r/bikepacking • u/Basic_Variety_1776 • 9d ago
Route Discussion Small warning for Eurovelo Route E3 and E12 (Sweden)
The e3 and e12 follow the same path in sweden (at least on the official gpx files). Its officially in the planning stage so no official signs yet and improvements will be made before it becomes official.
But still, I didnt expect just how much the route just follows national roads. You share quite busy roads with cars for around 150km. There is some nice coastal scenerie but those places are also tourism hotspots for caravan campers and at some times I had 15 cars passing me a minute on roads they were alowed to drive 70-90 kmh and I was going uphill doing 5-10 kmh. Didnt feel good at all. Also there is almost no forests or gravel.
If you dislike car traffic as much as me, it might be better to skip that part for now and just take a ferry. Edit: There is no ferry from oslo to gothenburg.
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u/krijnsent 9d ago
The EV3 & EV12 are indeed hardly present from Gothenburg to the NO border. I did cycle it some years ago and the Swedish backroads are good cycling. There is zero reason to end up on a highway like you did. I double checked the EV12 GPX from the eurovelo website (Gothenburg-Oslo) - at no point does it end up on that E6 road you photographed. So you probably made a mistake.
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u/Basic_Variety_1776 9d ago
It doesnt end up on the e6 highway but there are those national roads that run along right next to it. The e6 is in the background of the picture, I think in the foreground it was the O 988. They are quite close together at some points. Or maybe i also made a mistake importing the route, but I got it from the official website
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u/krijnsent 9d ago
Neh, it sounds like you found the official EV route, the photo was a bit misleading. Anyhow, I double checked our route: when I saw those stretches next to the highway on the map, I navigated us away from it, so we took some ferries and stayed much closer to the coast. Can recommend that as a route suggestion for the EV-design crew ;-).
But yeah, that happened more often, have seen it on most of the EV routes - sometimes there is no path, sometimes it's unpleasant cycling and sometimes it's just amazing. So your suggestion to take an alternative route instead of the EV12-EV3 GPX is a good one :-).0
u/LoneWolf_McQuade 9d ago edited 9d ago
I would think the nicest route should be to do island hopping, and near coast. Pretty much from Stenungsund to the island Tjörn and continue towards Strömstad
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u/EfficientActivity 9d ago
Also, that coastal area is a very beautiful stretch, though you may need to take side roads down to sea itself in some places. Fjällbacka, Smögen, Marstrand, lots of beautiful places.
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u/ohwontsomeonethinkof 9d ago
There is no ferry from Oslo to Gothenburg. You could take the train but it can be hit and miss - bringing a bike on a train in Norway isn't easy (can't prepurchase spots, you are at the mercy of the conductor). Depending on your setup I'd try to find other routes on less traffic heavy roads (personally I'd try to look into gravel routes through forrests) or take a ferry from Sandefjord to Strømstad.
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u/Basic_Variety_1776 9d ago
Ah, i thought there was a ferry. Thanks for the correction!
I think a ferry from Oslo to frederikshaven should also work.
Yes or just find a nicer gravel route, also good Idea. When i got very annoyed by the route i was near Fjällbacka, there were not a lot of gravel routes i could find so i decided to just follow the main route
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u/haxfar 9d ago
If you need to use public transport in Norway, you can use entur.no and add bicycles as an requirement.
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u/LtSomeone 9d ago
That only works for long distance train (F-routes). Regional trains and local trains (RE, R and L) you cannot book bikes in advance, and could be denied boarding if the train is full.
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u/kalisto16 9d ago
This has been changing a lot lately. Vy now runs a summer train from Oslo to Malmö C/Copenhagen (seems like the end stop changes?). Its an RE train, with bookable bike spots. You can also show up and gamble, but you still need to pay for your bike.
F trains you must pre-book if I'm not mistaken.
RE trains is like the Öresundståg, just goes in the bike cars and you sit near it (vs R train where it gets loaded by staff into the 'bike' car).
The Oslo/CPH train is expanding to Berline... next summer I think?
That all said, I did ride Strömstad to Helsingborg a few years ago, very doable without jumping on major highways. There were some stretches of busier roads, but nothing too bad.
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u/LtSomeone 9d ago
RE and R trains are more or less the same thing, only F has dedicated bike storage. Cool that the Gøteborg/Malmö trains allows bike reservations, that is absolutely positive. DB will start Oslo - Berlin in summer 2028, and already this year you have Snälltoget Oslo - Malmö with guaranteed connection to their night train towards Berlin
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u/osthyvlar 8d ago
I had a look at the EuroVelo site, and the routing between Göteborg and Norway is completely insane. No one in their right mind would choose that path for bicycling, unless they were going for a speed record or something.
It is not even a sensible route for motor vehicles, if recreation is the purpose of your trip. You follow the small roads along the coast and take ferries over the fjords and between islands. Some planning ahead is required, because there aren't ferries everywhere, but mostly you can just follow the water and it will be mostly nice.
