Sure, the riding is not bad, but is this what gravel has become? A loop of the same curated content, spoon-fed through collabs and brand placements, all for the ‘gram?
Where did the spirit go? Where’s the “f**k me, I wonder where that track goes” curiosity? The impulse to take a do-it-all bike somewhere a bit mad?
That’s why we packed up our gravel bikes, bid adieu to the chance of meeting a social media big dog (never on my bucket list anyway) and headed north to the edge of the Arctic Circle, chasing midnight sun and remote gravel gold, a stone’s throw from the Russian border.
Circadian Breakdown
I glance at my watch again. 23:55. Generally I wouldn’t be riding at this hour, but the light is full and my body is alert as we hum along pristine, slightly green-black gravel. We’re a handful of kilometres from Russia, and seemingly have the world to ourselves.
The small clusters of houses we occasionally pass in this endless forest lie quiet, with the inhabitants still clinging to clock time, despite how abstract it feels to us.
A rustle. A moose; we see it for a second as it crashes back into the trees – perhaps just as confused as we are by this nightless night. Collectively, our body clocks are fried, it’s only the clock telling us humans the actual time, a few minutes from midnight. But we’re moving, awake, and riding around Ruka-Kuusamo in June
We’d been warned: 24 hours of light messes with you. But honestly, why wouldn’t you want to ride under the midnight sun?
F is for Finland
Finland has slowly crept onto our radar when it comes to gravel riding. We’ve long loved Sweden’s gravel riding, but this Nordic neighbour – not quite Scandinavian – offers something different.
There are shared threads across the Nordic countries: minimalism, quiet resilience, a love of the outdoors. But cross into Finland and things shift. The language is complex. The atmosphere is more introverted. There’s a subtle tension: it’s a place on the edge, both culturally and geographically. And then there’s sauna. Always sauna.
When it comes to riding, we had a hunch that Finland might just outdo its Western neighbours. A sparse population (5.5 million), vast forests, a major logging industry – and the clincher: Ruka-Kuusamo had mapped out 900km of gravel routes last summer. That got our attention.
The Gravel Hype House
Rewind 24 hours, we’re standing in the quiet luggage reclaim hall of Rovaniemi airport. It’s 23:20 and the sun is still high. As the small airport waits for the final flight of the day to exit, we look at the Santa Claus-themed decor. Tired from the long day of travelling, we feel as out of place as this festive icon in the middle of summer. As the luggage belt judders to life, squeaking in protest, we have two hours to drive until we reach our base at the Ruka House of Gravel.
Think of the House of Gravel as the anti-Hype House. Less about algorithm-chasing influencer collabs, more about sharing this far-flung location with real riders. A curated space for people with taste, the avant-garde of gravel, not its commercialised core.
Even with our cynicism for the vacuous world that mainstream Insta-gravel has become, we thought this was actually a cool idea, created by Finland’s Ruka-Kuusamo. After all, how can you let people know about the riding without the right voices in the mix?
With five days and no nights until our flight out, we were hyped. Time to ride.
Just Remote Enough
Ruka-Kuusamo isn’t the easiest place to get to, and that’s part of the appeal. Ruka, the ski resort sitting on an 80 m hill, is around 25 km from the town of Kuusamo. While about a 10 hour drive north of Finland’s capital, Helsinki, Ruka-Kuusamo is actually only just over halfway up the length of the country, 60km south of the Arctic Circle, and 15km west of the Russian border. Known as a family-friendly ski resort, Ruka’s hilltop position gives a rare vantage point in a country where elevation is more of a concept than a reality.
Why Ruka? Simple. We weren’t looking to bikepack across Lapland. We wanted quality gravel, peaceful remoteness, and a taste of local culture. For us, Ruka sits in that sweet spot.
F is for Forest
Finland’s forests* are like nowhere else. One moment you’re riding through dense evergreen forests on champagne gravel. The next moment, it’s thinly spread birch trees, their silver bark shining over the lush green carpet that rolls out into the forest. And then, near the border, it turns wild. Mixed woodland, ominous greenish-black gravel: Bear country. And the vague awareness that Putin is on the doorstep.
With few reference points on the horizon, these endless forests become dreamlike, where the endless days blend with the continuously changing trees. There’s variation, yet similarity in what feels like a game-like fairytale land of greens and amazing gravel to get lost in.
And lost we felt. Without familiar cues, we relied on head units and trail signs. A glimpse of Ruka’s red and white tower would signal we were nearing home.
This type of riding – one that’s free from known reference points spotted on the ride – meant we focused on the blanket-like forest around us, immersed in a world of smells, shifting vegetation and ever-changing gravel.
Some sections screamed by. Others were slow, technical, sandy. It kept you present. The adventure here isn’t about drama, it’s in the details. The quiet. The reserved. Much like the Finnish people themselves.
(*We would later learn that much of Finland’s old-growth forest has long since vanished, a consequence of a strong logging industry and, historically, the war reparations paid to the Soviet Union after WWII. Vast amounts of timber were sent east during that time, and it left its mark on the landscape, explaining the orderly lines of trees that now let soft light flood the dirt tracks.)
Real Finland
Ski resorts can be sterile, so we headed to Kuusamo for a slice of real life. We found a vegan buffet, and a coffee shop called The French Café (the name says it all). It didn’t have a hipster feel, there were no fisherman’s hats (just mine, sorry), nor tattooed staff. But the coffee? That was next-level.
The amazing coffee from Valtteri Bottas’ roasters in Lahti was served with a sommelier style and performance. My Chemex came with tasting notes, technique, weights and temperature. We can safely say that this topped the rapid service, flat white world of Girona.
