TET Sweden: costs, navigation, accommodation, kit list

I’ve received hundreds of questions about the logistics of my trip on the Swedish TET this summer, so I made this video to answer those questions and to help you if you are planning a similar trip. This is quite a long video, so I have indexed it:

0:00 Introduction
1.38 Route planning, gpx files and daily mileage
6:50 Navigation devices and maps used.
8:50 Choice of bikes and bike setup
11:26 KTM service intervals
12:46 Choice of tyres
14:45 Accommodation
15:35 Luggage systems
17:36 Kit list
18:50 Breakdown of costs for the trip
22:14 What to wear for adventure riding

If you would like a free copy of my gpx files for the ride from Amsterdam ferry to Sweden and the return journey through Denmark, then follow this link: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/fromthesaddle/e/198657

You can access TET route files on the TET website: https://transeurotrail.org/

If you would like a free copy of my kit list for the trip, then follow this link: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/fromthesaddle/e/198684

We found the overnight shelters in Sweden using the app you can download from the following website: https://vindskyddskartan.se/en/

Hello and thanks for joining me I’m making this video in response to hundreds of comments that I’ve had on the uh series of videos three-part series of videos I made about my trip from the UK to the Swedish tet this summer it’s been amazing the number of

Views I’ve had thousands of views on those uh videos which is amazing considering that I only have a few hundred subscribers on this channel so by the way if you’re watching my videos and enjoy join them please do subscribe to the channel if nothing else it’ll make me feel

Better so I’ve had many viewers asking me questions about uh you know how did we plan the route what did it cost what did we take Etc so I thought I would make this video in response to try and answer all of the questions that been

Asked so this is what I’m going to cover in this video I will explain the route we took and how we navigated I’ll give you a detailed breakdown of the the costs from the trip I’ll explain bikes we uh used and the setup and the tires

Uh how we carried our luggage kit list uh where we stayed how we found the accommodation and also what we wore uh to ride in and uh give you some feedback on pros and cons of the choices cuz we we had different choices between us if you are only interested in one

Aspect to this or one part of it then I will Index this video so if you look in the video description this should be an index for you to be able to jump to the relevant section that you’re interested in okay so um let’s start with

Roots we left the UK by catching the overnight ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam which docks in imuda just outside Amsterdam and then we rode across uh Holland and Germany from imaa all the way to Trava in one day so quite a long ride and it was all on

Tarmak but we just wanted to get that tarmak out of the way in one day and then we caught another overnight ferry from travonda across to Malmo in Sweden where we then immediately picked up the Tet if you can see from the details of the map here when we rode up through

Holland we actually went across the asl’s Dyke which goes across the eisel me it’s a really spectacular ride very very um long Dam with a the road the motorway across the top of it great ride great to stop halfway across and there’s a observation tower anyway so we did all

Of that in one day which is quite a long haul on the tarmac but you know the bikes uh were happily buzzing along we were cruising about sort of 65 70 M hour all the way and that got us to the ferry um to the the next overnight ferry in plenty of

Time I’m going to jump ahead now to the return run Road Journey from Sweden back to imower to catch the ferry back to the UK so we took a different route on the way back from Malmo where we we left the the Swedish tet we crossed the orison

Bridge across from Sweden to Denmark to Copenhagen and Denmark and then we rode down through Denmark and caught the ferry across to put Garden in Germany from there when we we uh rode just south of Hamburg and bremond across Germany and back into Holland we didn’t take the

North route through Honan and and around the eilir we just took the fastest route down through Amsterdam it’s a bit congested busy roads but it’s the fastest route uh back to Ima and the the ferry so that return Journey was just over 800 kilomet about 500 miles and we

Did that in two days so that was an average of 250 m a day but that was all road work now if you are interested in these routes I I will put the GPS files for these roots up on my um buy me a coffee account where you will be able to

Download them for free I just use the buy me a coffee account to be able to share documents uh and files with people you don’t have to buy me a coffee though U if you would like to of course I will be delighted I will put a link to those

GPS routs in the description to this video for you and finally here’s a map of the route that we took on the Tet through Sweden now I’m not going to share the GPS file for this because the T does change from time to time and so

If you want to ride the Swedish tet I recommend that you go on to the Tet website just before you leave for your ride and download the latest version of the file but I’ll just explain we wrote from Malmo you can see we took a different route back down to to coming

Up we we rode uh up to the Norwegian border we we just very briefly crossed into Norway we didn’t have time to actually do any riding in Norway we followed the uh border up until we ran out of time and uh then headed south again so we did a total of

1,600 miles on the Swedish T that’s about 2,600 uh kilm so we we averaged about 260 km a day whilst we were on the T and we did that very easily and if you’ve watched the videos of the trip you can see there were plenty of uh uh stops uh

