Pyrenees N-260 Weekend

A 324 km loop

Open this ride in the planner →

Why this ride

A rider’s loop: clean exit, memorable middle, calm return. Out of Mataró and back again: 324 km, roughly 5 h 53 in the saddle. It goes by way of Olost, near Aguilar de Segarra, Cunit and El Prat de Llobregat. la Marina del Prat Vermell is the high point.

Roadbook

1. Mataró fuel

   The first railway on the Iberian Peninsula ran from Barcelona to Mataró, opening in 1848, and the line still runs along the shore, now crowded with commuters rather than curious passengers. Mataró is the capital of the Maresme, a working city of over a hundred thousand people with an old town of narrow streets, a busy port and a long seafront. It is not a resort, and it does not pretend to be, which is part of its appeal.

   Mataró has an early work by Antoni Gaudí, long before the Sagrada Família made him famous: the Nau Gaudí, an industrial shed built for a workers' cooperative in the 1880s, with elegant wooden arches that foreshadow his later structural experiments. It now houses a contemporary art collection. The Basílica de Santa Maria, in the old town, has a richly decorated Baroque chapel, and the streets around it are pleasant for a short walk.

   For riders, Mataró is mostly a practical place to start and finish a ride, with plenty of fuel, food and parking. The inland roads are what make it worth it. A few kilometres away, Argentona marks the start of the climb over the Coll de Parpers towards Granollers, a well-loved local road with a run of tight bends through pine and oak woods, popular with motorcyclists at weekends. Beyond it lie the Montseny massif, the Vallès plains and eventually the long roads north into the Pyrenees, including the N-260, which runs along the southern flank of the mountains.

   The coast road through the Maresme is slow and urban, with traffic lights, roundabouts and plenty of traffic, especially in summer. The C-32 motorway alongside it is faster but tolled. Leave early in the morning, when the light is soft and the roads are quieter, and head inland as soon as possible. Mataró has a long sandy beach, and at the end of a hot summer day a swim in the Mediterranean is the obvious way to wash off the dust before dinner.

2. Near Olost, on the way back swim

   The Lluçanès is a high, rolling plateau north of Barcelona, between the plain of Vic and the valleys of the Ter and Llobregat rivers, and this point lies near the village of Olost, in the heart of it. It is a quiet, rural part of Catalonia, a mosaic of wheat fields, pastures and oak and pine woods, with scattered stone farmhouses, called masies, sitting on the hills. Villages such as Olost, Prats de Lluçanès and Sant Boi de Lluçanès are small and unhurried.

   The plateau has a long history. Romanesque churches dot the landscape, many dating from the tenth to twelfth centuries, some isolated on hilltops among the fields. The Osona region around Vic, to the east, is famous for its cured sausages, especially llonganissa and fuet, and its pig farms, which you will notice from the smell on a warm day. Vic itself has a large arcaded main square and a lively Saturday market.

   On the swim, be realistic. The Lluçanès has few natural swimming places; the rivers here are small streams, often low in summer. There are municipal outdoor pools in several villages, open in summer, which are the easiest option for a quick dip. For bigger water, the Sau reservoir east of Vic, beneath the cliffs of the Guilleries, is popular, though swimming is allowed only in some areas, so check locally.

   The riding is lovely: narrow country roads twist across the plateau, rising and falling over the hills and dipping into wooded valleys, with very little traffic. The BV and C roads around Olost are perfect for unhurried touring, with long views over the fields to the Pyrenees, snow-capped in spring. The surface is generally good, though some minor roads are narrow and patched. Watch for tractors, cyclists and wild boar at dusk. The weather can change quickly, with summer storms building over the mountains.

   Olost and Prats de Lluçanès have small shops and cafes, and there is fuel nearby, but the larger towns, such as Vic, are better for services. On the way back from the Pyrenees and the N-260, the route south across the Lluçanès toward Barcelona is a peaceful way to wind down after the high mountain passes.

3. Food stop near Aguilar de Segarra food

   On a clear morning, the serrated outline of Montserrat stands out to the south of Aguilar de Segarra, the holy mountain of Catalonia with its monastery and Black Madonna, hovering over the plain like a stage set. Aguilar itself is a small village in the Bages district, west of Manresa, set in a rolling landscape of cereal fields, pine woods and scattered farmhouses, on the edge of the drier, higher plateau of the Segarra.

   The land here is old and quiet, with Romanesque churches, ruined castles and stone farmhouses. Many of these castles were built during the long frontier wars between the Christian counts of Barcelona and the Muslim rulers to the south in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and their towers still crown the hills. A short ride north lies Cardona, with its mighty castle and the Muntanya de Sal, a mountain of salt that has been mined since prehistoric times and can be visited on guided tours.

   The riding here is excellent. The roads wind over the hills and through the valleys, with good surfaces, light traffic and long views. The C-25, the Eix Transversal, is a fast highway across central Catalonia, but the minor roads are much more rewarding, with curves and changes of gradient. The climate is continental, with hot summers and cold winters, and fog can fill the valleys on winter mornings.

   For fuel and a sit-down meal, head for Manresa or the larger towns along the main roads, because Aguilar de Segarra itself offers very little. A lunch of Catalan country food, perhaps grilled meats with pa amb tomàquet, is a good choice. The N-260 and the Pyrenees lie to the north, along some of the best mountain roads in Spain.

4. Cunit photo

   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.

5. Near El Prat de Llobregat finish

   The Llobregat delta is flat, green and noisy in equal measure. Jets climb out of Barcelona's airport over the sea, the city's port stretches along the coast to the north, and between them lie fields of artichokes, orchards, marshes and pine-backed beaches.

   The delta was built by the river over thousands of years, a fertile plain that fed Barcelona for centuries. Two local products are famous: the artichokes of El Prat, sold under their own protected name, and the Prat chicken, a breed with distinctive blue legs that is a Christmas delicacy in Catalonia. In the early 2000s the mouth of the Llobregat was shifted south to make room for the port's expansion, one of the larger engineering projects on this coast.

   Nature hangs on in surprising ways. The Delta del Llobregat nature reserves protect marshes, lagoons and pine woods by the beach, with hides where you can watch herons, egrets, waders and other birds, and the area is an important stop on migration routes. The beaches of El Prat are long, open and often almost empty compared with those of the city, with dunes and pines behind them, though the roar of planes is constant.

   For riders, the delta is mainly a place to begin and end. The roads are flat and straight, with roundabouts, lorries and airport traffic, and the B-22 and C-31 lead quickly onto the motorways. Head north and west toward the Pyrenees and the N-260, or south along the coast toward Tarragona and the Priorat. Within an hour the delta's flatness is behind you and the first hills begin to climb.

   El Prat has fuel, cafes and supermarkets, and the town centre has restaurants serving Catalan food, including the local artichokes in season, which runs roughly from late autumn to spring. Gavà and Viladecans to the south also have every service. Wind can be strong on the open delta, especially in the afternoon when the sea breeze picks up, and the area around the airport is heavily policed, with speed cameras on the main roads. Keep it gentle until you reach the mountains.

6. la Marina del Prat Vermell pass

   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.

7. la Marina del Prat Vermell scenic
8. Back to Mataró finish

   Back at Pyrenees N-260. That is the ride.

Where this sits

Rides near here