Greatings from Canada

Hello

I hope I found the correct forum…..
My wife and I have an opportunity to move to Oslo Norway and we are wondering what the biking and life is like?

Any trails that must be rode? Where are most of the trails?
Any good videos.
We ride “Enduro”, epic trails and XC. We hate wide trails…..

This is indeed the right forum - you will find lots of helpful people and guides here.

In my opinion Oslo is world class when it comes to trail riding, running and xc skiing. One of the major canadian MTB magazines (Bike?) did a story on the trail riding around Oslo in 2006, the editor was impressed by the trails, terrain and its proximity to the city. Within 15 minutes of riding from the city centre, you will reach high quality trails! Maybe you can dig up the article. There are essentially no legal restrictions as to where you can ride your bike, and the terrain, trails and people are generally MTB friendly. There are pretty big foresty areas around the entire city in which the trail network is quite developed.

Typical trail here: http://youtu.be/XD95BawUdxk

Bear in mind that there are four distinct seasons in Oslo - one of the city´s greates qualities in my opinion, and you would be most happy here if you enjoy outdoors activities throughout all of them; MTB, xc-skiing, running, hiking etc (although fatbike riding seems to become increasingly popular making bikeriding an all year activity).

Well, too bad you don't like wide trails because Norway is littered with gravel roads and "wide trails", absolutely worth spending time on.

Who needs utterly boring wide trails and gravel roads when we have world class singletrack? ;-)

Hi Kaffelars

Great to hear. how many months a year can you ride before you have to switch to a fat bike for snow riding?

Keep the videos coming.

In and around Oslo, anywhere from Mid-Feb/March to September/October/November...all depends on what weather is like... :-)

2 hours southeast you can ride almost year around.

Oslo + 4-5 hours gets you to all kinds of trails, forrests and mountains for biking(Including Hafjell Bikepark which held the World DH champs in 2014) and hiking.

Staying for a year, you will not have covered all trails "in Oslo" at all :-)
If you take all trails within 1 hours of Oslo center you have LOTS of trails...!

What area around Oslo are most of the quality trails?

https://www.strava.com/segments/explore?utm_source=top-nav#location/oslo/type/cycling/min/0/max/5/surface/undefined/center/59.893962,10.785117/zoom/11/map_type/terrain

All the area has high quality trails, and all the areas with particular soil. So you could just point around with a finger and 90% of the time you will hit a good trail.

Nordmarka has more trails that goes up, then straight down. Same with Lillomarka, meanwhile Østmarka is more up and down and lower hills then the other two.

You also have Romeriksåsen, about 15 mins drive north of Oslo with great trails similar to Østmarka. Here is a great guide for this area but it's in norwgian...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r0tmfsfgigzqio7/Sykkelstier.pdf?dl=0

There are A LOT of open trails, for every skill level, with great variation.
If you like visuals, I would suggest you take a look at a branch of Open Street Map for mountain biking. http://mtbmap.no/#12/59.9522/10.8006 where the trails are color coded by required skill level. You can also turn on Strava heatmap as an overlay, to see where people who use Strava bike.

Some more videos for you:

Best of Oslo (made by some wacky swedes): http://vimeo.com/111921324 Lots of it takes place around Grefsenkollen ( http://mtbmap.no/#15/59.9576/10.8114 )

And the view from the top is like this:


http://vimeo.com/78283179 is filmed around http://mtbmap.no/#14/59.9738/10.6933

A video roundup from last years XC race "terrengsykkelrittet" which takes place in late May each year:

http://www.fftv.no/terrengsykkelrittet-2014 ( area: http://mtbmap.no/#14/59.8693/10.8893 )

One difference from Canada, depending on where you live, is that there are almost no built trails in Oslo (or in Norway as whole). There are a few exceptions, but the norm is natural trails, which can be technical and rough in some parts. They are also shared with hikers and going riding midday on a nice-weather Saturday and Sunday can result in heavy traffic from hikers, especially on the trails closest to residential areas. But go early or late or pick trails further into the forest, and you're good to go.

You can even bikeshuttle by subway in the north forests :-)

And speaking of subway. 10-15 minutes by subway in both northern and south/east directions get you close to quality trails.

And if you crave for bigger mountains, you can travel a handful of hours and get proper mountains.

Add in Vestmarka in Bærum kommune and Asker kommune as well, and areas around Drammen... within 40 minutes, go a bit further and you find Kongsberg.

As mentioned, there is a huge amount of trails.
Maybe not the longest "downhills", but a very varied network of singletrack trails.

Ping this forum for guides when you get here, and you will probably get invited to grouprides, small or large.

You'll find people have different opinions on this one. My personal opinion is that nothing beats an epic ride in Østmarka, east of the city. Personal favourite here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/593291815. Østmarka seems do be drier and snow free longer than Nordmarka north of the city, which also houses a plethora of awesome singletracks.

Season: Mid march-late november. You might want a decent set of lights and a rain jacket if you enjoy early spring and late fall riding.

I agree with everyone else that there are lots of nice trails within 1 hour drive from the city, however Oslo's unique feature is that some of the best trails are accessible by bike from your front door. No car needed!

A little information to curb your enthusiasm
My guess is, if youre not grown up in Vancouver and love the Nort Shore style, that youll find the cycling techy and quite much slower than you are used to. FOX Norway has found it necesarry to develop a complete retune of the dampers and forks to adjust to the Norwegian conditions wich is basically rocks and roots with quite much small steep climbs and decents. Add a often wet climate on top of that and you have a fair blend of techy narrow singletrack ahead of you.