Some unfortunately some breakdowns with with Brian’s bike so you know we weren’t riding hard every day the riding on the Swedish tet is relatively easy you can clock along at sort of 40 even 50 miles per per hour um and just keep going that kind of speed all day so it’s fairly

Easy ride riding so just to sum up the mileages we did about 355 mil on the outward Journey um from the ferry terminal in Amsterdam to to get to Sweden about 500 miles on the way back and we did about 1,600 miles whilst actually on the TCH so

That’s a total of uh 2,455 mil if my maths is Right which is just under 4,000 km and and that was in uh two weeks we did that uh so that felt comfortable that did not feel pushed that was a nice gentle pace so that’ll give you some

Kind of uh guide for what uh reasonable mileages are whilst uh traveling on that section of the Tet so I hope you found that uh useful let’s move on then and talk about navigation now I uh created all of the roots before we left the UK using using

Garmin base camp just because that’s what I’m used to using and with uh with Garmin base camp you can create tracks as well as routes Which is far more useful for off-road and Green Lane riding if you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about there then you know

You need to get your head into how garming systems work and what have you but um Brian used a some app on his mobile phone I’m not quite sure what it was to navigate um Peter didn’t have navigation with him he just followed the rest of us but shipo and I both used

Garmin Montanas and we had the 600 series Montanas and before we left the UK I loaded on my Garmin the whole of Europe uh toppo Maps so I was navigating with the Garmin toppo Maps uh right across Europe and then uh around Sweden and they worked well the the the

Topographical maps are the sort of European equivalent or worldwide the equivalent of Ordinance survey maps in the UK they’re nowhere near as detailed as Ordinance survey Maps so when I’m riding in the UK I always use the Ordinance survey Maps but for outside of the UK they’re not available so I use

Those topo maps and they they plenty of detail they’re they’re great however I would say this because in Sweden just about all of the Ted route is on roads as opposed to uh you know Green Lanes you could probably get away with navigating the Swedish Tech with a

Road-based GPS system such as a Garmin uh Zumo or or even a TomTom um and uh you know in many respects that would probably be easier if you’re not used to using the the more off-road oriented satnav systems okay so let’s move on and talk about choice of motorcycles what bikes

We rode on this trip we we all rode small bikes we’re all into lightweight adventure riding and after this trip uh even more so it’s really reinforced in my mind that it’s the way to go lightweight is the way to go particularly if you’re wanting to ride

The Tet and do Green Lane in off off-road riding like this so Peter had an older bike he had an old Yamaha TTR 600 and that was actually the largest capacity bite but obviously being older it wasn’t the the most powerful Brian had his CCM 450 and shiplo and I were

Both riding KTM 450s um we all had um large capacity fuel tanks on Brian CCM has quite a large fuel tank anyway but the uh the Yamaha and the KTMs we fitted larger range uh fuel tanks on there and that was absolutely fine you know we had

About 200 mile range comfortably on the bikes so you know fuel was not a problem so I guess a couple of questions then from choice of bikes would bigger have been better well not really not on the Tet uh perhaps for the road work getting to and from Sweden it would have been

More comfortable on a a larger bike but it was fine it was absolutely fine on the smaller bikes as I said we cruising ac across Germany we stuck to about 6570 and that that was absolutely fine and you know the real advantage of riding a smaller bike is when you get on

The tech when you get on the loose surfaces it’s just so much easier to handle and maneuver which for me is is more enjoyable it’s less less tiring less stressful you can really just enjoy the ride so much more on a smaller bike I have to say of the other riders that

We met when we were on the Tet they were all on much bigger bikes and you could ride the Tet on any big bike the Swedish tet on any big bike so for example I’ve got a Triumph Scrambler 1200 I would have felt very comfortable riding that

On the T I could have equally have taken that that bike and it would have been absolutely fine on the road you can see from the video footage that I’m rolling whilst I’m talking to you uh it’s very easy going there’s just the odd bit that

Was a bit muddy and and sticky and loose uh but in the main it’s very easy going so everybody else we saw were riding big bikes so 700s 900s you know through to the 1200 cc bikes and they were all doing fine but we just prefer the

Smaller bikes so before I I leave the the the topic of uh of of the bikes I just have to address a question that I get all the time about uh you know riding my KTM for for this kind of long distance touring what about the service intervals what about the oil changes

Well the answer to that is that if you’re touring and you can see from the video footage we’re just pottering along you are not stressing the engine nearly as much as you are if you’re using the bike for racing KTM service intervals are for racing and so you don’t need to

Service them nearly as much if you’re not really thrashing the engine like that so I changed the oil on my KTM just before we left and I changed it just after I got back and the oil was still very clean that I dropped out and that

