You are balancing on a mountain bike at the top of a slither of rocky trail running steeply down a mountainside. Everything is focused on your next maneuver. Your behind hovers behind the saddle for balance, feet in firm contact with the pedals, white knuckles on the handlebars, you choose your moment carefully before cycling the pedals forward just enough to inject the downward force of the hill straight into your now spinning wheels. It’s a great feeling.
The Canvas Hotel will provide you with a top of the range mountain bike and trails to suit all standards. In the evenings, your muscles ache but your body has released all tension and it’s time to sit in the sauna before jumping into the lake as is the traditional Scandinavian way. Your room is a ‘Yurt’ which is the traditional lodging of Norway’s native people.
The hotel has pitched the canvass Yurts on raised platforms and specially insulated them around a wood-burning fire. The canvass and carpets create an intimate and embracing space to relax in the evenings. Tomorrow it’s time to try cycling the bare granite of the post-volcanic landscape. God’s own cycle paths.
Norway, Nissedal Kommune in Telemark, two kilometres from the nearest road.
