Planning a great ride for Saturday

OK, back from a business trip, bike back from some service in the shop... It is time to head out for another great ride in the mountains. This Saturday we will head out to El Atazar, just north of Madrid.



If any of you want to join let me know.

Preparing for the Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago)

OK, the decision has been made, we will do the Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago) from Madrid to Santiago. We will depart on Sunday 7 June and will hopefully arrive in Santiago on Friday 12 or Saturday 13 June. click on below map to get an idea of the route. We will do this by MTB of course.



Most likely the route will take us along Navacerada, Segovia, up to Valladolid and at Sahagun we will catch the traditional camino in direction Leon. The entire route from Madrid to Santiago is approximately 700 kilometers and we are expecting some spectacular terrain.

Anybody that would like to join us on this trip simply let us know. The plan is to stay in b&b's along the route.
Click for more information on the Camino, with origins as a pilgrimmage. Don' t worry, also atheists are more than welcome to join in on the fun ;-)

More details on planning of this journey will follow in blog entries leading up to 7 June.

Casa de Campo - Madrid

OK, so on a Friday evening we did not have a lot of time to hit the mountains for a good MTB route before dark. So we decided to go on a usual trail around Casa de Campo, a huge park, well more of a forrest actually. It is within the city limits and because of it Madrid is listed as one of the greenest cities in the world. The park is used for all sorts of sports and it was interesting to see hookering to be one of them. Prostitutes all over the place. Nevertheless the actual trails around Casa de Camo are pretty good, not quite like the sierra but good enough for a quick ride around.



After a good workout of dodging trees, traps, hookers and finding the way back we decided to have a "quick" beer. Lago (lake) is a place in the Casa de Campo with a few restaurants right at the lake. We stopped at what now seems to have become our regular watering hole, judging by the amount of free tapas we got :-)

A trail just outside of Rascafría, northern tip of Madrid

Today we intended to do a cycling tour with the kids near Rascafría. This is an area in the mountains north of Madrid bordering Castilla y León (province of Segovia). Beautiful terrain and the track we ended up walking is just off KM 32 on the M604 (see below for map indication)


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The trail is stunning, along a number of waterfalls cutting through a thick forrest. Although we had 20 degree weather in the city, we found ourselfs in Rascafría at 3 degrees. Quite fría indeed... So we decided against taking our kids out on the bikes, and walked. We are sure to head back to this lovely spot though. There are two restaurants right at the beginning of the trail for either coffee or lunch.

After hanging aroud this track for a while and having our exoctic combination of coffee and croquetas, we headed out and took the M604 further into the mountains. A winterwonderland spectacle awaited us. It quite obviously had been snowing here the past couple of days. We should have left the bikes at home and taken our skis instead.

Valdemaqueda near El Escorial, easy trail with the kids

OK, so not all entries on here will be about trails for die-hards. Today we took the kids out to a mountainous area near Madrid. We took the bicycles and did an easy trail just outside of Valdemaqueda. See below map for location details. 
The area  indicated as A on the map is where you should park your car, in Avda. del Puente Romano. Drive towards the end (lowest part) of the street, where you will find the start of the dirt track. We cycled along a little stream until we hit a medieval bridge with a brilliantly located picninc ground where we took our picnic. 

The way we discovered this new route was through a guide-book I bought recently, which is dedicated to outdoor trips in the mountains surrounding Madrid. Many of them can be done by bicycle, others are best done on foot. 

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The book is called: Excursiones para niños por la sierra de Madrid and can be found at Casa del Libro (Spanish)

http://www.casadellibro.com/libro-excursiones-para-ninos-por-la-sierra-de-madrid/2900000909360

Next stop for a tour with the kids will be a trail somewhere more north over the Easter holidays. 

5 April, first try at the Vandellos trail

Set out on Sunday morning at 8 AM for the Vandellos trail. The entry to the trail can be found along the C44 (the road from L´Hospitalet de L´Infant to Vandellos. A steady climb up the C44 from Hospitalet will take you across the AP7 and you will pass an exit to the T318. Right after passing this exit you will see a curve up ahead. At that curve on your left you will find the entry to the MTB trail. See above map where the red dot marks the entry.