Was after 2 and a half th000 mile trip so I felt perfectly comfortable uh with that so yes the KTM is a viable long distance um uh you know Touring bike obviously it’s not as good as a bike that’s got say 68 10,000 mile service intervals but you know having to change

The oil every couple of weeks is not really a pain in my book particularly as the oil is so easy to change on the KTM it’s you know once you got it down it’s literally a 10-minute job so before I leave the topic of the Bikes let’s talk

About our choice of tires we all changed our tires for this trip because in the UK we normally run knobblies quite a aggressive nobl just because of the kind of terrain that we’re normally riding on around North umland where where we all live so for this um trip we all put on

5050 tires with inner tubes and we used heavyduty inner tubes I actually put in the mitchellan extra heavyduty inner tubes none of us had a puncture the whole trip so we had no problems at all with these so Peter and I used mitas tires mitas e7s Brian was using

Something very similar Golden Tire GT uh 20 2011 which is almost identical to the mitas shipo had a slightly different Choice he put on Moto’s extreme hybrid tires which the rear is slightly more kind of aggressive it’s more like a trials bike tire actually is that uh but

He used a Kendo K uh 2 uh 70 front which I think was not quite as surefooted as our tires on the front so how did we get on those tires no problem they were absolutely great the only time where you know the uh footing was was less than

Secure was when we did a very few uh muddy uh sections and you’d need some fairly aggressive knobbly tires on to to be surefooted on that kind of terrain so no complaints about that and in terms of weage well when we got back uh I fitted

My mitas tires new for this trip we got back after 2 and a half thousand miles very little noticeable wear of my B Tires of course this is another advantage of running uh such a lightweight bike it’s a lot less heavy on the the tires so um yeah it was um

There’s loads and loads of mileage left in those tires um I I’ve yet to find how much mileage I I get out of those okay so that’s the Bikes let’s move on and talk about accommodation we all carried small hiking tents with us on the trip and we

Did Camp a few nights but that was really just whil we were off the tent whilst we were on the Tet every night we stayed at one of these what the the Swedish call these wind shelters which in the main part are free I’ll flash a

Image on the screen but you’ll know what I’m talking about if you watch the videos of the trip and you can access a a map which shows you where they are all located and gives you a description so that’s how we found it every day we

Looked on the map we found a shelter close to where we wanted to go and then headed for it so I will provide a a link to that map in the video description below okay so let’s talk about luggage and kit list so um we all had different

Panas Brian myself and shiplo we all had soft Pia systems uh Peter had hard Piers mounted on his bike uh I favor the ker system the creger P system the O system uh for a couple of reasons firstly you don’t need any kind of P Rack or support

With the creger system that it’s got a a very clever harness which straps onto your bike and then the the other great thing about them is the bags are interchangeable so I have different bags so for example for riding around uh the UK uh locally I have some uh I think

The’re 8 L bags um and then I have some um they even maybe smaller than that I can’t remember now and then for going off touring like on this trip I have the uh bigger bags the the the biggest bags which I think are 18 liter bags and then

I use a a dry bag a roll bag uh across the back seat and I find with that I can carry as much stuff uh as I want to I wouldn’t want to be carrying more weight on the back of the bike than uh I can get in those bags normally I’m carrying

About 15 kg worth of luggage on this trip uh I was car carrying more because we took extra stuff in terms of extra tools supplies and I took a large tarpo in as well in case we encountered uh bad weather so yeah um but there are other

I’m not I’m not saying you know that the creek is the best that’s just what I use and it works for me there are several other uh systems that are very similar but I find that they are the best ones for dirt bikes and also if you do drop

The bike you do come off you’re less likely to damage the the soft bike you know you might damage something inside the bags but you’re not going to damage the the bags uh themselves cuz they just just uh squash so as for the kit list um well I

Can’t start going into detail here about what we took but in the video description I will put a link to my buy me a coffee page where you can download for free the complete uh kit list of what we took with us uh and so I’ll just

Say a word about how we organized kit now now um we’re all very experienced at going off on this kind of trip and I I do s of longdistance motorcycle tours uh frequently so I have a a very wellestablished kit list uh and so what we did we divided the kit list into

Personal kits stuff that you take for yourself your hygiene products spare clothes your camping gear you know your sleeping bag Etc and then communial uh equipment that’s stuff that we didn’t need to duplicate so we could share between us and that included cooking equipment spares tools things like that so I will

Make both of these kit lists available for you if you want to download them on my um buy me a coffee account uh that will be free and there will be a link in the description below okay so let’s move on to a very important question which is what did it

All cost so I will flash upon the the screen a breakdown of the costs for this trip and as you will see from that breakdown of costs by far the biggest cost was the overnight ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam even sharing a for birth cabin between the four of us it cost us

