A delightful day in the Casa de Campo

well, the day was simply amazing. Blue skies, no wind and 24 degrees centigrade made for perfect conditions for some mountain biking in Casa de Campo. This is an enormous park, a forest rather, bordering the city center of Madrid. To give you a feel of its size, it is five times the size of New York´s Central Park.

Casa de Campo is also where the mountain biking world cup was held this year in May. So we were obviously keen to try out some of these WC trails. This was by no means our first time there, in fact we have cycled through it many times before. Its extremely convenient location in the city as well as its great tracks make it perfect for a few hours of MTBing.


All was well today as we ascended and descended, until I decided to gun it down one of the more challenging and steep world cup runs. It was very steep and somehow my front wheel got a bit stuck. I soon found myself airborn and doing a bit of a somersault, with bike and all. The landing, face first, in the dirt took the wind out of me for a bit. Part of the landing was broken by my helmet and I was glad to be weiring all finger and tough gloves. Besides some token blood (to impress the girls) I was fine and left the area of the crash unscathed. It happened right underneath the gondola, and am sure it must have provided some of its passengers with a spectacular scene. I aim to please of course... ;)

anyway, the bike will need to be tuned a little bit and will go in for service tomorrow, will want to head out again next weekend of course.

hasta la próxima
Douwe

La Pedriza, Madrid

I have done Pedriza twice before, once in April (although we did only a snippet of the entire trail) and once on June 20 of this year. An amazing circular trail, which we did counter clockwise. This meant that we had the steapest climb to start with with a long descent to take us back to where we had parked the car.


This trail is not particularly difficult, technically speaking. The difficulty is in the steep and long climb as you can see in below diagram.




Once you start to climb a little bit the views start getting better and better. There is a viewpoint (mirador) at the top of the trail, with stunning views of the peeks of Pedriza and down below Manzanares and the lake. In the distance you can also see the city of Madrid and its unmistakable 4 towers.



This trail is definitely worth going for, but don't underestimate the climb. If you stay on the track, a pretty smooth dirt track with small rocks and gravel, it is very easy going. Next time I am keen to take some of the forest trails that are around. The park, up until you reach the hight of the mirador, is pretty much a pine forest with huge rocks. Am looking forward to doing a winter wonderland trail once there will be snow later in the season, is supposed to be amazing.



We only had one incident happen yesterday, one that has now got Frans convince that he will in fact bring his gloves and helmet next time.