Bubion Big Descent

Bubion sits even higher in the mountains and is a quaint village, seemingly clinging to the hillside. This was to be the start point for today’s ride. The plan was to climb up into the national park and drop straight down, on single-track, to a place called Capilerilla. This was to be another largish climb at around 10km at a gentle gradient. We climbed, riding through patches of snow, until we could all feel the altitude on the lungs.

The first section of downhill was fantastic, the wooded single-track had fast, long corners with slight natural berms which were great fun. As we dropped things got slightly rockier and more technical. The section down into Capilerilla dropped through an olive grove on a loose, slatey surface around countless numbers of switchbacks, some with huge natural berms and little drops. Halfway down we came across a biker, turn out he was a guide maintaining the trail. Apparently this trail was one of the most popular in the area and used frequently by the guides, I can see why too. After a short climb back up out of Capilerilla we were looking down on Bubion and trying to figure out just where exactly the trail manages to work its way down the super steep hill side. The views were epic and made more impressive watching on another creep round these zig-zags where it looked impossible.

Lanjaron Big Climb

Yesterday we moved from El Chorro to a town called Orgiva in the Alpujarras mountains. We moved into a lovely self-catered cottage, Buena Vista, on the outskirts of Orgiva. It was a fantastic base and it was hard to leave our own private little veranda this morning. Just up the road from Orgiva is a town called Lanjaron, this is where we started today’s ride. Sue wasn’t really doing a good job of selling this route to us; explaining that it had a 16km climb and an elevation gain of 800m in one go. What goes up must come down though right? If the climb was that long, the descent has got to be worth a crack surely? Damn right!

The day started off bright and warm, enough so to almost make us leave the waterproofs back at base. The climb started off steep but soon became gentle, once you were in a suitable gear the climb, wasn’t too unpleasant. It was nice winding your way up and being able to watch your progress and seeing the track and town get smaller beneath you. About ¾ of the way up the wind picked up and the sky clouded over. It was time to don that waterproof I almost left behind earlier. The final grind was just that, it needed happy thoughts to drag us those last few K’s to the top. Whilst waiting at the top the clouds got blacker and the wind stronger, a couple of minutes later there was heavy snow coming down. I had to armour up to stop myself freezing, but my fingers started to go. I’ve had the hot-aches a million times before, but this time they were worse than ever, I could have sworn my fingers were read to drop off.

We found shelter under an overhang of rock and warmed ourselves up, jumping on the bikes as soon as we had done to drop down and escape the snow. Even though it hurt like hell to brake, I couldn’t help but smile as the swooped along the hill. Before long we dropped into the open and out of the worst of the snow. We joined with the path over the river and hit the first section of cobbled trail. It was the most perfectly made cobbled trail, zig-zagging round tight switchbacks that stretched out for 8km. The tight zig-zags were incredibly hard at first but by the bottom we were all definitely masters of the switchback.

Benalmendena

Has it happened, have we turned into fully fledged down-hillers? Today we gave the legs a rest again and went to the coast to use the cable-car at Benalmedena. Benalmedena is on the Costa Del Sol just west of Malaga. The hill behind has a selection of downhill tracks on it. Sue had ridden here once before, but in the mist, and wasn’t sure what to expect. I half expected to turn up, pay for a days lift pass and have a few runs down the hill. The pass was 7 euro for the one trip, so multi runs were out of the question really, little did I know that one run would take us nearly 3 hours.

From the top we descended on a natural trail. It was steep with large loose rocks on a sandy base. It made for interesting riding, the bike skipped about on the rocks and drifted in the sandy corners. The terrain was a complete contrast yet again. The trail levelled off and traversed to the other side of the hill, where we met the top of one of the DH tracks.

The start of the track was great, dropping down a steep rock slab and round some tight steep switchbacks, but went downhill from there (excuse the pun). There were a series of huge gap jumps with rocky take offs and landings. Unless Berrecloth is your last name these jumps are probably undoable, with none of them being under 25ft gaps. To top it off there were no real chicken runs to speak of so you couldn’t even ride the trail in one without having to clamber over the lip of a jump or walking through a bush. The ride finished off with a bit of off-roading through a building site and a flat out blast on the road. All in all a great days ride again, only hindered by a small section of DH track (there are other, more rideable DH trails on the hill somewhere).