£570 each and it’s interesting just by comparison the overnight ferry so it’s another overnight ferry from uh Mund in Germany across to Malmo in Sweden cost only £110 and we had actually two twin cabins on that one so you know sorry to have a bit of a ramp but the Newcastle

Ferry is just so extortionately expensive it’s a real ripoff if you uh have the time to ride down through the UK to the euro tunnel or if you live sou or in the UK um it’s much better value just to go through the Euro tunnel and

You know and then ride up um uh through France but um due to time and convenience we decided to take that Ferry but on top of that the uh orison bridge on which we took on the way back that uh has a bridge toll of uh60 UK and

The put Garden Ferry which is a relatively short Ferry Crossing so that’s the one from the south of Denmark back into Germany on our return Journey uh that was just £65 you don’t need to pre-book that Ferry you can just turn up and pay so all of that those cost were

Just sort of getting to and from Sweden the actual cost of riding the Tet in Sweden was very very small so we used an average of about 15 pound worth of fuel every day um you know these are small light bikes with very good fuel economy

So even though we were doing about 160 m per day we were only using a very small amount of fuel uh so that didn’t cost much at all just over £200 likewise with food we took our camping stoves with us and we every day we called into a

Supermarket we bought some uh food uh it usually came to about £40 between the the four of us and that made for the evening meal and uh for breakfast and for snacks during the day so the only cost over and above that is we we

Stopped for a coffee and a piece of cake or something like that during the day if we came across civilization so gain averaging about5 a day on food so the time that we spent on the T the 10 days we spent on the Tet cost us less than

500 it’s very very cheap holiday and that’s one of the things I love about this kind of lightweight Adventure traveling where you where you’re camping you uh you know you’re not staying in in hotels and because you’re camping you’re doing your own cooking it’s relatively cheap which means that you can afford to

Do more of it you know you can have more trips you can go off for longer so looking at that breakdown the total cost of the whole trip was uh just over 1,200 which I consider to be excellent value for the fun and Adventure that we had

Away and that brings me to the the final topic which is what should you wear when you do a trip like this you know what would I advise you wear well it’s a very personal thing and everybody’s got their own ideas and really what I say to you

Is just over time with experience of doing trips like this you find out what works for you and I’ve been doing this kind of uh touring for for over 40 years now yeah that’s right 4 Z over 40 years and so over time I’ve kind of really

Refin what I wear so it’s all for me it’s always a balance between comfort and convenience and safety because you obviously you have to be aware of the you safety aspect of riding but my preferred approach is layering to layer up have lay so you can adjust what you

Wear according to the weather and the the temperature so I tend to wear a base layer of Marino wool garments and on this trip I wore a short sleeve Marino wool t-shirt but I was carrying with me a longer sleeve Marino uh top as well I’ll then wear a mid layer uh which

Extra warmth and a bit of wind proof and then a lightweight jacket now you could choose to wear body armor but for convenience on this I wore a jacket with armor built in so it was a a climb uh jacket that I was wearing a lightweight

Climb jacket and it’s a vented jacket as well so when the weather’s hot it’s very comfortable and when the weather’s hot you just wear the climb jacket with the t-shirt underneath and you get plenty of ventilation and that’s very comfortable if it gets a bit cooler I put a warmer

Layer um uh underneath I also have a perex windproof lir uh that I can put on as a wind stopper underneath the jacket and then separate waterproof so on a on a longer trip like this I will always carry separate waterproofs rather than wearing a a waterproof or a gortex

Jacket I do have gortex jackets I have several of them and if I’m riding in the UK say on a days ride uh or a couple of days ride and I know the weather’s going to be appalling the whole time then I’ll wear my gortex but for a trip like this

Which if you watch the videos you can see we had very warm days lot of sunshine and then we had days of heavy rain as well you need that versatility um shiplo and Peter were both wearing gortex uh jackets all the time and they found that when the weather was warm

They were getting very hot and and quite sweaty inside those jackets uh you know even with the the the vents open so you know it’s my preference is I tend to get quite warm when I’m riding particularly off-road but my preference is to to where light and and to lay up but it’s

Quite a complex topic is this so I will probably make a separate video all about what I wear when I’m doing this kind of longer distance riding because I think it merits a a video of its own okay so I think I’ve covered all of the topics that people had asked

Questions about if I haven’t please do drop a question in the comments uh box uh below uh but I do hope you found this useful if you are planning on doing a trip like this or thinking of doing a trip like this I hope the information in

This video has been useful that’s the whole purpose of making this videos to try and help other people out if you’ve enjoyed it please give the video a like please consider subscribing to the channel and hopefully I’ll see you again soon in a future video where I’m sharing

More of my Adventures thanks very much for watching bye