markie_wales
Registered user
In case you are wondering, this ride report is more for me to remember the trip, than to entertain you bunch of reprobates, so no slagging off my grammar, spelling, format etc. Also I used my phone for these pics, so thoughts on quality appreciated (not composition!!).
The plan this year was to ferry to / from Santander, the ride some researched routes heading generally south for a bit then do a loop around Madrid, clockwise, and end up back in Santander. Oh and have fun, enjoy ourselves and watch England vs Australia in the Rugby World cup when there. Well, as is tradition, other than the ferries, and having fun, we didn’t.
So hat’s off to Brittany Ferries, they leave on time (unlike the days of P&O) and we had a very smooth sailing. They even seemed to understand one part of our plan.
Landing in Santander we were planning on riding over the mountains to Miranda de Ebro – however looking at the timings it would mean the chances of watching all of the rugby was minimal, so a quick hop on the motorway across to Bilbao and down to Miranda got us there in time. We won’t speak any more about the Rugby OK?
As is typical with Spain in the autumn, the first proper day dawned bright and sunny with a few scattered clouds. We had ridden the trails from Miranda a few times, so we popped on the back roads down to Logrono to get to some new ones. After a bit of brunch in the centre of Logrono we headed out west to pick up the trails. I got a bit worried as 2 of the first 3 trails we picked up were shut (had visions of Spain turning into the UK), but these were pretty much the only closed trails we hit during the holiday. Heading south, this is typical of what you will find in the area.
Riding up a steep, familiar trail (couldn’t remember why I remembered it) there was a “no vehicles” sign before the wind turbines. OK that’s why it was familiar. Well the ~5 mile ride back down was fun. At the bottom of this trail, there is an abandoned quarry, in which my “naughty boy SE” got locked up for outrageous behaviour after mucking around in it.
We found another trail over the mountain, and saw this sign by one of many abandoned buildings on the holiday – so that set the tone for liquid refreshment that night.
By the time we hit tarmac again later that afternoon, we were both pretty beat, so decided to head for Zaragoza, check in for 3 nights and ride without luggage for a couple of days. Half an hour to the auutoroute, then blatted down to Zaragoza. Odd thoughts on this last road section. I wasn’t really enjoying myself, or thinking that it had been a fantastic day riding, and began to think “perhaps I’m getting too old for this?”. More of that later.
If you have never been to Zaragoza, I have a bit of a soft spot for it. I’m not religious, but some of the buildings are fantastic and we’ve have always felt it’s a vibrant, bustling river small-city with loads of great restaurants, tapas bars, history etc and just has a nice feel about it. Yes there are modern parts to it, but the area around the Cathedral is great with the pretty medieval style bridge you can just abut make out below. Oh and a cheap Ibis hotel over the bridge with secure parking which my mate disgraced himself in last year, but they must have forgiven us by now as we got a room overlooking the river/cathedral.
To give you an sense of the trails we rode south of Zaragoza, think of a figure of 8, with a tail. We did the top loop of the “8” on one day, most of the bottom loop on the next day, then rode down to the bottom of the “8” then headed south on the “tail” on the third of these days.
The first of these three days, we hit the trails (without luggage, just tools and tubes), around 5 miles south of Zaragoza and within minutes all the previous days concerns about not really being “into” it were gone. This is what I came for. Great trails, great scenery, great weather.
There were sections of trail that were either deep sand (well deep for a pansy-foo-foo off roader like me), or just as bad, an inch of sand on hard packed surface where throttle control was vital to stop the rear spinning up. Really, I was a gear higher than needed and VERY gentle on the throttle. You can sort of see the surface in the pic below.
The canyon in the pic below looked like a dead end, but there was a very steep, rocky, and how can I put this…. “Interesting” trail to get you to the top. And after a mere four changes of underwear we were at the top.
Once at the top of the cliff, the riding was lovely. Great views over the valley, the track meandering from along the edge of the cliff, to through the fields (where they seem to be growing rocks…), to a gentle run down a mini valley all of which was fairly quick riding. Obligatory mate/BMW shot, with a rock field to the left.
Coming back down off the ridge and beginning to think about lunch we came across this bit of water which had half a dozen or so trails leading off it. Quick look at the sat nav and we finished off the trails and headed for Carinena for lunch.