The café’s young owners – a French barista and a Finnish patissier who’d met while working in Nice – gave us local tips, from thrift shops to more local food spots.
Kuusamo has an Eastern European feel as a town. Straight roads, low buildings and wide sidewalks all give a hint to what is across the border. We learned it was rebuilt after WWII, razed by retreating German forces. Heavy history, light conversation.
Sauna, Always Sauna
The cold of the water is sharp on my skin, a contrast to the heat felt moments earlier in the sauna. The shock of submersion forces out a gasp. I swim a few metres from the jetty, and the panic of this icy overload eases. The water feels warmer now. I look at the almost silent world around me as I swim back to the jetty.
In the low light of the late evening, dripping with water, the lost feeling of only three hours sleep evaporates, and I feel completely connected in the moment. There is something unique about Finnish sauna culture. A central part of Finnish life, there is no challenge or performative pressure to it. Gone are the clocks, with the focus being on the spiritual side of feeling. No timer, no macho endurance contest. Just flow: in, out, back again at your own pace.
It’s no surprise that Finland has around 3 million saunas, and that UNESCO declared the sauna to be part of its cultural heritage – it’s more than just a hot bath, it’s a headspace reset.
Ski Tracks, Singletrack, and the Russian Border
As our watches marked the passing of time, the kilometres we covered increased in equal parts with the coffee we consumed, our circadian rhythms increasingly corrupted with the lack of night. Some highlights of this nightless five days started to emerge.
Riding XC ski tracks close to Ruka was a standout: narrower than the main roads, and totally car-free, they felt like gravel singletrack, winding past bogs and as they twist around Ruka’s mountain.
Technical singletrack sections were also a fun twist , built into the 900 km Ruka-Kuusamo network. Technical for a gravel bike – think crap 1990s mountain bike terrain, only now with decent brakes – they kept us on our toes with roots, mud, and some hike-a-bike, leading us to smooth gravel payoffs and adding texture to the experience.
Then there was the night ride east, riding towards the Russian border whilst the sky was burning red as the sun torched the horizon. Abandoned cars, seemingly empty houses (or was everyone simply asleep because it was after midnight?) and thick forests lending a sense of tension we’ve never felt before. Touching the edge of the border zone (you can get fined if you go past this point) was a special moment. Living in central Europe, we are sometimes oblivious to land borders, but this one is very real, very tense, and very controlled.
Long-distance Sugar Sales
The chill of the evening wraps around us, like that loud member of the group everyone wants to hide from. Pinching at our cheeks as we ride, we spot the same van that has passed us twice now, this time with a family beside it buying ice creams. It turns out to be an ice cream seller on a 700 km loop through the backcountry, with bulk-buy boxes and dog-friendly options. The drivers ask us why we are out in the chill, we asked the same of them. We buy one of three options for single sales, and keep chatting.
They end by apologising for the hard freeze on our chosen treats “because it’s -30 degrees Celcius inside the van.” We say goodbye as they continue their sugar deliveries, commenting that if we did a 700 km round trip from our base in central Europe, we could pass through 3 countries.
Endless Day and True Hype
Our time in Ruka comes to an end, as we sit with tired eyes and legs in Kuusamo airport. The small propeller plane’s engines go silent as the passengers from the inbound flight step off. It feels like we’ve been away for a month, yet simultaneously just one long, light-drenched day. The lack of real night eliminates the bookends that typically mark the passage of time.
Ruka is a real life Hype House for gravel, just in a quiet, Finnish kind of way. Unlike many of its synthetic, vacuous peers, where the algorithm feeds us a version of reality that rarely matches the ground truth, the gravel here feels like a hybrid: part European, part American, part East, part West. We are hard pushed to think of a location with such a mix of varied, yet strangely predictable gravel. A place that feels remote, but where language is never a barrier thanks to the Finn’s fluent English.
People often scoff when you suggest heading north during the summer, but Ruka is the kind of place that rewards those who go against the grain. If you’re willing to turn your back on the over-promised, over-hyped riding locations swarmed by the herd, and reconnect with nature, space and the spirit of real adventures that sits at the core of gravel, then Ruka gets our recommendation.
Big thanks to Ruka-Kuusamo tourist board for the support on the trip, and also Canyon Nordics for the loan of one very sick bike
How to Get There
Getting there is half the fun. Fly to Kuusamo through Helsinki: there is a once daily flight in the summer and limited bike bag capacity. Or do what we did and fly to Rovaniemi, then drive two hours to Ruka-Kuusamo. There are also train options to Oulu or Kemijärvi. There’s also a ferry from Germany so you can take your car with bikes, and drive.
Where to Stay
The resort of Ruka has a whole host of accommodation options, from self-catering apartments to luxury hotels. We stayed at the House of Gravel, a self-catering lodge that was perfect.
Top Tips
Talk to the locals. It felt like they knew we knew very little about their culture, which made conversations even more rewarding.
One absolute highlight we’d recommend is eating outdoors with Wildout. Plan a westward ride and stop mid-way on the chef’s beach to be fed like royalty. Genuinely life-changing – the views, the food, the total stillness. The ride out there is gorgeous too, making the whole thing feel like something stitched together from a dream.
When to go
June – early July: midnight sun and 24-hour light.
August: lush forests, some actual darkness.
September: autumn colours and possible northern lights.
Outside that? Risk of snow or slushy gravel: swap the gravel bike for a fat bike or skis.
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Words: Philip Gale Photos: Emmie Colinge