El Escorial Ridge Roads

3 passes in 105 km, topping out at 2220 m

Open this ride in the planner →

Why this ride

Scenery first, traffic last, with checkpoints that make sense on a bike. Out of Madrid and back again: 105 km, roughly 1 h 55 in the saddle. The highest point is about 1,250 m. Much of it runs through woodland.

Roadbook

1. Madrid start

   Madrid sits higher than any other capital in the European Union, around six hundred and fifty metres above the sea, on a dry plateau with the Sierra de Guadarrama as a blue-white wall to the north. That height explains the light, which is hard and clear, and the winters, which can be sharp, and the habit of the place, which is to stay up very late. The city was a modest town until 1561, when Philip II moved his court here, more or less because it was in the middle of Spain, and it has been the capital ever since. Everything grand about the centre, the palace, the Plaza Mayor and the Prado, grew out of that decision.

   The Royal Palace, on the western edge of the old town, is a vast block of white stone and granite begun in the 1730s on the site of a burned fortress, and the square in front looks across a gardened slope toward the Casa de Campo, a former royal hunting ground that is now an enormous park. Walk a few minutes east and the Plaza Mayor, with its red arcades, is the place for a coffee and a bocadillo de calamares, the fried squid sandwich that is the city's cheerful signature. The Retiro park and the Prado museum lie farther along, and a day in them is a good use of a rest day.

   Riding out of the capital is easier than it looks. The M-30 ring road and the radial motorways are fast and well signed, and the traffic, though thick, moves. Low-emission zones restrict older vehicles in the centre, so check the current rules and do not assume a bike is exempt. Once past the northern suburbs the land rises toward the sierra and the roads begin to bend, through holm oak and granite boulders, with mountain passes like Navacerrada and Cotos within an hour or so. Weekends are crowded with other riders, so weekdays or early starts help.

   Fuel is no concern in a city of three million, and the centre has bars on every corner. Madrileños eat late, with lunch around two and dinner after nine, and the best cheap breakfast is chocolate con churros, thick hot chocolate with fried dough, at one of the old churrerías. In summer the afternoon heat is fierce, and the streets are empty between three and six, then fill again as the shadows lengthen. The smell of the city is hot pavement, coffee and, after a thunderstorm, wet dust.

2. El Escorial food
3. Madrid finish

Where this sits

Rides near here