take with us. So, I left the bike locked up in my

building's communal shed and planned to to come back for it later and

transport it without the aid of a car.

There are two companies running twice-daily ferries between Finland

and Sweden. I call these things "ferries" because that's the

convention everybody here uses when talking about these things in

English, but I think it's kind of misleading because most people, when

picturing "a ferry", imagine something that one of the boats I'm

talking about might eat as a light breakfast. These things are a lot

closer to what most people would picture when they hear "cruise ship".

200 metres long, nearly 3,000 passengers, multiple onboard shops,

restaurants and entertainment venues, and, crucially, multiple car

decks that you can drive right into and out of. Apparently the

industry term for this is "RORO", for "Roll-on/roll-of".

For a meagre 10 EUR extra you can add a bicycle to your ticket, so,

not really knowing how this would work but encouraged that it was "a

thing", I made plans in early January to head back for one day to

return some stuff to my former workplace which I'd not had time to

clean up before leaving, and to collect my bike.

I generally think of the Nordic countries as being exceptionally

bicycle friendly, and these ferries always make a brief half-way stop

at the Åland Islands, which are famous as a summer cycling

destination. So I expected this whole thing to be fairly

straightforward. It came as quite a surprise, then, when it turns out

that the way you take your bike on the ferry is simply to pretend you

are a car: you get to the harbour an hour early and line up in the

big multi-lane queues with all the other cars, and then you roll-on

via a huge metal ramp.

Now, this part was actually kind of fun. After checking in at the

boom gate I got told to line up in the bus queue (yeah, buses and even

semi-trailers loaded with cargo use these ferries), which happened to

be empty. So I got allowed on relatively early in the bording

process, while the car deck was still almost entirely empty. The

boarding process is quite well orchestrated, I guess to keep the boat

well-balanced, so the deck is full of men in fluorescent yellow

jackets guiding cars into appropriate lanes, and I got to go through

this exact same procedure. I tried to ride fast enough through the

large, empty and enclosed space that I wasn't at risk of being caught

up to by any cars which may have been released from the queues behind

me, and this combined with being guided into lanes by

officious-looking workers made the whole thing feel like some kind of

weird, very short industrial race.

I was surprised that the car deck included nothing in the way of

dedicated bicycle racks that I was guided to, I was just told to leave

my bike standing out of the way beside some random equipment standing

around. I don't know whether during the summer they install racks and

so I was seeing the situation at it worst, but it wasn't what I

expected. So, I left my bike on its kickstand, fully expecting to

come back in the morning (these passages take about 12 hours - they

could be done faster, but they're slowed down, in part to facilitate

the convenience of being able to get on at the end of one day and get

off at the start of the next, but also to maximise the time spent in

international waters where alcohol can be sold tax-free, which is what

these ferries are actually infamous for) to find it lying on its side

• which, to my astonishment I didn't.

Getting off was largely the same procedure in reverse, but not as fun

because all the parallel lanes of cars get released at the same time.

There is no bike lane in the harbour's internal roads, so I was riding

amongst real traffic in precisely the kind of way that I'm used to

absolutely never having to do in the Nordics. But it wasn't terribly

heavy or fast traffic and so I survived, rolling through the "nothing

to declare" lane and out into the free world.

The next leg of the journey was also a bit complicated. The ferries

arrive in Stockholm, but I don't live in Stockholm. However, it's

only a very short train ride away. Yet another surprise, though, was

that Swedish train operators are not terribly bicycle friendly. Bikes

aren't allowed on most trains. They are allowed on some, but only

outside of the 0600 - 0900 rush period. Naturally, my ferry arrived

at 0600, meaning I had a compulsory three hour thumb twiddle in the

cold and dark waiting for me. But this wasn't all bad, since even

outside of rush hours bicycles are never allowed to board a train at

Stockholm Central station or at Arlanda Airport station (i.e. the two

most obvious and convenient stations for somebody bringing a bicycle

in out of the country). Which meant I had to first complete an

unfamiliar ride from the harbour to the nearest non-central station on

a suitable line, and it was nice to know that I was in absolutely no

rush for this part.

The majority of the ride to the station was possible using nice wide

segregated bike lanes, which was exactly what I had come to expect.

The final leg, though, involved the kind of bike lane which is more or

less the only kind that exists in places like Australia and New

Zealand, which is a 50cm narrow strip on the side of the road with no

actual separation beyond a dotted white line painted on the road.

This was kind of a surprise, and I don't recall ever seeing a single

instance of this kind of lane in Finland, although I never wandered

around Helsinki specifically looking for them. I chickened out of

this part and walked my bike along the sidewalk, admittedly feeling

like a bit of a coward watching very non-intrepid looking locals of

all ages happily riding in the lane in question. I presume the

drivers in Sweden have orders of magnitude more awareness and

consideration for those lanes than is common back home, so maybe I

shouldn't been so afraid.

I found my station, locked up my bike and killed nearly two hours in a

cafe waiting for 0900 so I'd be allowed on. At which point I unlocked

my bike and rolled up to the station door only to have my heart sink

when I spotted, from a distance, a "no bicycles" sign on the door. I

was certain all the official information said bikes should have been

allowed at this station. Up close enough to read the sign, things

became a bit clearer - bikes were allowed but had to use an

alternative station entrance on such-and-such street (no map

offered!), not the nice, big, obvious first-class entrance that Google

Maps knows about. But I eventually found my entrance, and got to use

two separate elevators (one of which may technically have been a

funicular, but I won't swear to it) to get down to the platforms.

From this point on the rest of the journey was straightforward and

boring.

Ultimately, I'm incredibly thankful that it's possible, and also

extremely affordable, to move a bike internationally without a car in

this part of the world. But it wasn't as easy or as convenient as I

had hoped it would be, particularly with regards to the trains.

That's quite a shame, because in the summer time I'd love to take

my bike to the Åland islands, or even to somewhere like Estonia or

Latvia, for some light touring. Oh, well. The move is now complete,

and winter is proving so mild this year that I don't think I even

need to wait to start riding around my new home. Certainly no need

for winter tyres.