Mountain Biking in Leknes

11/10/2025

After our wild windy walk at Unstad we moved on to Leknes. This is Lofoten’s other large town (we’d already visted Svolvær a few days before) and unusually is not a fishing town but is more of an administrative centre. Although, of course, you are never far from the sea anywhere on these islands.

Supermarket Shopping

I was on the search for something special for my birthday dinner so we made our way to a very large Extra supermarket. We like Extra and, in fact, we have been impressed with most of Norway’s supermarkets. REMA1000 is at the budget end of the scale with emphasis on frozen and store cupboard food, Kiwi and Extra have a greater variety of fresh food and generally higher prices. Overall we’ve found that most of the supermarkets have a wide range of produce including plenty of ingredients for all sorts of cuisine (Chinese, Indian, Italian etc). Nowhere is really cheap, and imported food is even more expensive, but after reading blogs and posts that claimed the food choices were limited and poor quality I’m just a bit confused where those people have been shopping.

This Extra leapt to the top of my favourite supermarket list because it sold rotisserie chicken. I’d been yearning for a roast chicken for some time so this was a real birthday bonus. We pounced on a chicken as though it might be stolen from us any minute. Other goodies were bought, including Paul’s favourite – jam doughnuts (berliners) – and then we drove out to the sports centre to find our park up.

The gravel car park at the sports centre was ideal for an overnight, large, flat and quiet. We made ourselves comfortable and then tucked into a birthday tea of roast chicken, salad and lomper (Norwegian potato flatbreads) washed down with a couple of glasses of red wine.

Bike ride number one

The sports centre in Leknes was also an entry point to the outdoor recreation area, made up of trails for all types of outdoor activities.

We scouted out an off road bike trail here for the morning. A short circuit that took us along tracks and across boggy grassland where the water sprayed up from under our wheels. A quick ascent of the evocatively named small top of ‘Skullbruheia’ was our target at the far end of the circuit and gave us a short fun downhill ride. Our return route led us to the tiny hill of Himmelsteinborga that overlooks the sports centre car park. There we had a great fun downhill track back to the van.

It had been wet on and off but we managed to complete most of the circuit in the dry and the views were amazingly clear, as though they’d been washed clean by all of the rain. As always there were plenty of people out and about on the trails, enjoying the friluftsliv – ‘fresh air life’.

Leknes Motorhome Services

We didn’t travel far that afternoon. After a revisit of Leknes town centre for a bit more shopping we moved out to the east of the town where there is a rest area with motorhome services. We emptied the toilet and filled up with water. As there were a lot of signs telling us ‘no overnight parking’ we felt we shouldn’t stay, despite the rest area being completely empty. Maybe it was a bit ridiculous but we moved about 100 meters up the road to the car park for the cross country ski area. This was also empty but had no signs forbidding us from staying so we felt happier staying overnight. We relaxed in the van for the rest of the day as rain drummed on the roof, the most interesting thing being watching someone trimming the trees and shrubs that were overhanging the car park. Even he took frequent breaks in his van when the heavier showers passed over.

Another bike ride

From our parking spot I had seen an ambitious and exciting looking bike ride on trailforks up the local mountain – Justadtinden. We set off with the intention to see how far we could get before turning around and riding the supposedly excellent downhill back.

We didn’t get very far. The trail was deep with mud and neither of us were able to cycle it. After two stints of pushing, when our feet sunk into the mud and trenchfoot felt like a real possibility, we turned around. On the short ride back to the van the water made our brakes squeal and we were liberally sprayed with mud.

Undeterred we found an alternative route on the other side of the road. It looked like there was a track heading up towards some buildings and making a small circuit. The buildings turned out to be a ski jump and the track was a reasonable route for bikes enabling us to get up quite high. Many other trails tempted us further south through the hills, but we stuck to the loop we’d originally planned. The final stretch was a steep downhill through trees which Paul tackled with his usual gung ho style. He waited for me at the gate as I slowly tackled a section at a time and finally got off to push down the last few meters. We’d only been out on the bikes for an hour but it was enough for now.

We cycled back to the motorhome and then took the bikes to the motorhome service point where we used the water to wash the bikes off, and then washed the worst of the mud off our jackets, backsides and shoes.

Although our bike rides had been short we had really enjoyed them. We felt that we’d finally worked out how to mountain bike in Norway. It’s not about the big statement hills with their steep sides that are frankly impossible to cycle and much better explored on foot. The best way to get out on a mountain bike was to make the most of the trails in the (marginally) less spectacular recreational areas. The UT map app and Trailforks had also been excellent help in identifying possible trails. It may have taken us too long to realise this but we’ll be prepared for our next visit.