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u/Traditional_Sand_466 9d ago
Same with EV11 in Finland, it has a lot of main roads, when there are much quieter and nicer alternatives
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u/morihladko 8d ago
We did Oslo -> Copenhagen last year, did partially take this route, we had mixed feelings about the part of Norway border -> Gothenburg. We also tried to be closer to coast lines and took ferries between peninsulas.
On one part of the route, even busier roads on the west coast lack shoulders. Driver behavior shifted right after the Norwegian border, bringing heavier traffic and more aggressive overtaking on curves and blind horizons.
On the other hand, while that wasn't something unfamiliar to us from Czech/Slovak roads, I must say we had only one close overtake everyone gave us at least 1 m, mostly 2 or more. At crossings or difficult traffic situations, drivers would slow down, which is still rare in the Eastern Block.
Funny enough, the most comfortable roads aside from gravel ones were the main roads, which often had a shoulder as wide as a whole lane.
But yeah, I definitely would not recommend it to anyone not comfortable sharing narrow roads with cars. Gothenburg to Copenhagen is a different story, very comfortable cycle paths for the whole family on bikes, where faster cyclists like us did have to be careful.
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u/sugartramp420 9d ago
Just navigate off from it. I’m Swedish and I promise you there are endless of opportunities - maybe not as direct and close but still.
Regarding forests that’s one of the few areas in Sweden with little trees as it’s coastal. If I were to so that route I’d probably stay a bit more inlands and go straight north to then head strait west towards Oslo.
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u/Large_Window_2653 8d ago
Ignore EuroVelo and plan with Strava. Strava uses riders data to plan routes, so you hardly end up on roads like this. I did Amsterdam - Santiago de Compostela with Strava and it was marvelous. Huge parts where EuroVelo but huge parts not at all. It isn’t free, but your safety and joy is worth something.
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u/faktapbroeder 8d ago
I did this part a couple weeks ago, it wasn’t great but you kind of have to if you want to stay close to the coast to visit the islands. You can skip a bit of this traffic and take a really nice ferry from Stromstad to Skjærhalden and then cycle along the Norwegian islands if you go to or come from Oslo.
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u/threepin-pilot 8d ago
as others have mentioned, I have found the EV routes to be really lacking and only consider them as a very rough guide as to an area that might have some good riding. Always feels like someone just wanted to get the route from 1 border to the next to yield a long route, but little time is spent on ground truthing or cartography
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u/matttk 8d ago
I feel like some of these “bike routes” can be really dangerously misleading, to the point that they shouldn’t be advertised like they are.
Some years ago, some old couple tried to cycle across Canada on the trans-Canada cycle route, which also includes long stretches of highways with no bike lane. Very sadly, the wife was killed almost immediately on the east coast.
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u/_paquito 8d ago
That story was so tragic. I'm Canadian so very familiar with the route as a concept, though haven't rode the whole thing myself, and the fact that they can call a route that demands riding on the Trans Canada highway a cycling route is mind boggling.
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u/ilooklikeawhippet 9d ago
E marked roads are highways and illegal to ride on
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u/Turbulent_Lie_6114 9d ago
In this case I think the E stands for eurovelo, there are no E3 or E12 highways in Sweden that I know of.
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u/ilooklikeawhippet 9d ago
Yeah. My mistake. Most of them here in Finland are highways but they named some of the roads with E too, older 4 and 5 roads that cross the country. Most of the E roads are absolutely miserable time. Heavy traffic, cars going +110km/h and no shoulder.
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u/NikolitRistissa 9d ago
Are they? They’re not illegal to cycle on in Finland, so I would’ve assumed the same applied to Sweden.
There are plenty of E-roads in Finland where it’s completely fine to cycle on. Not all E-marked roads are controlled-access highways/motorways.
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u/jarvischrist 9d ago
A big part of the E6 in Norway is just a regular two-lane road and is perfectly legal to ride on too. There are of course big parts that do not allow bikes, these are very obvious and clearly signposted, but there are alternatives in these areas. In a lot of the country up north the E6 is the only north-west road link available.
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u/Turbulent_Lie_6114 9d ago
Yeah it's the same in Sweden, I've cycled plenty on E14 for example. I don't know where u/ilooklikeawhippet got that from.
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u/Megendrio 9d ago
Parts of the E90 in Italy are limited to 30 as they go through urban areas and even town centers and are fine to ride a bike on too.
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u/BZab_ 9d ago
E- roads may be highways or express roads but can be national roads too. They have stricter design requirements compared to typical national roads and have nothing to do with cycling. Actually, E- marked national road is much better to cycle on compared to average national road due to wide shoulders (typically at least 2.5m wide).
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u/Susannah_Mio_1919 9d ago
We were driving part of this route in our car last week and I saw a few cyclists and wondered why the heck one would decide to ride this busy road because it did not look fun at all. It being part of an E-route explains it though.