A weekend out of Barcelona: into the Pyrenees, through Andorra, back along the coast

Barcelona is a city people fly into for the city. What they rarely notice on the way in is that the mountains start about ninety minutes north of the airport, and that you can be at two thousand metres before lunch on a Saturday. This is the loop we ride when we have two days and no interest in a motorway.

Getting out

The first half hour is the price of admission. Barcelona does not release you gently: you work through traffic, ring roads and roundabouts until the city thins into industrial edge, and then, without much ceremony, the land tilts upward and the roads get narrow and good.

Head inland rather than along the coast. The coastal route out of the city is slower and more built up than it looks on a map; the inland roads through the Catalan interior are emptier, and they put you at the foot of the Pyrenees in half the time.

The Catalan Pyrenees

This is why you came. The valleys of the Alt Urgell are wide and green in a way that surprises people who expect Spain to be dry, with villages of stone and slate sitting on the shoulders of the road and farmland climbing the slopes behind them. The tarmac is generally excellent. Traffic is light enough that you can settle into a rhythm and hold it for an hour.

The passes here are not the theatrical hairpin staircases of the French side. They are long, open, fast-flowing roads that reward smoothness rather than bravery — the kind of riding that makes a heavy bike feel light. There are viewpoints built out over the valleys where it costs nothing to stop, and stopping is the point.

Andorra, and whether to bother

Andorra sits at the top of the loop and divides opinion. The capital is a shopping street with mountains behind it, and if that is all you see of the country you will wonder why you climbed. Ride past it. The roads on either side of the town are the reason to come — high, well surfaced, and quiet on a weekday — and the terraces above the valley are the best place on this route to sit for an hour with the bike in sight.

It is a border crossing, so carry your documents. Fuel is cheaper than in Spain or France, which is the one piece of shopping worth doing.

The coast on the way home

Come back a different way. Dropping east towards the Costa Brava turns the second day into something completely different from the first: the mountains flatten into cork oak and vineyard, and then the road meets the sea at a coastline of headlands and small bays that looks nothing like the resort coast further south.

Cadaqués is worth the detour, and the road in is worth more than the town — a climb over a bare headland and a descent to white houses and very blue water. It is a dead end, which keeps the traffic honest. From there it is a straightforward run back down the coast to the city.

Which bike, and how long

Anything comfortable. This is tarmac from start to finish, so a cruiser is as happy here as an adventure bike — and a cruiser on the long Pyrenean sweeps is a specific pleasure. There is nothing on this route that demands ground clearance.

Two days works. Three is better, and turns the second day from a transit into a proper coastal ride. Spring and autumn are the seasons: the high roads can hold snow into April, and August puts the coast under traffic that is not worth sitting in.