Three friends. A window of good weather. An 800km bikepacking route through incredible scenery. These sound like the ingredients for a dream #travelgravel opportunity. Mark Livesey persuaded his good friends Tony & Graham to join him on a bikepacking adventure across the north of Spain back in October and put together this great story and a brilliant video. 

As I look across the open expanse of rolling country around me, I realise how far off the beaten track we are. And just as that thought enters my head, I hear a loud noise from my rear wheel, quickly followed by an anxious shout from behind 

“Mark. Stop! You have something in your wheel”.

I hit the brakes and dismount expecting to see a small insignificant branch. Instead, I am confronted by a long piece of metal rebar wrapped around the spokes and disc brake. Another pedal stroke and I would have snapped at least one spoke. If I had been riding at the back, I am not sure I would have been so lucky.

After some tense moments we manage to untangle the mess, but it was only after Tony checked the wheel that we breathed a collective sigh of relief. The realisation of what could have been if the wheel was left unrideable was sobering. We were so isolated. 

The wilderness now feels even more committing, but I am comforted knowing that with nearly 100 years total military experience between us (we are all retired now), we can get ourselves out of most scrapes. And I remind myself that this is what we were seeking. We like the controlled risk. We like to feel as if we are on a real adventure. 

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m hamming it up a bit. I mean, we are ‘only’ in Spain after all. And until I started bikepacking in this enormous country, I too thought of Spain in the context of packed beaches and quaint white buildings bordering an azure sea. But I have come to realise that Spain is huge and has a lot of sparsely populated, remote rural areas which I am fast learning are a gravel cyclists’ dream. 

For this trip, myself and my two friends, Tony and Graham, have met up in Bilbao near the Atlantic North coast to ride to Barcelona on the Mediterranean. With 800 km between us and our destination and just 7 days to get there, we have purposefully chosen a route that we knew would be quite testing.

We wanted as much as possible of the route to be off road and in the end about 90% of it was. I think if I hadn’t done previous bikepacking trips in Spain I would have been less confident about creating a generic gravel route on Komoot and just setting off.  But Spain is remarkably consistent in delivering astonishingly good gravel and stunning wilderness. Of the 800km, we ended up doing hike-a-bike only twice for short sections of around 200m. 

Spain also has a long window of good consistent weather conditions meaning you can trust the forecast and pack light. We were there in October and were rough camping for most nights with a couple of B&B nights thrown in to allow us to get some admin done [Ed – laundry/chores]. We were able to ride with around 20kg each (including the bikes). Each of us was on a different bike set up for gravel, but as Tony (a professional bike mechanic) said to me, it is not necessarily about the bike itself. He stresses that it is the condition of the bike that is the important thing. If you are heading out into the wilderness of Spain there will be stretches where you are 100s of kms from the nearest bike shop. Knowing and trusting your kit is essential.

As if to remind us of how isolated we were, on the third morning we broke camp and headed off to the nearest village for breakfast before starting our 120km for that day. However, we were disappointed to find that the nearest “village” was just a group of houses with no visible sign of life. We kept riding. But the next village was the same. We stopped to gather our thoughts and look at Komoot. The next section of the ride was around 40km through a national park with no dwellings at all. We ate some energy bars, grinned at each other and got pedalling - joking that we had a few extra kilos to lose between us anyway. It was 60km of riding that day before we came across an open cafe with hot food and drinks. By that stage the boys were starting to fade a little. 

While I have a life that allows me to ride my bike a lot, Tony was more time-starved and less fit having recently finished a very busy job. And it is easy to forget, Graham is in his 60s. While he’s one of the fittest, most consistent riders I know, riding without fuel for three hours is not a great idea at any age.

We tucked in to the staple Spanish cafe food of patatas bravas, Spanish omelette and ham and cheese baguettes. Stung by the experience, we enjoyed a long stop and packed food to take with us for the rest of the day and that night if we couldn’t find anything for dinner. In fact, over the next few days, finding food became a comical theme and we often ended up fasting for longer than we wanted. This did not affect our experience one bit as the riding was exhilarating and without meaning to, we would just fall into hours of enjoyment on the bikes, with food a distant thought until it was too late. 

So, we tried to plan a bit better around the major towns and villages on the route. They were a welcome break, and without exception each time we walked into a cafe we were greeted with smiles and warmth. My basic Spanish got us a long way. Unlike in other parts of Europe, the Spanish love it if you try even a little of the local lingo. These interactions were such a pleasure and sitting in the pretty village squares drenched in October sunshine while eating and laughing together are memories I will carry with me forever. 

As old friends, we have known each other for years and quickly resorted to our military banter and the jokes we have told (and heard) a million times. It is perhaps testament to the depth of our friendship that when we came across a beautiful lake, hours from anywhere, we all stripped naked and jumped in for a swim!! The long days spent together gave us the opportunity to share stories, reminisce and enjoy plenty of laughs. I can honestly say that there were no “ups and downs” other than geographical. It was a near-perfect mix of adventure, unknown outcomes and controlled risks to keep us focussed and engaged.

The wide-open spaces and simplicity of thinking only about riding quickly gives your mind room to unwind. Tony had arrived on the trip after recently retiring from 35 years in the Army and he was clearly ready to use this adventure as a way of decompressing. He’d been struggling with quality sleep for years prior to the trip, but after just two days he was sleeping well and even dreaming again (despite being in a tent!). He later described the trip as much needed form of therapy. 

I think that is one of my favourite things about bikepacking. Despite sometimes being exhausting, it is incredibly refreshing and I always return physically tired but invigorated by the experience. I know as we arrived in Barcelona all of us had mixed emotions about the journey coming to an end. We were glad to finish what had been a really challenging ride. But we also had become absorbed in the daily routine and rhythm of riding and didn’t want it to end. Despite feeling as if we had ridden an incredibly long way, when you look at the small section of Spain that we had ridden across, it is clear just how much more there is to offer across the rest of the country. 

Needless to say, we have already started planning for another trip next year.