Impressions: Sweden by bike in 2008

July 12, 2008

If you are looking for something different in your next cycletour in Europe, Sweden is a strong contender for combining endless opportunities for wild camping with well-signed cycle routes and a good mix of historical buildings and pastoral scenery. The only downside is that as you go further North from Dalarna the preponderance of forests and hills can make things monotonous. I really enjoyed pedalling around Dalarna and Varmland and Uppland though and traffic was never a problem!

Sweden does not feature much as a holiday destination for UK cyclists which is a shame, because cycling is well catered for here and if you choose to combine it with camping and the odd night in one of the excellent chain of Swedish hostels it can make for a budget holiday compared with other European destinations. I was fortunate to find two yellow-covered A4-sized paperback cycle route guides to Sweden yesterday on sale in a tourist office near the main station in Stockholm. They are published in Swedish by the Svenska Cyleksällskapet or SCS (www.svenska-cykelsallskapet.se) and they are key to unlocking the signage for cycleroutes in the country - the way marking is quite extensive but isn’t easy to follow because the national cycleroutes did not appear on other maps, or at least not in 2008, although since then much more detailed maps have appeared for sale on the SwedenByBike.com website, which seems to be run as a more commercially focused alternative to the STF.

If you do go with the original STF maps, the country is covered at a scale of 1:250 000 in I think six of these books that were originally published in 1995-6, the two I have secured broadly cover Uppland, Värmland, and Dalarna, the areas that looked most interesting from my initial planning in the UK before I left.