A Day at Harstad Bike Park

26/09/2025

From Senja to Harstad

After leaving Senja we drove south, following route 84 through the hills where a sprinkle of snow still lined the edge of the road and every now and again the showers were sleet rather than rain. We branched off route 84 to take a ‘short cut’ along the smaller Fv848 road which strings together two implausibly triangular islands and concludes at a ferry terminal.

We’d been looking for potential stops on the way down but hadn’t seen anywhere we fancied spending a damp day. In the end we let fate decide for us. If we made it to the ferry terminal in time for the ferry then we would sail across to Harstad, if not then we would turn back to one of the possible stop offs and work out how to get the most out of a drizzly day.

We knew we were cutting it fine when we encountered a string of traffic coming towards us, obviously they’d just unloaded from the ferry. Would we make it? As we drove towards Sørrollnes we could see the ferry was still in dock. We drove straight down and into the gaping open mouth of the ferry with barely a pause to get the nod from the member of staff doing final pre-departure checks.

Harstad Sykkelpark

Harstad is the largest town on the island of Hinnøya giving us an opportunity to re-fuel and pick up some groceries. i’d found a parking opportunity at the local bike park. It seemed perfect, somewhere we could stay overnight and get out on the bikes the following morning. We made our way up through some residential streets on the outskirts of town, wondering if we were in the right place. Eventually popped out by a smart modern bike park entrance and a large gravel car park.

Bike Park entrance

We parked up and had some dinner followed by a look around. There was a large central building with toilets (open all night), showers, workshop, communal space and cafe area. A couple of pump tracks, a skills park and a freeride area with some interesting looking jumps terminated near the building. A noticeboard and map showed an interlacing set of uphill and downhill tracks of all grades. There was even a road safety area for teaching children road awareness. We’ve noticed that school children in towns spend a lot of time on their bikes, leaving them scattered around the school grounds with seemingly no need to worry about locks.

We found out the next day that the larger of the pump tracks had been designed and built for the 2022 Red Bull UCI Pump Track World Championships. The whole area had been created as part of a community initiative, with some hefty sponsorship but also a lot of local business input and volunteer trades and crafts people. We saw how many people used it over the course of our visit and were really impressed that it was both well used but also respected by the adults and children who dropped in.

Another van turned up that evening, a Scottish chap who was here for some mountain biking. We saw him out and about early the next day while we were taking our time waiting for the worst of the rain to pass over. By the time we were heading out he was coming back, sadly he had broken his bike frame and his day of cycling was over but he told us that it was a great park with some really good progression trails.

He was right, the biking was excellent especially for an area with no uplift. The well designed trails were just long enough to allow an ascent that was challenging but not too tiring, and the descents managed to provide enough variety in a small area with some flow trails and some rocky technical sections. We went up and down multiple times, I stuck to the green and blue tracks trying to improve my confidence at speed and Paul gave the reds a try. It was enormous fun. Groups of children were using the park as well but most of them were more interested in the skills park and pump tracks so we didn’t have to share the trails with many people. We bumped into a local guide and his friend who told us about the history of the park and pointed out some other good rides in the local area as well as making some suggestions for cycling further afield.

We took advantage of the bike wash after finishing up. Another welcome free facility at this excellent spot. I’ve seen people say that Norway isn’t great for cycling but I think we’ve found some great spots so far.

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