Off piste off the N260

[Captain Black]

Looking at planning a bit of a route with my lad, Boat to Bilbao or Santander then head east on and off the N260 for 2 or 3 days, cut across the med coast of France then up through Alps to the tunnel.
Does anyone have an interesting route on a paper map ? Want to do it without sat nav's, we will be camping all the way so our bikes will be laden with the usual stuff.
Not looking for mega rough terrain just fire road type stuff.
I was try to find route that could take in some trail roads that we could maybe camp off along the way. I know they don't like camping in the national parks etc, so I'm trying to stay within the rules but be a bit off the beaten track.

 

[araspitfire]

Lots of lovely camp-grounds on the Spanish side... Weather is better on that side as well...

We followed Garmin planned routes up and over and back on the Northern half... lots of the roads said unpaved, but were... Euro dollars hard at work...

The riding was lovely though.. little well-paved mountain roads.. truly awesome... till you got to the col... then the pavement went for to hell on the french side.. and the roads became wet.

Only one of the roads we found ended up being un-paved though. We weren't looking that hard, as I'd found quite a few, but we never got to them.


Al...

 

[CliveS]

Captain
Firstly when are you planning on going. Do you want all off road or on road. What are you interested in on the way and how long do you have around Sort?

 

[Captain Black]

Captain
Firstly when are you planning on going. Do you want all off road or on road. What are you interested in on the way and how long do you have around Sort?

Hi Clive, were looking at June or July with a minimum of 10 days, but hopeful of making it a full two weeks if my son can get the time from work. Ideally three or four nights wild or semi wild camping across from east to west before we hit the med coast of France. This will be my lads second trip ( f650 Dakar) so as nice as the N260 is I'm sure, we'd like to hit some of the back roads/ trails as well for a more rural experience. I'm mindful however of the Spanish laws in national parks and I don't want to piss the locals off. The odd little village for provisions, but other than that we want this part of our trip to be more scenery / out of the way camping. I'll be on my GSA 1150, both bikes with have panniers/camping gear so we don't want anything technical. Dusty lanes and trails would be ideal. I just wondered if it was possible to do given the way bike travel on unmade roads/ trails seems to be getting reduced. 15 /20 years ago I did a lot of green lanes here in the UK ( Peak District) but it seems to be having a hard time. The TRF were very good and I was a member for several years.
I'm banging on a bit

 

[Corp.Clinger!]

Hi Clive, were looking at June or July with a minimum of 10 days, but hopeful of making it a full two weeks if my son can get the time from work. Ideally three or four nights wild or semi wild camping across from east to west before we hit the med coast of France. This will be my lads second trip ( f650 Dakar) so as nice as the N260 is I'm sure, we'd like to hit some of the back roads/ trails as well for a more rural experience. I'm mindful however of the Spanish laws in national parks and I don't want to piss the locals off. The odd little village for provisions, but other than that we want this part of our trip to be more scenery / out of the way camping. I'll be on my GSA 1150, both bikes with have panniers/camping gear so we don't want anything technical. Dusty lanes and trails would be ideal. I just wondered if it was possible to do given the way bike travel on unmade roads/ trails seems to be getting reduced. 15 /20 years ago I did a lot of green lanes here in the UK ( Peak District) but it seems to be having a hard time. The TRF were very good and I was a member for several years.
I'm banging on a bit

I rode some trails a few months ago off the N260. They are there but the paper maps only show some trails that end in a dead end. When you ride some of them do not. I know you said no GPS but to be honest I use Open Street Maps that you download free (more detail than Garmin)and these work very well for those trails that you think end but when you zoom in you find that some of them continue on. There's a lot of abandoned villages in the region and there's no problem wild camping at these and as usual tidy up thereafter and off you go.

At the same time I would have a look at www.wikilocs.com where you'll find trails. I scoot over into Spain often to ride trails there on my XTZ660Z and use wikilocs to pick and choose what I want.




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