Difficulty: Easy
Bike type: Mountain
Length: 20 km
Elevation: 250m
Finding a tooth-rattlingly hard route is pretty easy as a mountain biker. Find cliff, cycle over it. Finding a really pleasant route for beginner or casual riders who have invested in a mountain bike but don’t want a full-face helmet and aren’t entirely sure what a bike-park is can be a challenge. There are a lot of very simple trails, like Prins Bertils Stig that offer no technical challenge, and an infinite amount of gravel roads, but how to find that perfect trail in nature that offers quiet trails, shorter climbs, some flow, and beautiful fika spots?
Well, leave that to me.
The Simlångsdalen Easy 8 begins at badplatsen. Why not goodplatsen? We’ll leave the bad jokes here. You ride a relatively flat trail behind Tallhöjden hotel (and pub) that brings you through Simlångsdalen’s mini-Mordor, the Industrial Park, from there you follow another quite loop that eventually spits you out on Hwy 25, which you follow for 500m before heading into Björkelund natural area, which is home to a number of perfect fika spots, if you are ready.
From Björkelund you follow the paved Banvalsleden, taking a few short side trails, constantly working your way East to the end of Simlångsen (the big Lake) where you pick up the blue route (Simlångsrunt) and follow it up two steep gravel climbs before heading through some beautiful MTB trails which will lead you back to Badplatsen. The total route takes casual mountain biker riders about 2 hours.
If you are riding with kids, I strongly recommend coming out of the industrial park, crossing Hwy 25 and taking the paved Banvalsleden 2 km until you reach Björkelund, rather than riding a bit more trail and then on the side of the highway. 25 can get quite busy and there is not a great shoulder.
Due to troubles with the edited GPX file, this is the original that begins at PaulssonsPaleo, you don’t need to climb the big hill, you can just start at Badplatsen.
Total climbing: 379 m