Rovaniemi GP   

Rovaniemi is a city in northern Finland just 10km south of the Arctic Circle. It is most well known to be the home of Santa Claus, at least the Finnish people think that. He has a house on the Arctic Circle, and you can even go visit him in the summer.

Rovaniemi is surrounded by arctic pine forest and lakes, as most places in rural Finland is. The lakes and the rivers that feed them have names that are impossible to ...

Read more

Rovaniemi is a city in northern Finland just 10km south of the Arctic Circle. It is most well known to be the home of Santa Claus, at least the Finnish people think that. He has a house on the Arctic Circle, and you can even go visit him in the summer.

Rovaniemi is surrounded by arctic pine forest and lakes, as most places in rural Finland is. The lakes and the rivers that feed them have names that are impossible to spell and even harder to pronounce. That is what you get when the local language is not even part of the Indo-European family but instead belongs to the Finno-Ugrian family. Just as an example the city is situated between the hills of Ounasvaara and Korkalovaara.

Those hills are the defining feature of the route. The riders will start in Rovaniemi, and they then head for the hills. The rider will have to be careful to stay in the group as they can easily get lost in the landscape that is the same wherever they look. Each year some riders get lost, but most of them finds their way back to Rovaniemi at the end of the day. One time though one rider showed up in Murmansk 4 days later. Murmansk is in Russia and about 415km away as the crow flies.

After a grueling trip through the hills, one of the remaining riders will get an early present from Santa back on Rovaniemi. The remaining 119 riders will have payed with blood, sweat, and tears, but Santa has judged them to be too naughty for the sweetest of rewards.