Chocolate Log

Ciclo Montana Espana have been running Mountainbiking holidays in the Sierra Nevada mountains since about 1821, so it's fair to say they know their Jamon.

I'd booked this trip a while back and in the weeks before I suddenly doubted whether I'd really enjoy it. Was it really for me? I've been doing lots more freeriding lately and a whole week without jumps, drops, gaps and stuff …

But shit man; it was going to be pissing it down in the UK and I was going to be in the most beautiful parts of Spain, bathed in sunshine and lording it up on killer singletrack, rock strewn switchbacks, exposed cliff-hugging off-camber rocky twist fests and gullys, techy rockfields, steeps and god knows what else.

Show me to the plane, Stelios, show me the fucking plane*!

Getting Going

Myself, Rob, Phil and Ian were hooked up with 3 other lads from the Bristol MTB Club - Martin, Si & Phil, all of whom were only out for 3 days.

Here we are, all together on Day 2. Say Cheese :

I was out injured on Day 1, resting up a niggling knee injury.

Luckily for me Mark, the guide, sorted everyone else out a nice 3 hour climb to start the proceedings, and a few more throughout the day to break people in. Strangely they still all came back smiling and mumbling about sweet singletrack and switchbacks to die for [on?].

Ciclo Montana Espana

This lot really know how to sort out a biking holiday. Mark and Jackie run the gaff - and while Jackie does ride, she also sorts out some of the nicest home cooked munch you will ever find on an MTB trip. You need a lot of feeding to knock out the big climbs, and she makes sure you don't go wanting!

The gaff is a homely affair, there's a pool, but it was out of service when we went, and it's fresh water so it's FUCKING FREEZING even when it is full. Rather you than me, I'll stick to the shower, ta.

There's room for seven or eight in the apartment above Mark & Jackie's, and it's pretty well kitted out with DVD player, a few Sky channels - we watched 234 Freestyle Motocross backflips over the course of the week.

It's Mark's baby, the man just loves his riding. He's got a good knack of knowing how far you can really go, and coming up with seemingly endless wicked technical singletrack trails to test you right to your limit. As you'd expect, he'll cane most mortals up the hills, and he's ultra smooth and fast on the descents too - and you know he's chilling because he just can't afford to fall off!

The Trails

The pics tell the story of the trails better than I can, but I will say that having a full week to blast out techy descent after techy descent does some good shit for your trail riding skills.

One trail in particular did it for me, it was called Lanjaron 70 - which is roughly how many switchbacks are on it. And it's bumpy as hell, rocky, fast, technical and ragged all the way down for about half an hour. Just before the end you get the most incredible view over a gorge and although it's a lovely bit of singletrack, I eased off for all of four seconds to appreciated it before hitting the last section like a man possessed. Awesome trail, and one that should definitely be a designated fork/shock test track!

Ian even found a large rock drop-off, hidden away in the woods near a peaceful and usually deserted picnic site. We cleared a few rocks from the landing and that was that - a sweet 6fter to tranny:

On the very last descent of the trip, Phil pulled out all the stops and pinned a series of switchbacks that were so steep and so loose that no-one else from our group could clean. That's not to mention that if you overran any of them, you were looking at around a 6ft drop straight down to the next one. When you're perched on a bike angled at about 45 degrees, that looks pretty bloody far away!

This is the trail, one of the easier bits (and me messing it right up):

Granada

A new addition to the repertoire is a series of rides around Granada including a tough day's XC followed straight up by a night streetride around this historic, and damn laid back Spanish city.

We rode a trail called The Holy Grail, which is just incredible. It skirts around a huge valley with some big exposure to one side almost all the way around, and offering up some of the sweetest sections of technical singletrack, with some loose switchbacks as you come over a crest and see the valley floor stretching away from you that you really do not want to get wrong!

It's incredible, but probably not if you suffer from serious vertigo. I confess, I was mincing a lot of it. It shat me right up. Everyone else seemed to be up for the crack, Phil even went over the bars trying an off camber rocky section and we all held our breath to see if he'd flip into oblivion… but he just hit the deck like a sack of spuds. Spuds saved by Dainese knee and elbow pads, that is.

The finale to the trail seems to go through about 5 countries in a mile or two of trails - from dusty whooping lines, to slickrock, to hardpack singletrack, and grass lined trails. It's an odd place out here.

Barely had we got back to the van and steamed it to the Hostal, we were out again, meeting Antonio The Local for a streetride.

As no stranger to the Chocolate Foot London streetrides that have been going on over the past year or so, I was looking forward to it, although I think I was the only one. Ian and Rob were both fearing the cobbled steps onslaught we'd been warned about. This is the same Ian who'd ridden the 6ft rock slab and pretty much blasted down every trail throughout the whole week on his Bullet with 150mm Z1 Freerides on…

It turned out to be a pretty atmospheric affair - we watched the sun set over the city, and the lights of the Alhambra (a big old castle thing full of monks or something) coming up. As for the riding, it really was all about steps. Fucking millions of them, up, down, down some more, then around and about. There were so many, it rattled my main pivot bolt loose (see pic above).

Local terrorist hippies treated us to their mobile disco complete with bongo drummers and handheld explosives, while we supped several hard-earned and very tasty Alhambra Especiales in a streetside bar.

A pretty damn fine day's riding.

Mechanicals

The place really takes it's toll on your bike. The embedded rocks on many of the trails - designed to give the mules traction on their way up the hills - will test the reliability and performance of any fork or shock, and the endless pounding of rocks and dust will quickly dispose of sub-standard parts. It's hard to know where to compromise, but you do need a bike that goes uphill as well as down, so it's a tough call. Turner 5-spot's seemed to be the weapon of choice this year, although Ian was still annoyingly fast uphill on his Bullit with DH rims, invalidating and entire wing of my excuse library in one fell swoop. Bastard.

The other nemesis are the thorns; anywhere this dry is going to have cacti, and a billion other spiky plants that don't want just any old fucker nicking their hard earned water. The Stan's No-Tubes posse lead the way with the failures at the start, but even by the next morning as the slowies had set in on the standard tubed tyres it was pretty clear the latex using boys were going to win the week.

Other failures included a Hope brake pissing it's fluid out, and Si's Maverick DUCs pissing their oil out (onto the brake caliper handily enough). Oh, and Rob's elbow pretty much seized solid up his return to the UK. Get well soon fella.

In Short

I'll be going back for more, no doubt about that. The place is awesome, the people, the scenery, the food, and the riding is just a different class of XC. Yeah, you have to spin up some massive climbs - it's no DH paradise - but the descents bring out the big wide grins that signify truly fun trails.

Oh, and it's about 75p for a massive bottle of San Miguel.