Montseny Natural Park

A 468 km loop

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Why this ride

Built for flow, views and useful stops rather than navigation busywork. 468 km round from la Marina de Port - plan on about 8 h 31 of riding. It goes by way of Cunit, near Vallfogona de Riucorb and near Sant Aniol de Finestres. Castelldefels is the high point. It tops out at about 850 m.

Roadbook

1. la Marina del Prat Vermell fuel

   This is not the Barcelona of postcards, and that is half its charm for a rider. La Marina del Prat Vermell sits on the flat ground between the southern slope of Montjuïc and the Zona Franca, the city's great industrial and logistics zone, with the port cranes on one side, warehouses and new apartment blocks on the other, and the motorway ring roads that make escape from the city fast. It is a neighbourhood in transition, long a pocket of workers' housing among factories, now slowly being rebuilt.

   Look up and the mountain tells a better story. Montjuïc's seaward face is covered by the Montjuïc cemetery, a vast terraced city of tombs and mausoleums that steps down toward the port, a strange and moving sight from the road below. Above it sits the castle, which held prisoners through several wars and was where the Catalan president Lluís Companys was executed in 1940. And for motorcyclists the mountain has its own legend: its park roads were home to the 24 Horas de Montjuïc endurance race for decades, and Grand Prix cars raced there until the 1970s. You can still ride the climb past the Olympic stadium and the gardens, with the city spread below.

   From here the rides head out fast. The Ronda Litoral and the B-10 connect to the motorways west and north, the A-2 and AP-7, which lead toward the Priorat and the Pyrenees. Traffic in and around Barcelona is dense and aggressive, scooters filter everywhere, and the ring roads have speed cameras and variable limits, so stay alert. Early on a weekend morning the industrial streets are nearly empty, which makes it one of the calmer places in the city to start a long day.

   The Priorat ride is a world away from these warehouses: dark slate hills, terraced vines and village churches inland from Tarragona, with some of the best small roads in Catalonia. The N-260 weekend climbs the length of the Pyrenees, a famously winding road with mountain towns and long views. Both deserve an early start and a full tank.

   There are fuel stations along the main avenues of the Zona Franca, and the neighbouring areas of la Marina de Port and Poble-sec have bars and cafes for a coffee and a bocadillo before you go. For a longer pause, take the bike up Montjuïc for a view across the port, which is especially good at sunset when you return.

2. Castelldefels pass

   Castelldefels is where Barcelona goes to the beach, and where the coast suddenly stops being flat. Behind the town's long sandy shore, the limestone hills of the Garraf massif rise abruptly, and just south of town the coast road begins its famous run along the cliffs to Sitges. A castle on a small hill, rebuilt many times, gives the town its name and keeps watch over the plain of the Llobregat delta to the north.

   The beach is the heart of the place, several kilometres of fine sand with chiringuitos, beach bars, and a lively crowd in summer, when kitesurfers fill the water on breezy days. Planes from Barcelona's airport pass low overhead as they climb out over the sea. Away from the beach, Castelldefels is a prosperous residential town, popular with the wealthy, including many of Barcelona's footballers.

   The road to know is the C-31 south toward Sitges. Once past the last houses, it clings to the cliffs above the sea, through tunnels and around a series of tight, blind bends, with views straight down into the coves and over the water. It is narrow and busy at weekends, with cyclists and cars, and police watch it closely, so ride it calmly and enjoy the scenery rather than chasing a time. Inland, small roads climb into the Garraf Natural Park, a dry landscape of scrub, limestone and pine where you can find a Tibetan Buddhist monastery among the hills, and the Modernista wine cellars at Garraf, designed by Gaudí, stand beside the coast road.

   The rides from here go in very different directions. The Priorat ride heads southwest along the coast and inland to the slate vineyards and mountain villages behind Tarragona, while the Cap de Creus ride runs northeast past Barcelona to the rocky peninsula near the French border, where the Pyrenees meet the sea and Dalí made his home at Portlligat.

   Castelldefels has everything: fuel, supermarkets, cafes and restaurants, many serving paella and seafood on the beachfront. Traffic on the C-32 motorway and around the town can be heavy in summer and at rush hour, and parking near the beach in July and August is a challenge, though bikes usually have more options. For the best of the coast road, go early in the morning, when the light is soft and the traffic is still asleep.

3. Cunit scenic

   Cunit is where the Garraf coast stops climbing and settles into long, flat sand. It is the first town of Tarragona province as you come down from Barcelona, sitting just past Cubelles and the mouth of the Foix, with Calafell running on to the south-west. The town is mostly holiday apartments and family streets, quiet in winter and crowded in August, and its great virtue at the end of a ride is a broad beach with a promenade where you can park, peel off the jacket and watch the sea go pewter in the evening.