El Colorado

Today started off misty and then rained. We made a group decision to take it easy, get things organised and maybe go for a quick lift assisted blast of something local later on in the day. After a chat with John, the hostel owner, we discovered the where abouts of some single-track created by local mountain bikers. It sounded good from his description, so we decided to try and find it and maybe give it a go if it looked any good.

Turns out that the trail was absolutely amazing, and was completely different to anything I have ever ridden. The trail head gave nothing away; it was tucked off the side of the main road, easily missed if you didn’t know about it. Once over the brow of the hill the trail swooped through wooded single track before sending you out into the open and onto a series of strange shaped rock slabs. Each slab was different, but the all flowed really well and could be ridden much faster than expected. It was a real rush and kept surprising us with more fun features, including some mad off-camber rock traverses. The most fun feature without a doubt was the double humped rock that rode like you were on a ‘big-dipper’.

This trail dropped us conveniently onto the road to the top of La Mesa ready for our next uplift. You’d think being a wet day all this rock would get treacherous, but it’s the complete opposite, the rock remains as grippy as ever. La Mesa descent was even superb the second time around, knowing when the dodgier bits were coming was great and meant the whole thing flowed much better. Maybe the fact it was my first day out on the Kona had a part to play. The Kona was absolutely superb and took no time at all to get used to. Within an hour I felt completely at home on it and could already see an improvement in my riding. I’ll let you know how I get on with it as time goes on.

Mijas Singletrack

We set out to ride and track log a route above a place called Mijas. It was yet another sunny, warm day and we were looking forward to getting some riding done. We arrived at Mijas and stopped for a Coffee before getting ready. The ride began by climbing on dirt track for a while before climbing/ pushing steeply on single track. Before long the single track levelled out and then began dropping. This is quite possibly the longest, uninterrupted piece of single track I’ve ever ridden. It flowed really well and undulated across the side of the hill for kilometre after kilometre. It traversed the hill taking you in to, and spitting you out of gullies, sometimes with steep awkward climbs out. One of which claimed Sue P., there were, thankfully, no serious injuries though. It was an amazing contrast too from La Mesa descent yesterday, not nearly so technical, but just as much fun.

The ride continued along dirt track to meet up with a ready made MTB loop. This couldn’t have been any different from the man-made trails you will find in the UK, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we were the first people to have ridden it this year. The trail itself was really good fun but a bit vague in places. To finish the ride was a piece of trail, appropriately named ‘Babies Head Revenge’, with huge rocks littered all the way down, it looked like a section of trail from Coed-y-Brenin, but was all completely natural.

After each section of trail I’m always convinced it’s the best riding I’ve ever done, that is until I ride the next piece. The riding is so varied; it keeps bringing up new challenges and new interesting features so it keeps you on your toes and makes it even more exciting.

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.

The Journey

With the van bulging with enough stuff between us to last a year let alone four weeks we were surely ready to hit the road. By 12 o’clock we were all set and headed off on the first leg of the journey; destination Dover and the ferry. It was a brilliant day, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. The trip was pretty painless and we cruised in to the ferry port with plenty of time to spare before our boat left. Feeling happy with ourselves to have made a start on the journey, little did we know that we had barley scraped the surface and that by the end we would be seeing motorway in our sleep.

After the crossing to France, we drove another hour and then parked up for the night. The trip through France was pretty straight-forward, except for Paris. It could have quite easily been like driving dodgems through a maze, whilst trying to catch what is written on every road sign. It was pretty hectic to say the least. We made as far as the Pyrenees and my Dad’s place where we held up for the night. There was plenty of snow at my ol’ man’s which was a huge contrast from the weather we’d had on the journey so far.

This morning we set off deciding to cross into Spain at the nearest crossing to my Dad’s. This was probably not the best idea ever as it really slowed the whole journey down. Instead of cruising along the motorway, we were reduced to crawling pace as we creeped our way over snowy, mountain passes. Slowly the scenery changed from huge white, mountains to dry and dusty orange and lemon orchards, as we made our way deeper into Spain. We drove through the day, getting pretty lost around Madrid, but finally arriving near El Chorro at about 2am, knackered and happy never to see another motorway again. After finding a nice quiet spot we got our heads down for the night.