After months spent turning my T5 van into a comfortable camper we were ready for our big trip. The plan was to take the ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao and drive to Andorra in time for the May 2009 UCI Downhill world cup. On the way back we arranged to stop in for a week with Basque MTB, a new mountain bike holiday company that we'd heard good things about.
The drive to Portsmouth was uneventful and the ferry was totally painless with some 'select' evening entertainment. Spice Girls impersonators anyone? The fun really started when we drove off the ferry and realised that my smart new i-phone satnav package didn't work in Europe. Great! The 5 hour drive to Andorra took us about 14 hours and we arrived well after dark, stressed and tired. The world cup was totally epic, you probably know the results, Sam Hill stacked leaving Peaty with the win, and the British guys partied the rest of the night!
The riding around Andorra was great. We rode around Vallnord for a day and a half, using the uplifts to ease ourselves into cycling after so long sitting in the van. We missed the trail markers on our first run, probably due to tiredness, and ended up riding down the fireroad before picking up a fast swoopy blue trail but after that we didn't have many more problems, and rode some great reds and blacks. The trails are a lot smoother than some of their alpine counterparts, and are a lot better for the lack of huge braking bumps. We were both riding 5-6”, and although a bigger bike would have been nice, we never felt out of our depth. Just after lunch we met Fabien Barel on the trail, what a nice guy he is, and he insisted on showing us some runs. Of course, as soon as we started downhill he disappeared and there was no way we could keep up, but it made our day. Totally star struck.
The drive back to Basque MTB's base, just outside San Sebastian, was a lot easier with some proper directions; just over five hours down the spine of the Pyrenees, all the way to where they met the wild Atlantic coast. The new van was fantastic but it was great to unpack our bags at our accommodation, a traditional Basque country house with well appreciated modern showers. Clean and fed... happy days!
We weren't sure what we were going to be shown, the Basque Country isn't an area that I've heard a lot about. A friend that we used to ride with in Scotland knows Doug who started his holiday company, Basque MTB, and we had heard stories of epic trails with a real back country feel. Some of the pictures looked amazing and it was really those that made our minds up, the green mountains seemed to come right down to the sea and some of the singletrack looked like it was right up our street.
We had breakfast on the balcony that morning and watched the sun climb up over the sea, throwing light on Larrun, a local mountain of about 1100m's. Last night, over a couple of cervezas, Doug had mentioned Larrun as a possible ride for today so when he arrived in the van we were itching to go. In between blasts of AC/DC in the van we got some of the story about how Doug had discovered the riding in the area; something like, he met a Basque girl in a Spanish pub and they got on very well, on visiting her Mum he saw the mountains and rode some of the trails and seeing the potential they moved here, with the rest being history. All very interesting but back to the biking. We got a lift in the van up to over 500m's which lessened the pain of the first climb significantly, still by the time we reached the top of Larrun we were glad to take some time and admire the view. It's a funny place, it's a wild mountain and a tough climb, but there's an old railway up one side which means that at the top there's a cafe and a gaggle of tourists! They seemed quite surprised to see us putting body armor on, winding forks out and dropping saddles, and we got a hearty standing ovation from the whole cafe. The descent was epic; I've ridden my bike in the Alps, the south of Spain, Andorra and all over Scotland but this was as hard as anything I've done. We rode down a trail simply called “Larrun”, a very testing series of loose rocky switchback with a penalty for failure, which dropped a few hundred meters before traversing around the face of Larrun on fast, buff singletrack and picking up a trail called “Cheeky Larrun”. That was my favorite of the day, it dropped for about 800m's on exposed bedrock with fast open sections and more testing switchbacks. We had to stop several times to let the arm pump dissipate. Intense!