   The reason people end a day here is usually what came before. If you ride down from Barcelona on the old C-31 rather than the motorway, you get the Costes del Garraf, the road that clings to the limestone cliffs between Castelldefels and Sitges in a long series of tight bends above the water. It is narrow, often busy with cyclists and camper vans, and the guardrails are not generous, so treat it as a sightseeing road rather than a racetrack. Beyond Sitges the coast flattens, the road gets duller and the town names start blurring together; Cunit is a good full stop.

   The surrounding district, the Baix Penedès, has more depth than its beaches suggest. A short ride inland brings you into the vineyards of the Penedès, the heartland of cava, with low ridges and stone farmhouses. Just along the coast at Sant Salvador, beside El Vendrell, the cellist Pau Casals had his seaside house, now a museum devoted to him. In Calafell there is a reconstructed Iberian citadel built on the site of a real settlement, one of the better places in Catalonia to get a sense of who lived on this coast before the Romans.

   Fuel, food and cafés are all in town, and on summer evenings the beach bars stay open late. Wind can be a factor: the afternoon sea breeze is pleasant, but a strong garbí from the south-west can make the exposed coast road gusty. Spring and autumn are the sweet seasons, when the Garraf is quieter, the light is clear and the sea is still warm enough for a swim to rinse off the day.

4. Photo stop near Vallfogona de Riucorb photo

   Vallfogona de Riucorb was once a spa village, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century its mineral waters drew visitors from Barcelona to a grand balneari and a few hotels. The glory days faded, but the village keeps the air of a place that knew better times, with old villas, a church on the hill and the little Riucorb river running through a quiet valley in the Conca de Barberà.

   The Conca de Barberà is a land of rolling hills, vineyards, almond groves and cereal fields, and it is home to one of the great treasures of Catalonia: the Ruta del Cister, a circuit linking three Cistercian monasteries, Poblet, Santes Creus and Vallbona de les Monges. Poblet, the largest, was the burial place of the kings of Aragon and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a vast complex of walls, cloisters and churches set against the Prades mountains. Vallbona, closer to Vallfogona, is a convent of nuns that has been continuously inhabited since the twelfth century.

   On the bike, things are a pleasure. The roads wind through the hills and valleys, with good surfaces and very little traffic. The landscape is open and varied, with long views over the vineyards and the mountains. In spring, the almond trees blossom in white and pink, and in autumn, the vineyards turn red and gold. Summer can be hot and dry, while winter brings fog and frost.

   Services in Vallfogona are thin, so plan the tank and lunch around Santa Coloma de Queralt, Tàrrega or Montblanc. Montblanc, the capital of the Conca, has impressive medieval walls and a lively old centre, perfect for lunch. The Montseny massif lies to the east, with its beech forests and winding roads.

5. Food stop near Sant Aniol de Finestres food

   Food at 354 km, roughly 7 hours into the riding.

6. Sant Martí Vell, on the way back swim

   Girona sits where the Onyar River meets the Ter, and its old town is one of the best-preserved in Spain. The town of Girona, about ten kilometres away, has nearly a hundred thousand people and is the main city of the northern part of Catalonia.

   The old quarter climbs a hill above the river, with a cathedral at the top that is approached by a monumental staircase of ninety steps, which was used as a location in a famous television fantasy series. Below it lies the Call, the medieval Jewish quarter, a tangle of lanes and stairways that was home to a thriving community until its expulsion in 1492. Along the Onyar, rows of houses painted in yellow, ochre and red hang over the water, and the iron footbridge that crosses it was built in a workshop run by Gustave Eiffel's company. A walk along the city walls gives a view over the red roofs to the mountains.

   The ride finishes or starts here, as part of a loop that runs from Barcelona to the Pyrenees and back. The roads east of Girona are flat and straight, with a good surface and light traffic, and in spring the fields are green and the poppies bloom. A short ride to the north leads to the Albera hills and the border, while to the east, the Empordà coast, with Begur, Pals and Cadaqués, is some of the finest in Spain. Autumn is the best season, when the heat has eased and the crowds have gone.

   Foixà has a castle and little else, and Bordils and Celrà are small towns with the basic services. Girona has all the fuel and food you could need, from supermarkets to Michelin-starred restaurants, and the Roca brothers' famous restaurant is one of the best in the world. For a simpler meal, try a menu del día in the old town, with rice, fish and a glass of wine. Park outside the centre, because the old quarter is a maze of steps.

7. Near Viladecans finish

   Montseny Natural Park checkpoint 8 closes the day.

8. Back to la Marina del Prat Vermell finish

   Back at Montseny. That is the ride.

Where this sits

Rides near here