I wasn’t able to fit my bike into the car when we moved back to Spain, so I had to bring it on the plane on my way back after Christmas. One of the rules for packaging up the bike is removing the air from the tyres. Once unpacked, I discovered that my bike pump was broken. Visiting my local bike shop to get a new one I took the opportunity to find out about good routes in the area. Not only did they point me to the excellent www.wikiloc.com, but let me know about the monthly excursions they put on.

February’s excursion was to Montsant in Tarragona for which I joined 10 others. The start of the ride was a killer, with a long steep climb (guess who was last to the top). Well worth it though, once we reached the 1148 meter peak.

As you can tell, we were blessed with great weather weather and stunning views of the national park with its caves, rock formations, overhangs and reservoir.

The route was a mix or open rocky ridges and technical step downhill sections finished by a steady climb on a gravel road. Great fun minus the final climb.

There were a lot of sections that weren’t ridable, so we had to carry the bikes quite a lot. Not helped by the fact my bike was the heaviest of the lot…

On the final climb really I really suffered. Although we covered less than 40km, we were out for the whole day and climbed a cumulative 1200m, not to mention the walking and lifting of the bikes. Once again I was at the back. Quite clearly, I need to get fit.

Thanks to all at Bici Escapa for an excellent day out.

I’ll post the route here once I get copy of the GPS track from the guys at the shop.
Meanwhile, check out the Bici Escapa Photo Gallery