Casa Marzo is the place you want to go for lunch if you are in the area, lots of interesting tapas (and the usual favourites), good service and great café con leche. After lunch we headed back for Zaragoza on new trails, which although did not have the ridge, got fairly demanding in places but was good riding. Usual wildlife scurrying away before you got to it, including lizards, a snake and something small, furry and very fast (no idea what it was). Is it just me or on some surfaces that have low grip are you convinced that you’ve got a puncture???
Miles from anywhere there was this “mound” around ½ - 1 km long, and you can see the height. It wasn’t man made as far as we could tell, and the rock wasn’t different from anything in the surrounding area, but it was a giggle riding up, over and down it (several times….). The first part of the drop was damn steep, again not see-able in the pictures.
The third day out of Zaragoza meant an hour and a half road ride to where we had ended the day before, a bit chilly if the truth be told! My mate was struggling with the temps in his kit which allowed the chilly air through. I went on ahead and we met up in a small town (Calamocha) “head for the middle and I’ll see you at a coffee shop” – which amazingly worked out well by my cunning use of the pavement on the roundabout in the centre of town. Having said that, the guy serving couldn’t get his head around “Dos Café con Leche y dos croissant” when it was just me. My Spanish is boarder line at best so I kept saying “si” when he asked me.
The trail started just outside and to the west of Calamocha, and after an aborted start where my mate and I split up and met up again next to the trail, we were on our way (you know that riding around trying to find each other and pass each other going different ways feeling?). A few pics of the trails from today. The first one was weird. As you can see in the first pic below the surface looks fine, but it shook the bejesus out of me, and didn’t seem to have any grip.
How good does this next trail look? Yeah good isn’t it? One of those “I wonder what’s over there?” trails that is what drives a lot of us, I believe. Winding up over a nice little hill, what’s not to like?
Well, all you Adventure types, let me tell you something man-to-unknown-gender-person (see I’m being al politically correct). Let me tell you this. If you are on bikes the size of a KTM 950 SuperEnduro or a BMW 800 gs. Let me tell you something with no agenda on my side. Turn around. Turn around now. Go back the way you came. Don’t think about it, don’t be all macho, and don’t regret not going up there later. Ride away.
Just beyond where you can see, the surface deteriorates suddenly, and it becomes very steep, with loose rocks, rock steps, dusty surface with little grip. I was ahead at the time and managed to get up 90% of it when over the intercom my mate says he’s dropped it. Basically he bounced off a rock and got thrown into the side of the hill. I stopped and walked back down to help him get it back on its tyres. I also walked ahead and the trail eased off after another ~200m, but he had no idea what the trail was going to do after that. Discretion being the better part of valour, we decided to turn around and go back down. I came a small cropper on the way down. Coming off a rock step, front wheel hit a rock and was turned/twisted out, put my foot down where there was about 10 inches of thin air. So the bike was laid down, rather than crashed, no damage though so all good. In the pics below, I’ve tried to show the surface/steepness but as always it really does not show it.
Really not showing the surface / steepness well.
After that abandoned trail the rest of the day’s riding was excellent, and one small, self-indulgent moment when my SE ticked over 20,000 miles. So much nicer to have it happen on the trail than when popping up the shops or on the M3 commuting to work in the summer etc. Do you remember where you were at 20,000 miles? I do N40 32.202 W1 20.131.
Random pictures from the rest of the day’s riding. Dried up river bed – not a lot of grip!
Exiting the river bed.
That night we stopped over in Teruel. What a great little town. We had no idea what it was going to be like, but very impressed with this place perched on top of a hill. Loads of beautiful old buildings, nice tapas places / bars / restaurants - lovely place and a nice hotel (Hotel Reina Cristina). Recommended. One of the many squares:
Our hotel is on the left of this pic:
View “almost” from our window.
Leaving Teruel a little worse for wear, we had a gentle road ride up to Albarracin for a coffee / cake break along some lovely twisty roads, and then plotted out the rest of the day. We had a few trails marked up for the day but generally wanted to head north. Not all the trials were quite as exciting as we were hoping for….
Random bull ring picture, which we did pass a lot of in small towns.
Having said that we then came across one of the most beautiful gorges of the whole holiday. OK it was road only, but truly stunning. At one end is a place called Ventosa if you want to look it up.
Nearing the end (heading west) we picked up the trails again and rode up over the gorge through some gorgeous forest trails that seemed to go on forever, but in reality were probably only 15 miles or so.
This one does not do justice to the rock formations by the trail.
By the end of this trail we were about done for the day so headed to Almazan for the evening. Well it looked a reasonable size and was on a river which usually bodes well, but other than some nice old walls etc, was a bit small and rather dead. So a quick hop on the autoroute took us up to Soria which was setting up a market for the next day.
