La Mesa

The following morning we were woken up by a tractor spraying something on the olive tree opposite... ‘oops!’, the spot we’d come across was in-fact a farmers field and not the sneaky car-park we thought we were lucky in finding the night before. A sense of relief kicked in as it hit us that the driving was over for now, and we could kick back and enjoy the riding. The plan was to go and check into the hostel, La Finca in El Chorro and get things unloaded and organised before heading out for a short blast in the afternoon.

The hostel was brilliant; it was a beautiful place with a really good atmosphere. We were soon unpacked and sussing out the showers and kitchen. Bikes assembled and kit organised, we set out for a short blast from the hostel. The plan was to do La Mesa descent, one that Sue had done before and rated highly. She pointed out where the descent was on what looked a cliff, I looked up in disbelief. The trail drops down from La Mesa reservoir above and meets with the reservoir in El Chorro below. It drops from the big chimney at the top and clings to the cliff side, carved out of the rock itself.

To get to the top it was a good old slog up the road, from the bottom it looked absolutely horrific, but in the end wasn’t half as bad as it looked. The road eventually took us to La Mesa reservoir where we had to follow it around and ride across the dam wall itself before dropping down. The descent itself started off on mellow, smooth, wooded single-track before getting steeper and turning into solid rock with loose gravel and ruts waiting to claim a victim. I was in shock, the riding was perfect, even better than I had imagined, and it went on forever. Just when I thought the trail had peaked, it threw up another few surprises. Undoubtedly a brilliant first taster of the riding to come.

We picked Sue P. up from Malaga airport in the evening, back in the van again.