It's been a quiet couple of years on the international touring front, what with the dreaded 'rona and domestic rearrangements making things tricky. Well now things have settled down and travel to the continent should be a lot easier again (fingers crossed) my minds turning towards another trip.

I'll probably go late Spring/early Summer, and given (i) my antipathy to packing up the bike for flights and (ii) the proximity of the great Brittany Ferry route from Plymouth to Spain, I was thinking of a jaunt through "Green Spain", i.e. the coastal and mountainous stretch of northern Spain where, despite the rhyme, the rain mainly is. Ferry to Santander/Bilboa, and while transport back is a little sketchier (though I have thoughts), it looks really attractive - mountainous, quiet, some interesting history and possibly interactions with the Camino. Might even make it beyond Santiago and into the Duoro region of Portugal.

Any tips or recommendation in this part of the world? Good roads/trails for riding? How are the mountains around Asturias/Picos de Europa? Anywhere to avoid? I've never really explored the region (other than passing through Santander for the ferry - which is fairly pleasant place in itself).

Anyone tried taking bikes on Spanish trains? I gather that the Cantabrian railway service FEVE has been absorbed into RENFE, and it looks like there are serious line closures all over the north of the country (the Costa Verde coastal line from Ferrol to Santander now only serves luxury trains taking 6 days for €4000!). Nevertheless, it seems possible to get from Valladolid, say, to Santander by regionale train alone which are apparently fine to take undismantled bikes on for a small fee.

I do have another cunning plan to get back without flying - hire a car and stick the bike in the back. Hiring cars and driving them across the Spanish-Portuguese border then dropping them off is prohibitively expensive - >€500-1000 a day! But if you cross the border by bike, to do a one-way drop-off comes down to ~€50. So maybe I'll not bother monkeying around with the trains anyway...

(my back's still a bit dodgy and the closest I've come to injuring myself on tour has been lugging fully loaded bikes between train platforms in a hurry...)

Cheers! Jon

...and I manage to misspell the word "touring" in the title. An auspicious start!

Jon,

Hopefully the Andersons' will chime in here shortly, but check their journals for several Spain tours. We are also planning on Spain/Portugal for 2023 (tickets are purchased!). They have answered numerous questions about all forms of European travel. This will be our first tour overseas.

We looked at one way car rental, due to my eight foot long recumbent. Prices seemed reasonable for a one way, self drive rental. In the USA, one way rentals are typically much more expensive. 

We are starting in Madrid and making a rough square. This is our working route, changes possible. 

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/41849024 

Perhaps we will be in the same place at the same time?

When is Madrid happening? I will be there April 26 and leaving the 28th. Is a CB meet-up in Madrid possible?

Heck. We are months apart. We aren't arriving until June. It will be up to you to write a journal we can follow - don't forget the details!

The journal is up, though a mere fledgling at the moment. I will be heading north to p8ck up the Duero then Douro.

Thanks Kelly and Brent - that's cool, I had no idea there was such a convergence of CBers in that corner of Iberia this summer.

Timing wise I'm totally in the air at the moment. The ferries don't start running until April, but after that I don't really have any restrictions other than finding a window at work (and not colliding with any non-bike holidays - it's a hard knock life). Well, I guess I have an eye on the seasonal weather, but it seems like near the coast at least it doesn't get too sweltering in high summer.

That looks like a really interesting route, thanks. I probably won't be heading so far towards Madrid, but other than that the route through the mountains and towards Santiago looks great, and highly intrigued by the Duoro. I've been checking out potential Camino route and their suitability for cycling - to my surprise they all look pretty viable, the main caveat seems to be that they're too popular and might be crowded. Maybe the coastal route or the Camino Primitivo? I guess Santiago is a bit of a magnet though, it's hard to go to Galicia and say you've not been. 

Ah, yeah the recumbent on the train might be a bit of a stretch!

I have  cycled and walked the Camino and quite liked it. I have cycled the Douro and was blown away by its beauty.

I wish I had more to chip in with here, but we have pretty limited experience in this part of Spain.  On the Basque side we haven’t been west of Bilbao, which we’ve been to twice now and love.  And from the northwest we’ve biked around Santiago and into northern Portugal, but no further east in Galicia.

What we can say though is that it’s bound to be an exceptional tour if you haven’t biked in Spain before.  It’s one of our favorite countries, and amazingly diverse.  We’ve yet to come to a part of it that wasn’t full of exceptional interest.  And in fact we’re going back again this year - a ride down through the center from Bilbao to Malaga - but not until Autumn.

Also, we don’t have any first hand knowledge of the trains other than the Cercanías, the urban commuter networks which are vey bike friendly and a good option if you’re trying to get out of a major urban center (Bilbao has one, por ejemplo) without biking across it.  We have taken the bus with our bikes several times though and found them economical and convenient.

Good luck, and have a great tour!  Can’t wait to hear about it.

Hi Scott! Yeah, it's an region that - despite having been on non-biking trips through Spain three times as an adult (and several times being driven as a kid to and from the ferryport in Santander) I don't know at all. And I've never biked in Spain at all!

But on other visits I can really see its promise - and there's so much to recommend it anyway (hardly have to mention the food, the landscape, the culture and history, the tapas, the food ... what's not to like). Diverse seems to be right - I remember driving through Almeria and appreciating it was actually proper desert (we don't get to see much of this in Europe!). Looks like Green Spain couldn't be more different, in some of the photos it could be Austria.

Thanks for the train tips, yep I find it fairly amazing coming from the UK that the commuter Cercanías are so bike friendly (and the buses - that's unthinkable here!). I definitely don't mind travelling slowly by Regionale train if I need to ... it's more if there's a lot of administrative faff (my Spanish is ... not great) or lugging around stations.

Cheers! And all the best for your tour down through the centre - can't wait to read about it!