San Nicolás is one of those small Romanesque-era parish churches that Ávila scatters around the walled city like punctuation. It is easy to walk past, and easy to love once you slow down: a granite building with plain walls, a modest tower and the kind of thick doorway that has been touched by centuries of hands. The interest here is not in grand art but in how closely the town is packed with faith. Within a few minutes' walk of each other are churches, convents, a cathedral that doubles as part of the wall and houses dedicated to a woman who reformed a religious order.
Ávila sits high, at around 1,130 metres, on a bare plateau under the Sierra de Gredos, which makes it the highest provincial capital in Spain. That altitude shapes everything. Winters are cold, with frost and the occasional dusting of snow; summer evenings are cool even after hot days, and the light on the granite is thin and clean. Bikers who come in summer find it a relief after the baking plains of the Meseta, though a wind-proof layer is a good idea even in July.
For a stop, the practical side is straightforward. The town has nearly fifty-seven thousand people, so fuel and food are plentiful, and the best place to leave a bike is outside the walls, near one of the gates, then walk in. Parking inside the old town is tight and the streets are cobbled. Eat the local beef, the chuletón de Ávila, a thick grilled cut, and finish with yemas, sweet egg-yolk confections named for Santa Teresa.
The ride that starts from here runs east toward Alcalá de Henares, the old university town of Cervantes, and that shift from a mountain town of stone to a brick and plaster university city makes a good day. Leave early, because the plateau roads are open and fast and the sun comes up with little to block it.