When it comes to social life and how to tackle the Norwegian state of mind I will strongly recommend a book and a FB page made by a fellow countryman of yours Link to FB underneath the pic.





https://www.facebook.com/LoveNorge/photo...e=1&theater

And you could always head out to the West Coast for actual mountain trails

Wonderful singletrack by Morten Hoff, on Flickr

I agree, for a normal trail bike. Studded tires and/or fatbike makes the season last from january 1st to december 31st more or less, at least with the kind of winters we have had lately.

And, if you're moving to Norway, you have to learn the archetypical Norwegian maxim: There is no bad weather, only bad kleather! (ehr, clothing)

Awesome info, thanks. We have looked at climate graphs and are well aware of the weather patterns. Little rain never hurt anyone..... LoL

Keep the info coming.

Allbeit the winters can be harsh, the Eastern Norway summers can be almost mediterranian, so it's not all bad. Oslo has a plethora of natural trails in riding distance from almost anywhere in the city centre, and proper mountains a few hours away by car.

As others have said, the singletrack trails here tends to be of the narrow, tight and twisty kind, with lots in the way of rocks and roots. We'renot too spoiled with fast, flowing (or built) trails, but the locals will be more than happy to show you the good stuff.

Welcome to the forum! You've come to the right place.

It's possible to ride to at least one of the forests from virtually every point in greater Oslo, but of course it's easier the closer you live.

Once there, the possibilities are almost endless, so a canon "must ride"-list is a lot more difficult to decide than you'd think. In Norway it is by law very difficult for a land owner to be allowed to restrict public access. You can ride any trail, with just a few exceptions.

I agree it's fairly technical, the climate blesses us with an abundance of exposed roots and stones. And it's either up or down. Smooth, fast, flat needle forest paths exists, but not here. Generally speaking, of course. But apart from exactly that category, you have to be spoiled to complain... in my (of course absolutely 100 % unbiased) opinion

These might be of some interest, even though it's not Oslo:

http://petefagerlin.com/intvid.html

http://petefagerlin.com/norway.htm


Edit: Actually, there is a little Oslo in there.

How do most of you get to the trails? Transit? Drive? Or ride your bike?

Where do most people buy and sell vehicles in Norway?

The largest online marketplace for used cars is here:
http://www.finn.no/finn/car/used/browse1

Most trails are easily accessable by bike from the city centres. Many city centres are accessable by train, though you have to buy a ticket for the bike.

The exceptions are the largest towns, where Oslo has a good transit system for easy access to the trails.

Edit: For rides more than 10-20km away I think most people drive. I don't know the transit systems in the other large towns, Stavanger (flat and uninteresting?), Bergen (nothing is flat?, mountains) and Trondheim (lots of varied terrain). For most "real" mountains you need to drive, though many of these will require a fair bit of hiking.

Cars are expensive here in Norway.

In Oslo we are blessed with the subway that could take you to almost any trail. But if not, there will always be somebody to give you a ride if other bikers are heading to the same place.

Although I'm not living in Oslo myself, I'm sure that with a little research and the knowhow of the locals on this forum, you could verify the availability of good trails in the vicinity of any apartment you might be looking at.

That's great about Norway: I reckon just about everybody has trails in riding distance from their doorstep.

Here is a small edit i made! All trails are in the east Woods of Oslo about 20 min for downtown by subway! http://youtu.be/TinkHu2BMo4

Bergen's city centre is surrounded by mountains, all of which are ridable on mountain bikes, although most trails are pretty steep and technical, and most require hike-a-bike. Some of the routes start directly from the city centre, with paved/gravel roads that allow you to ride your bike up and follow trails downhill. Others are accessible within 30 minutes transport cycling from the city centre. Ulriken, the highest of the "city mountains" at 643 m, is accessible by gondola and has a downhill trail as well as some other largely rough trails.

Two other mountains that are good for riding, Arnanipa (456 m) and Toro (733 m) are both located around 25 km from the city centre. The first one is easily accessible by a 10 minute train ride, the other one is for all practical reasons hard to reach with public transportation.

It's true that we don't have much flat trails, unlike Oslo and Trondheim we do not have large forest areas close to the city. There are some smaller patches of XC'ish, flatter trails spread around the city, but our wet climate means that these are often very muddy for much of the year. The steeper trails tend do drain water better.

I try to bike from my house most of the times (1km to the nearest trails), but a small car trip is sometimes needed to try out new trails.

There are a lot of small parking lots at the forest edge around oslo (and many other places) called "utfartsparkering" made especially for parking your car when going hiking, skiiing or biking in the forest.

If you have any questions about the other sides of living in norway, there is a facebookgroup called Americans in Norway that has a lot of activity. Im sure they will let you join even though you're Canadian. My wife is American, and unfortunately she does not like it here and thinks there is a very big (too big for her) cultural difference. But of course, you never know until you try it!

If you both have jobs lined up already then I think thats a great start and will probably make all the difference.

For an American it mite be a huge gap in culture, but for a Canadian we don't think it will be too different. We have been to Iceland and loved the people and culture.

Just out of curiousity: What is the big culture clash about? Examples? I'd have imagined that an American could fit in nicely here, and vice versa, but I really would't know, so...