My first attempt at writing for the office intranet site in 2006. Unedited but now photo-rich.
Riding over peaches, falling over rocks
Mountain biking in Spain
Some time ago I picked up a book called ‘Driving Over
Lemons’ written by Chris Stewart, a sheep shearing Englishman who’d decided to
move to a region of Southern Spain called La Alpujarra that includes the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. I was somewhat taken with the book and thought that I’d like
to visit the region. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to take my
mountain bike abroad for a week, a small advert in a magazine caught my eye for
a company called Switchbacks operating in La Alpujarra. Several e-mails later I
was booked for a week of riding with Mike, a laid back Canadian, former
professional downhill mountain bike racer, I should have paid more attention to
his former occupation...
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| View from my window |
I arrived in Granada late on Saturday and was met by Mike
for the 70-minute drive to Bubion. Sunday dawned bright, sunny and hot. Looking
out the window I soon realised just how high we were; at 1600m above sea level
Bubion sits just below the winter snow line. Greeted at 10am by Robin, our
guide for the day, we ran through introductions, sized up each others equipment
(bikes!)
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| Day 1, hello. |
and left, riding through the steep, narrow village streets up to the mountain road, each of us concentrating on riding on the right, avoiding the numerous small yappy dogs and copious amounts of windfall fruit on the way. Everyone we saw greeted us with a hearty ‘Hola!’ and the occasional bit of Spanish that roughly translated to ‘look, more daft English men on bikes’.
Leaving the village below us we wound our way up and up,
past the end of the surfaced road onto gravel tracks. The higher we climbed the
better the view, a very good counter to the gradient. Eventually we re-grouped
at a trailhead and padded up;
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| A slimmer, padded me. |
this was something new to me, wearing arm and leg
armour to protect you from the effects of a fall and, as we quickly found out,
from the attention of the undergrowth, prickly plants were everywhere.
Following Robin’s advice we dropped our saddles and tentatively started down a
narrow track. This was at various points steep, rocky, dusty, smooth, fast,
slow and always exhilarating. We quickly picked up speed as we shot through
rock gardens, around bermed corners and through dry stream beds, occasionally
falling off and all too soon stopping to re-group at the next village, our
grins could be seen on Google Earth and this was just the start! The morning
progressed in the same vein, getting slightly harder as we descended. Lunchtime
saw us stop at a small bar, coffee and cold drinks all round with some tapas,
this is how a ride should go…But we’d lost all the altitude we’d worked hard to
gain and what comes down must at some point go up. In this case a 90-minute
climb called ‘desolation’ beckoned but at least it was followed by some fast
flowing singletrack alongside a steep valley. Happily all single tracks in the
Alpujarra seems to lead to a bar! Day one over, I’d survived, the food was good
and the beer was cold.
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| Beer! |
Day two dawned with a new guide, Tony. While Robin was on a
bike much like everyone else’s, Tony turned up on an oversized BMX / jump bike.
Oh dear…. but he’d brought transport.
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| Aim at the man in red. |
Driven up the mountain to a new trail we
all rode things we’d never have ridden before and were very glad Tony was a
‘strong lad’- it helps a lot when someone can catch you when (not if) you fall.
Collapsing in a village square at lunchtime greedily drinking spring water
under the baking midday sun we reflected on what we’d learnt, how good the
trails were and wondering what else they had in stall for us. More tough tracks
followed ending at, you guessed it, a bar!
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| Tony playing catch. |
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| Alpujarran Bike Park |
Tuesday, our first ‘big ride’ and today we were with head
honcho Mike. After sticking the bikes to the top of ‘The Tank’, a battered old
4x4, we were off high up the mountain. After unloading and a short fire road
climb to warm us up, we headed up the valley on some frankly beautiful trails,
picking our way through boulders and clumps of alpine plants, occasionally
splashing through streams fed from springs above us.
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| Warm up ride. |
We were all guilty of falling off when we should have been
looking at something other than the view. Sat at the head of the valley looking
towards the Mediterranean Sea on a beautiful sunny day, it just couldn’t have
been any better. But this ride had been easy so far and we knew that Mike had
something in store for us, the drop back to Orgiva was challenging to say the
least; I tested my body armour several times on the way down. No one cleared
this trail without falling. At the end of the day, again in a bar, we were all
reflecting on what was an ‘epic’ in every sense, I was drained. Thankfully
Wednesday was a rest day.
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| Perfect singletrack |
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| It's not a sexy sport. |
Thursday was a day for recovering some confidence,
concentrating on fun rather than exertion. The trails were damp and sticky
giving huge amounts of grip and catching us all out after the slippery dust of
the previous rides but we all ended up grinning again. Phew. At the end of the
day Mike warned us that Friday was going to be a big day, he wasn’t kidding.
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| Better than the Alps? |
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| Climbing |
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| Climbing |
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| Climbing |
No time was wasted at the top, it was cold up there and with
armour on and saddles dropped we shot down a snowy scree slope and into fields
of boulders where the trail was only marked by the occasional tyre track. The
view was breathtaking and I used any excuse to stop to look at it, OK sometimes
I stopped on my backside rather than on the bike but it was that good.
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| After climbing ... fun! |
Within minutes I was shattered yet stringing together
combinations of corners that I’d never have tried just a week before. I was
cheering after each corner, much to the amusement of a pair of walkers heading
up towards me. Too late I saw the video camera, then the big rock cunningly
hidden amongst all the other big rocks, then the ground. Another rider caught
me as I sorted my self out, his face contorted with concentration as he slid
down the hill on a white-knuckle ride chanting ‘speed is my friend’ quietly to
himself. Speed was my friend as I passed him on the next straight. Quite simply
it was the best bit of riding I’ve ever done.
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| Happy Riders. |
Would I do it again? I’d go tomorrow but I’ll have to wait
until next year.
