Starting a page for one of the largest mountain ranges in Europe is not evident and might sound ambitious. However, my aim is not to describe the whole Pyrenees from the biking point of view all at once, this is just a start and an attempt to give few main lines. The project is open to anyone who feels like joining in (Diego ?).

My own experience of cycling in the Pyrenees is very limited, just a couple of rides, but I have walked them extensively. During some hikes involving long approaches, I have noticed on many occasions places that would make fine bicycle rides, and, identically, I happened to drive by car many forestry tracks to get to trailheads, fine biking places too.

My aim is to inventory them in this page and establish a sort of list, instead of being able to post, for now at least, proper trail pages.

The Pyrenees ("Pyrénées" in French, "Pirineo" in Spanish) are a range which stretches over 400km from the Atlantic, West to the Mediterranean, East, separating on most of its length Spain with France, and following most of the water-divide line.

To tell an important detail from the start, we must differenciate the "Low Pyrenees" from the "High Pyrenees". The high Pyrenees are not a suitable place for mountain biking, except for flat rides on the roads in the bottom of the valleys.
The cycleable places tend to be rather on the "Low Pyrenees", the forehills, North on the French piedmont as well as South in the Spanish sierras. The hills of the Basque Country, West, as well as those in the Catalunyan East end are good places as well. In short, the biking stops where tops start exceeding 2000m, where it gives places to the the hiking terrain.

Apart from the well-known weather contrast that differenciates the green and humid French mountainside, similar in many ways to the Alps, with the dry and sunny Spanish side with its meridional weather and bush-like vegetation, another capital difference is to be mentionned for the cycling activity.

France always was a healthy country with a rich infrastructure, but Spain has gone out of a dictature in the 70's, and until a still recent past, the regions near the Pyrenees were extremely poor. This results into a lack of infrastructure, which is mainly translated, for the cycler, by the lack of asphalted roads.
While every French village is served by a road, and beautiful passes link each valley (making all the fame of some of the stages of the Tour de France), the same kind of network tends to be made of forestry tracks in Spain, mainly suitable for land rovers, or small cars high on wheels. A windfall for mountain bikers !
To summarize, the French Pyrenees tend to be for those who practise race-bike, road-bike, and cyclotouring, while Spanish Pyrenees tends to be for mountain bikers and those who seek adventure (however with exceptions on each side...)

Getting There

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Red Tape

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External Links

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Camping

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