Season start in Kragerø and Nissedal
If you are a mountain biking enthusiast, how would it sound for you to be able to build bike trails during day, and jump on your bike and go for a ride after work? For me that sounds like a dream summer and I´m lucky enough to be able to live my dream.
The first trail building project for this year was in Kragerø for Kragerø Resort. Kragerø Resort is a golf destination, but they also want to offer something more for their clients and for the locals. They have invested on cycling for second year in a row. Mountain biking is getting bigger and bigger in Norway and many holiday destinations are investing on it. We started there last year by building one blue trail. This year our goal was to build three new trails, one blue, two red and also a skills area. All the trails are designed by Duane Butcher and MTB Design. Duane is the master mind behind everything. He has done amazing work!
For me it´s fascinating to see how the trail forms a bit by bit from scratch. The trail shapes up layer by layer. Trail building is hard work and we did work long days. It´s nice to be outside. It was also easy to keep distance to other people now during the corona era. Most rewarding for me is to see the final product and people riding on it, with smile on their face.
Home in Geilo we can still only dream about trail riding. It will take several weeks before all the local trails are snow free. Kragerø meant also season start for mountain biking. There are some really nice trails, especially if you enjoy trails on open bedrock. There are some nice lookouts where you can see the open see. Trails are marked as blue in Trailguide and I do think that that is quite correct rating. Some technical sections of course, but nothing too demanding.
If you are staying at the resort like we were, you can take a ferry from Stabbestad to the actual town of Kragerø. It´s on the opposite side of the bay. We did the trip on one Saturday. We spend the day riding nice trails there and enjoyed a nice warm spring day. Trails are a bit more technical than in Stabbestad, but still super nice. We ate some good pizza and had cup of coffee at the town center. There is a lot of people in Kragerø on summer weekends. Kragero is really beautiful small town and it is worth while visiting, if you travel close by. The ferry isn´t too expensive and it takes about 25 minutes.
On our way back home we decided to make a cycling stop in Nissedal. We had been there once before. That time we had lot of bad luck with Miia´s bike. She ended up cycling with one brake only. Bad Nissedal karma seemed to be hunting as still in some level. It snowed there the day before our arrival. All the trails that where a bit more up, were not duable. We also had some issues with Miia´s bike again. Nevertheless we still managed to have a blast there. Also the snow melted and we were able to cycle also on the upper trails on the last day.
Nissedal is also a place-to-go for people who love to ride on open bedrock. There are endless trails mostly on open rock. On the area lives a mountain bike enthusiast, who runs a special wilderness hotel for mountain bikers (Canvas Hotel). Most of the trails are marked and maintained. And now I don´t mean build bike trails. Trails are natural trails, but there is some bridges and trails are maintained in some level. Some of trails can be found at Trailguide. You can also by a bike map at the local gas station. We will definitely take another tour again to Nissedal.