In the morning we popped into the local KTM dealer for my mate to get some chain lube and off we set again. Out to the west about 20 miles to pick up the trails and some really nice riding today. Some technical challenges, some wide open blasts, some ducking between the tress a real mix. And the usual lovely weather!
One of “those” posed pictures to try and make us look like proper adventure types:
Coming to the end of one trail that we’d been on for about 7 or 8 miles, there was a green barrier across the trail (the sort they put up next to the road for the London Marathon). “very odd” I thought, but we pulled up, walked past the barrier and saw why it was there. The picture does not show the size/depth well, but it was a good 10 – 12 feet deep, maybe the same across, and no easy way round it. You can see the BMW ahead for a bit of scale. To get round we had to ride up through the tress/bushes to the right, the white “path” you can see on the right disappeared into the hole and was undercut. A few more changes of underwear and we were round it. Barriers replaced – I owe whoever put them there a pint!
For the last trail of the day we need to go up over a mountain. Along this ridge….
Up this trail….
And avoid this rock on the way down the other side. Why can’t they put it in the big hole from earlier in the day……
Into Burgos for the last night and the worst service in a Chinese restaurant in history, overcome by the generous application of gin and tonic.
The last day, we basically wove our way north picking up any trails we came across. We rode off road until lunch time then just picked up some back roads heading towards Santander. Confession time. I am NOT good with heights. One pass we went along was a nightmare for me. A several hundred meter vertical drop to the right (on which side I was having to ride), which just some (perhaps) 2 foot high rock blocks with big gaps between them to stop a car going over the side. Useless for stopping a bike. Really not very pleasant.
Not many pictures from the last day, but this view was particularly impressive.
A couple of others from “somewhere” that day (I think near the beginning, near Burgos).
Rocked up into Santander about an hour early, grabbed some food, and homeward bound. All in all a very good week away. Still don’t understand why I didn’t really get into the first day and enjoy it, but hay-ho, onwards and upwards!
Miles: ~1,380
Drops: BMW 1, KTM 1 but I claim I was set up by having to turn round
Rain: nothing of note
Grins: Oh, lots.
Best bit: the 3 days of trails to the south of Zaragoza
Worse bit: I thought we agreed not to speak of England vs Oz again?
The plan this year was to ferry to / from Santander, the ride some researched routes heading generally south for a bit then do a loop around Madrid, clockwise, and end up back in Santander. Oh and have fun, enjoy ourselves and watch England vs Australia in the Rugby World cup when there. Well, as is tradition, other than the ferries, and having fun, we didn’t.
So hat’s off to Brittany Ferries, they leave on time (unlike the days of P&O) and we had a very smooth sailing. They even seemed to understand one part of our plan.
Landing in Santander we were planning on riding over the mountains to Miranda de Ebro – however looking at the timings it would mean the chances of watching all of the rugby was minimal, so a quick hop on the motorway across to Bilbao and down to Miranda got us there in time. We won’t speak any more about the Rugby OK?
As is typical with Spain in the autumn, the first proper day dawned bright and sunny with a few scattered clouds. We had ridden the trails from Miranda a few times, so we popped on the back roads down to Logrono to get to some new ones. After a bit of brunch in the centre of Logrono we headed out west to pick up the trails. I got a bit worried as 2 of the first 3 trails we picked up were shut (had visions of Spain turning into the UK), but these were pretty much the only closed trails we hit during the holiday. Heading south, this is typical of what you will find in the area.
Riding up a steep, familiar trail (couldn’t remember why I remembered it) there was a “no vehicles” sign before the wind turbines. OK that’s why it was familiar. Well the ~5 mile ride back down was fun. At the bottom of this trail, there is an abandoned quarry, in which my “naughty boy SE” got locked up for outrageous behaviour after mucking around in it.
We found another trail over the mountain, and saw this sign by one of many abandoned buildings on the holiday – so that set the tone for liquid refreshment that night.
By the time we hit tarmac again later that afternoon, we were both pretty beat, so decided to head for Zaragoza, check in for 3 nights and ride without luggage for a couple of days. Half an hour to the auutoroute, then blatted down to Zaragoza. Odd thoughts on this last road section. I wasn’t really enjoying myself, or thinking that it had been a fantastic day riding, and began to think “perhaps I’m getting too old for this?”. More of that later.