I did not do the entire trail, and I can tell you that the first bit is very tough, a bit of a climb let´s say. Amazing views, fairly easy terrain to cover and difficulty is more in the tough climbs than anything else. 

Above photo I shot at the highest point I reached today. (catching my breath...;)

I will set out for another few runs on this trail this week and will look to write a more comprehensive report on it. 

Tarragona

Am currently in Tarragona and am looking forward to doing a number of interesting runs whilst here. The first trail I am looking to give a go is around Vandellos:

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The trail should lead me through a some stunning sceanery, will bring the camera to take some pictures that I´ll post on this blog. To give you and idea of the trail see the blue marks on attached map.

22 March, Chinchón (Madrid)

Chinchón is a lovely little town south of Madrid, known mostly for its famous plaza Mayor that doubles as a bullfighting arena. The strucures surrounding the plaza are wooden and most date back to the 15th century. Chinchón is well worth a visit, but do not expect to spend more than a few hours walking around as the plaza is the main attraction.  A long weekend lunch on the plaza is a perfect way to esperience Chinchón.

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The plaza is also the place to get together as the starting point for the MTB trail. We got together at 9 AM, a time when almost all bars are still closed. All but one, a smoky bar packed with middle-aged Spanish men working hard on their sigarette and coffee intake at the start of a beautiful sunny day. We ordered our coffees and reviewed the route we´re about embark on. Frans has the entire route mapped in his GPS and we are looking forward to an approx. 40 KM route that will partly run over an old decommissioned rail-track. After coffee and copious amounts of second-hand smoke we set off, and ride through the streets of Chinchon. 

We initially need to head north to find the trail. To get to it we cycled north on the M311 passed the petrol station and found what we figured was the trail. It took us through a smallish gorge on a downhill track. Beyond this was a wonderful open space where we soon embarked on a climb. The climb eventually brought us through private hunting grounds. And eventhough we did stick to the public track, at one point we were nearly eaten by a couple of supersized foaming-at-the-mouth dogs... We escaped, and in fact these monsters helped us surmount the climb in record time. 

Soon we again again found the M 311 and rode it up to the town of Morata de Tajuña. By chance we rode passed the restaurant El Cid, 
http://www.mesonelcidmorata.com/

I remember having had lunch there and was tempted to chuck the bike and sit down for a big meal... it is actually a good Spanish restaurant, pretty authentic. 

From Morota it is the trick to find the old railway track that has been turned into a cycle track back to Chinchón. We later found out that you effectively need to just stay on the main road through the town, and pick up the train on the right. 

The trail back was beatiful, although a long (not steep, but long) climb back.

We were glad to be back in Chinchón and enjoyed a couple of pints in the sun. If you want more details on the actual trail, send me an email.

March 14 2009 Pedriza, mountains around Manzanares el Rey

It was a beatiful day as we headed out to the spectacular park of Pedriza, a nature reserve about 40 km north of Madrid. The terrain when you stay on the paths is light gravel and fairly smooth. The real fun is of course to be found off the beaten track dodging trees and many many stupendously big rocks. 

The overall tail when you stay on the generic track is about 30 KM. Starting altitude at around 1000 M and highest point at 1700M. We failed to check the GPS logs to see how much we ended up clinmbing, but I can assure you this one is not for wimps ;-) 

Would strongly recommend doing this route, next time I will do this one I´ll include more details on where to park the car and GPS details. 

Welcome

This blog will be dedicated to the various mountain bike trails that I will do or have done across Spain, and perhaps beyond. Spain has very many beautiful mountain bike routes throughout the country that are well worth it. I intend to ride most of them and report in detail on each one in this blog. Photos and route descriptions will be included as well as GPS information.

In June of 2006 I have plans to cycle a part of the Camino with some firnds, the route to Santiago de Compostela. We are likely to set off on the trip from Burgos, which will give us some 500 Km´s to pedal to Santiago. We have yet to decide how many days we will want to take to complete this trip ;)

So look out for upcoming postings on my Spain MTB adventures. First up a trail near Tarragona in the southern tip of Catalonia next week. I just bought my Garmin all terrain GPS to help me not getting lost.. wish me luck!