Peregrinos -
Come the end of September it will be time for us (the Skedaddle Spain team) to be loading the bikes on the trailer for the last time and take our annual pilgrimage south with a head full of amazing memories from a summer blazing the trails of the majestic Picos de Europa in Northern Spain - Check out the photos from the August Top Trails trip - Click Here
It’s a long journey (well, it is for the poor soul driving the landy!) heading south through the stark beauty of Spain’s interior, burnt to a crisp after the harsh, scorching summer.
We’ll be aiming for Andalusia, the ‘home’ of Skedaddle Spain in the Autumn, when the colours of the vast forests delight us, the heady fragrance of aromatic herbs fill the air as they seek out moisture after the drought and trails stay crisp and dry and skies startling blue. Come Winter, we’re licking our chops as the colour seeps back into the land and we’re heading out on rides still wearing shorts and t-shirts, temperatures often creeping over 20 degrees (check out our New Year Winter Warmer).
Andalusia enjoys a lengthy spring; the first signs beginning in late January when the almond blossom renders mountainside a delicious pink and white, while Britain is enduring its blanket of eternal grey (sorry, lasting memories of Huddersfield). Pastures and meadows become a dense wash of the most incredible colour imaginable. Each year i’m so amazed at the beauty of this ‘flower show’ i’m sure it improves year on year!
The people of this vast southern province are vibrant, fiesta loving and proud. It’s a place immersed in flamenco culture and still a very simple mountain community existence where farming methods have remained unchanged for centuries. The legacy of a long and industrious Moorish occupation left behind great Islamic architecture, not only in the cities with the ‘big draw’ buildings like the Alhambra but also the precipitous terraced mountainsides fed with irrigation channels making it possible even today for farmers to cultivate this rugged mountainous land.
More than half of all environmentally protected land in Spain is in Andalusia and over half of Andalusia is mountainous. This has helps save vast tracks of wilderness and varied mountainous terrain from the immense mass of the Sierra Nevada , the roof of mainland Spain (Mulhacen, 3478m) or the dramatic beauty of the karstic peaks of Grazalema, the stark grandeur of the Sierra de la Nieves and the vast forests of the Alcornocales that abruptly ends at the magnificent Straits of Gibraltar Natural Park and the alluring town of Tarifa, perched at the very end of Europe. The key ingredient is SPACE, space that we run our trips in, on wilderness trails with hardly another biker.
These mountain areas are littered with pretty, white-washed villages, largely unchanged since their Moorish beginnings, who’s people still eek out a tough existence on smallholdings, shepherding or cottage industries creating succulent meats, cheeses and other produce that on our trips is homecooked and served to hungry bikers. The villages house an ever increasing range of fantastic accommodation , our groups stay in caves, organic farms, yurts, grand palatial homes, thatched beach-side houses, mountain refuges’ and ancient Berber houses to name but a few. It’s been often commented that we don’t promote our trips enough through the quality of the accommodation!
So as the birds begin to migrate south and over the Straits of Gibraltar to Africa we’ll be following, but unlike the birds we are pilgrims seeking our ‘Mecca’. So Pereginos y Peregrinas if you fancy sharing a piece with us we’ll see you in Andalusia.
And finally, I nearly forgot; the biking here is superb! So whether you are a mountain biker, roadie or leisure cyclist we’ve got an array of guided and self guided trips awaiting your wheels!!
ps : If you fancy checking out some of the wonderful road cycling in the South then the Vuelta de Espana is happening here right now!!
Here’s the Holiday Details :
Skedaddle Mountain Bike Holidays in Southern Spain - Click Here
Skedaddle Leisure Cycling Holidays in Southern Spain - Click Here
Skedaddle Road Cycling Holidays in Southern Spain - Click Here
This superb desert biking adventure focuses on the deep south of Morocco, a land of big skies and stark mountain ranges where mud-brick kasbahs appear to rise up out of the desert, sitting in tranquil palm oases and framed by dramatic backdrops of snowcapped mountains. We ride along Morocco’s dirt roads, taking us from Marrakech to the Tichka Pass, the highest in the High Atlas, and then southward, descending along the Draa Valley to the fringes of the Sahara Desert.