If you have never been to Zaragoza, I have a bit of a soft spot for it. I’m not religious, but some of the buildings are fantastic and we’ve have always felt it’s a vibrant, bustling river small-city with loads of great restaurants, tapas bars, history etc and just has a nice feel about it. Yes there are modern parts to it, but the area around the Cathedral is great with the pretty medieval style bridge you can just abut make out below. Oh and a cheap Ibis hotel over the bridge with secure parking which my mate disgraced himself in last year, but they must have forgiven us by now as we got a room overlooking the river/cathedral.
To give you an sense of the trails we rode south of Zaragoza, think of a figure of 8, with a tail. We did the top loop of the “8” on one day, most of the bottom loop on the next day, then rode down to the bottom of the “8” then headed south on the “tail” on the third of these days.
The first of these three days, we hit the trails (without luggage, just tools and tubes), around 5 miles south of Zaragoza and within minutes all the previous days concerns about not really being “into” it were gone. This is what I came for. Great trails, great scenery, great weather.
There were sections of trail that were either deep sand (well deep for a pansy-foo-foo off roader like me), or just as bad, an inch of sand on hard packed surface where throttle control was vital to stop the rear spinning up. Really, I was a gear higher than needed and VERY gentle on the throttle. You can sort of see the surface in the pic below.
The canyon in the pic below looked like a dead end, but there was a very steep, rocky, and how can I put this…. “Interesting” trail to get you to the top. And after a mere four changes of underwear we were at the top.
Once at the top of the cliff, the riding was lovely. Great views over the valley, the track meandering from along the edge of the cliff, to through the fields (where they seem to be growing rocks…), to a gentle run down a mini valley all of which was fairly quick riding. Obligatory mate/BMW shot, with a rock field to the left.
Coming back down off the ridge and beginning to think about lunch we came across this bit of water which had half a dozen or so trails leading off it. Quick look at the sat nav and we finished off the trails and headed for Carinena for lunch.
Casa Marzo is the place you want to go for lunch if you are in the area, lots of interesting tapas (and the usual favourites), good service and great café con leche. After lunch we headed back for Zaragoza on new trails, which although did not have the ridge, got fairly demanding in places but was good riding. Usual wildlife scurrying away before you got to it, including lizards, a snake and something small, furry and very fast (no idea what it was). Is it just me or on some surfaces that have low grip are you convinced that you’ve got a puncture???
Miles from anywhere there was this “mound” around ½ - 1 km long, and you can see the height. It wasn’t man made as far as we could tell, and the rock wasn’t different from anything in the surrounding area, but it was a giggle riding up, over and down it (several times….). The first part of the drop was damn steep, again not see-able in the pictures.
The third day out of Zaragoza meant an hour and a half road ride to where we had ended the day before, a bit chilly if the truth be told! My mate was struggling with the temps in his kit which allowed the chilly air through. I went on ahead and we met up in a small town (Calamocha) “head for the middle and I’ll see you at a coffee shop” – which amazingly worked out well by my cunning use of the pavement on the roundabout in the centre of town. Having said that, the guy serving couldn’t get his head around “Dos Café con Leche y dos croissant” when it was just me. My Spanish is boarder line at best so I kept saying “si” when he asked me.
The trail started just outside and to the west of Calamocha, and after an aborted start where my mate and I split up and met up again next to the trail, we were on our way (you know that riding around trying to find each other and pass each other going different ways feeling?). A few pics of the trails from today. The first one was weird. As you can see in the first pic below the surface looks fine, but it shook the bejesus out of me, and didn’t seem to have any grip.
How good does this next trail look? Yeah good isn’t it? One of those “I wonder what’s over there?” trails that is what drives a lot of us, I believe. Winding up over a nice little hill, what’s not to like?
Well, all you Adventure types, let me tell you something man-to-unknown-gender-person (see I’m being al politically correct). Let me tell you this. If you are on bikes the size of a KTM 950 SuperEnduro or a BMW 800 gs. Let me tell you something with no agenda on my side. Turn around. Turn around now. Go back the way you came. Don’t think about it, don’t be all macho, and don’t regret not going up there later. Ride away.