We passed from some low down singletrack to an ancient Roman road that took us up a couple of hundred meters on some very technical climbing where we passed a 'venta'; a tiny mountain restaurant. Salivating and feeling the need for something in my belly it was really tempting to stop, however Doug promised us that there was another one higher up and that we could have lunch there. I don't understand why we can't do something like these 'ventas' in the UK, they are rough wooden buildings, generally on a mountain somewhere, and have a bar and a kitchen offering drinks and food. They always seemed to be packed full of people taking a break from walking and the atmosphere was great. We had a 3 course meal with wine and it came to €10 each; that definitely wouldn't happen in the UK! We were warned that the next trail was a tough one, called “Dutch Courage” because people normally had a few drinks in the venta before trying it. Well, it didn't disappoint, very tricky rocky sections wound down through the dense green vegetation, taking us all the way to the lower venta we had passed earlier. A double chainring with a bash guard seemed to be a big advantage here with the big rocky chutes, which grabbed at my big ring all the way down. Another climb led us to “Sibourne Weaver” which was a crazy descent made up entirely of switchbacks on loose slate. I fell here, catching a tyre on a rock and feeling the bars twisting out of my control and pitching me off the bike. I landed on my back staring at the sky but completely unscathed. By the time we reached the end of the day my upper body was more tired than my legs, it was a great day but it's been a long time since I've ridden trails that tough. We'd done about 1500m's of climbing and had descended over 2000m's, all on technical singletrack. Doug ordered us drinks in a local bar and set off to cycle back up to retrieve the van. Rather him than me!
The next day we took the option of an easier day around a local mountain called Jaizkibel. It's a sort of ridge which runs for about 10kms along the coast and rises to about 550m's at it's highest point. We took the van to the highest point to start the ride from there. The trails here were a lot easier than the technical trails yesterday but were all singletrack and we needed to keep our wits about us in places! It was fantastic to be winding along right next to the sea on little singletrack paths, listening to the breakers smashing against the coast and tasting the sea air. We took a packed lunch today and stopped just before lunchtime for a quick swim before lying on the grass to dry out and enjoy our food in the sun. After lunch we climbed to the summit, rapidly leaving the coast behind as we headed up on gentle paths winding in and out of the forests. The descent to finish the day was epic, about 6kms of singletrack which took us to a small coastal town. After yesterdays technical riding both of us felt that we were riding better than ever, and I certainly felt like I was floating down the singletrack with ease. The last bit of singletrack led us round the hill and back to our accommodation where we opened a beer on the terrace and I quickly fell asleep in the hammock, spilling my beer all over my riding shorts!
The other ride that both of us agreed totally stood out for us, was on a local hill called Aiko Harriak. That's a Basque name, and I had to google it to check the spelling! The riding was fantastic, a combination of swoopy through the woods and steep technical rocky trails, but it wasn't the riding that I remember the most! The final descent of the day was a fantastic track called “Reverse All the Way Home”, which was fast on a brilliant drifty surface through an ancient woodland. We cut past ancient mining works which had been reclaimed by nature, and through broken down castles as we sped towards sea level again. What makes it memorable though was what we found at the end of the trail. A traditional Sidreria, where they make the local Basque Cider, called sidre. When Doug did the van run we feasted on huge chunks of chargrilled beef, local fish omelettes and as much sidre as we could drink! !
The rest of the days were pretty much in the same vein. We did some more very technical riding on Ernio, another 1100m mountain which was totally deserted and was obviously untouched by bikes. Doug told us that he helped discover the trails here, with some local riders, and as far as they knew nobody had ever ridden it before. The whole area felt like that to be honest, almost totally undiscovered on bike. The trails twist and turn, diving down almost invisible paths before linking up with more fantastic singletrack, I would never have a chance of finding these trails again without a guide. The other thing that struck me about the area was the sheer number of mountains; they're not as large as the Alps, mostly sitting below 1500m's, but there is hardly any flat space, it's just mountain after mountain all the way to the beach. With flat space at a premium, you can see why housing is amongst the most expensive in Europe.
We spent most of the ferry back asleep in our cabin, but the drive up to Scotland was quite tiring after all the biking we had done. I think that when we come next time we won't take the van, it was great visiting Andorra but the driving was too much and we reckon that we wouldn't be bored staying in the Basque Region for our whole holiday. We didn't even get a chance to go surfing or visit San Sebastian this time round! If you're interested to check out more pictures or details then you can have a look at http://www.basquemtb.com, at the time of writing there were no other tour operators in the area but I guess that will change pretty quickly.
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Last Updated 28-02-2010
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