Winter Cycling in Andalusia, Spain

As I was the one who started this thread by inquiring about winter cycling in Andalucía, I thought I would add a last post to say we went in early January and returned home in early March, cycled in Andalucía the entire time from place to place with a stay of some days in Malaga at either end of our stay in Spain (we flew in and out of Malaga from Vancouver BC Canada with a connection in Paris - with Condor Air - excellent flight times).

It was fantastic cycling for the most part and the weather was perfect for it. Little rain, no wind, cool mornings and evenings but mostly sunny warm days. Amazed we did not see more cycle tourists - only ran into one other couple.

After some days of terrific day cycles along the coast in either direction out of Malaga, we took the train to Cádiz from Malaga to begin our cycle and cycled almost to Granada - about 900km in total. We took a bus with our bikes the last short leg to Granada and then back to Malaga.

We had to figure out our routes in some areas on a day to day basis but for the most part we were on quiet rural roads and some Santiago de Compostela trails but generally found them not such great surfaces for our touring bikes. Great bike routes leading into some even very small towns but connections between places are not all that well established or signed - however we found wonderful rail trail routes - in particular the Olive Oil Route. If you cycle anywhere in Spain cycle that route. Flat and absolutely spectacular scenery with small towns along the way.

We had no trouble booking accommodation a day or two in advance when we knew where we would be overnighting and found prices VERY reasonable for everything. Rarely paid more than 100€ a night for very nice accommodation and as little as 33€. Food and drink also very reasonable.

Loved the culture and found people very welcoming - and concerned about us. What were two 70+ years olds doing out on our bikes in the plains of Spain??? Having so much fun that’s what! If anyone is interested in the blog I wrote for the entire trip, I can send the link.

We are headed back to Spain and Portugal for another 9 week cycle this coming January. Can’t wait!

That sounds absolutely lovely. Thanks for coming back and telling us a bit about it!

I just read through some of your blog entries - very much makes me want to go back to that part of the world to explore it some more. Lovely photos, too!

I was a little bit disappointed not to see the complete bike route you took on the maps here; would help put some of the blog entries about to-me unknown places into context.

Also speaking of maps, as I was reading about your trouble with google maps for determining good bike routes, try komoot.com as an alternative. They specialize in hiking and biking routes, based on openstreetmap. Not certain how good the coverage is in Spain, but at the very least good to have handy as an alternative option to google, and quite probably far superior. You can probably test usefully beforehand by looking up some routes you remember from your last trip.

[ Edit: Edited on 16 Nov 2024, 11:01 GMT by Sander ]

Yes, we know about komoot and have used it. We didn’t find it much better for navigating as it seems to sometimes suggest routes that don’t make any sense. But it is another option.

Regarding the map on Travellerspoint. I have never been able to use it successfully when writing my blogs. I use a iPad when travelling. I will have to try again. But the instructions have never worked for me. Should be simple so not sure what I am doing wrong.

The other thing I really struggle with is posting videos. I find the seemingly instructions confusing.

Another improvement. I might suggest if I could that would be helpful for people like me who write fairly long blogs with a lot of photos, would be to have some indication that you have already posted a specific photo to a blog, like a tick mark by the photo in the upload list. The photos seem to upload in a random kind of order and I am scrolling up and down looking for particular ones and sometimes lose track of ones I have already put into a blog.

Having said that, I really like having Travellerspoint as my writing companion. Thanks!

I'm not a heavy komoot user, but what I tend to do is basically use it to explore alternative routes. E.g. when wanting to avoid busy roads, just drag waypoints onto small roads and see how much time that adds, what the surface material of the new path is, and what it does to the height profile.

I don't use mobile devices myself, so I can't help you there. Setting up the map might be a thing to do when you're back home, though, from a regular computer? Still, I'd expect it to just work on an iPad, too. If you try again, and still can't progress, maybe start a separate thread for that in the System Talk forum, where you list specifically what you click or write, and where you then get blocked from progressing further?

Cool idea about the photo inserting! I imagine it'd be pretty hard to implement properly, since adding a photo currently just adds the tag for it to the textarea, but I'm going to start a thread for that idea in the System Talk forum anyway, so Peter can consider adding it to his backlog.

Quoting Jenniferklm

Yes, we know about komoot and have used it. We didn’t find it much better for navigating as it seems to sometimes suggest routes that don’t make any sense. But it is another option. ...

Try https://cycle.travel. (I am nothing to do with the site beyond being a user).

I use this site for all my cycle touring in EU generally a couple of months each year through France, Germany, Belgium & Netherlands. I cycle tour camping (with full gear) unsupported (ie I'm carrying everything in panniers).

I don't plan beyond each evening deciding where to go tomorrow so each evening I go to cycle.travel and create a route for tomorrow and load it only my GPS so I get turn by turn directions.

But sometiomes if following a formal route eg La Velo Francette or Eurovelo 6, etc. then I do know my route and use the same site in effect to generate turn by turn directions for my GPS.

In reality because a lot of small rural villages campsites have rubbish or no Wi-Fi and no mobile data signal I might make provisional routes for a couple of days ahead so I wont be stuck if tonight's campsite has no internet available.

Through many months of cycle touring it has never given be a bad route for cycleing (it only does cycling).

Ian

Thanks for that. Not familar with cycle.travel. Always good to check out another route planner. We have followed the EuroVelo routes in a number of countries where there is good cycling infrastructure and lots of signage but it was not as well developed where we were in Spain last year.

Quoting Jenniferklm

Thanks for that. Not familar with cycle.travel. Always good to check out another route planner. We have followed the EuroVelo routes in a number of countries where there is good cycling infrastructure and lots of signage but it was not as well developed where we were in Spain last year.

I have a "test route", one I've never ridden but driven in a car and in the past I've put it into various supposed cycle route creation sites. Just Start and End points and see what the site creates.

Some create a route I can only call "certain death" - in the UK there is a, east-west major trunk road running to and from major container port in Felixstowe. It's a 3 lanes each way busy dual-carridgeway with loads of big lorries, 70 mph (110 km/h) speeds and no cycle track of any type yet at least one cycle route planner creates a route in part on this. OK, in reality on a bike you'd arrive at the slip road and not go onto the A14. But if a cycle route planner would create a route sending you onto this it raises major questions about other unsuitable roads it might send you along.

Certainly they don't all do this and as I commented above, cycle.travel doesn't and has never given me a bad cycle route. It does have some weird "quirks" sometimes probably because it uses a weighting system to select roads and in countries where data are avilable that includes traffic levels. On rare occasions it has routed me to turn off the good road I'm cycling onto a parallel "service road" for a few hundred meters then back onto the original road - almost certainly because the service road has less recorded traffic.

As for other such sites, you enter start and end and it creates a route. You can adjust that route by dragging the route or adding "Via Points". I hate cycling hills so tend to let it create the route then look at the altitude profile (a button to display it) and if to much/steep ascents I'll go to those "nasty" bits and add via points to try and reduce or detour round the hill. But it's a trade-off, how do you balance hills against distance where reducing climbs means a longer route - very personal choices.

There are also options to only use paved or only official cycle routes or any route. When on the recumbent I'll often select paved as sometimes unpaved, whilst fine on the bike can be a bit narrow on the recumbent (2 front, 1 rear wheel).

Also, I love turn by turn directions from my GPS. Some people love maps and navigating but for me I'd rather look at the scenery, wildlife and use the GPS to notify me as I approach each turn. "Each to their own" (as the expression goes).

Ian