Just beyond where you can see, the surface deteriorates suddenly, and it becomes very steep, with loose rocks, rock steps, dusty surface with little grip. I was ahead at the time and managed to get up 90% of it when over the intercom my mate says he’s dropped it. Basically he bounced off a rock and got thrown into the side of the hill. I stopped and walked back down to help him get it back on its tyres. I also walked ahead and the trail eased off after another ~200m, but he had no idea what the trail was going to do after that. Discretion being the better part of valour, we decided to turn around and go back down. I came a small cropper on the way down. Coming off a rock step, front wheel hit a rock and was turned/twisted out, put my foot down where there was about 10 inches of thin air. So the bike was laid down, rather than crashed, no damage though so all good. In the pics below, I’ve tried to show the surface/steepness but as always it really does not show it.
Really not showing the surface / steepness well.
After that abandoned trail the rest of the day’s riding was excellent, and one small, self-indulgent moment when my SE ticked over 20,000 miles. So much nicer to have it happen on the trail than when popping up the shops or on the M3 commuting to work in the summer etc. Do you remember where you were at 20,000 miles? I do N40 32.202 W1 20.131.
Random pictures from the rest of the day’s riding. Dried up river bed – not a lot of grip!
Exiting the river bed.
That night we stopped over in Teruel. What a great little town. We had no idea what it was going to be like, but very impressed with this place perched on top of a hill. Loads of beautiful old buildings, nice tapas places / bars / restaurants - lovely place and a nice hotel (Hotel Reina Cristina). Recommended. One of the many squares:
Our hotel is on the left of this pic:
View “almost” from our window.
Leaving Teruel a little worse for wear, we had a gentle road ride up to Albarracin for a coffee / cake break along some lovely twisty roads, and then plotted out the rest of the day. We had a few trails marked up for the day but generally wanted to head north. Not all the trials were quite as exciting as we were hoping for….
Random bull ring picture, which we did pass a lot of in small towns.
Having said that we then came across one of the most beautiful gorges of the whole holiday. OK it was road only, but truly stunning. At one end is a place called Ventosa if you want to look it up.
Nearing the end (heading west) we picked up the trails again and rode up over the gorge through some gorgeous forest trails that seemed to go on forever, but in reality were probably only 15 miles or so.
This one does not do justice to the rock formations by the trail.
By the end of this trail we were about done for the day so headed to Almazan for the evening. Well it looked a reasonable size and was on a river which usually bodes well, but other than some nice old walls etc, was a bit small and rather dead. So a quick hop on the autoroute took us up to Soria which was setting up a market for the next day.
In the morning we popped into the local KTM dealer for my mate to get some chain lube and off we set again. Out to the west about 20 miles to pick up the trails and some really nice riding today. Some technical challenges, some wide open blasts, some ducking between the tress a real mix. And the usual lovely weather!
One of “those” posed pictures to try and make us look like proper adventure types:
Coming to the end of one trail that we’d been on for about 7 or 8 miles, there was a green barrier across the trail (the sort they put up next to the road for the London Marathon). “very odd” I thought, but we pulled up, walked past the barrier and saw why it was there. The picture does not show the size/depth well, but it was a good 10 – 12 feet deep, maybe the same across, and no easy way round it. You can see the BMW ahead for a bit of scale. To get round we had to ride up through the tress/bushes to the right, the white “path” you can see on the right disappeared into the hole and was undercut. A few more changes of underwear and we were round it. Barriers replaced – I owe whoever put them there a pint!
For the last trail of the day we need to go up over a mountain. Along this ridge….
Up this trail….
And avoid this rock on the way down the other side. Why can’t they put it in the big hole from earlier in the day……
Into Burgos for the last night and the worst service in a Chinese restaurant in history, overcome by the generous application of gin and tonic.
The last day, we basically wove our way north picking up any trails we came across. We rode off road until lunch time then just picked up some back roads heading towards Santander. Confession time. I am NOT good with heights. One pass we went along was a nightmare for me. A several hundred meter vertical drop to the right (on which side I was having to ride), which just some (perhaps) 2 foot high rock blocks with big gaps between them to stop a car going over the side. Useless for stopping a bike. Really not very pleasant.
Not many pictures from the last day, but this view was particularly impressive.
A couple of others from “somewhere” that day (I think near the beginning, near Burgos).
Rocked up into Santander about an hour early, grabbed some food, and homeward bound. All in all a very good week away. Still don’t understand why I didn’t really get into the first day and enjoy it, but hay-ho, onwards and upwards!
Miles: ~1,380
Drops: BMW 1, KTM 1 but I claim I was set up by having to turn round
Rain: nothing of note
Grins: Oh, lots.
Best bit: the 3 days of trails to the south of Zaragoza
Worse bit: I thought we agreed not to speak of England vs Oz again?
