Choppers in the Picos de Europa: a route built around the bikes

Northern Spain keeps a range of limestone mountains about twenty kilometres from the Atlantic, which is close enough that the weather arrives before you do. We rode them on choppers — long forks, low pipes, big V-twins — because that is what we wanted under us, and because the route was drawn to suit them. Gorges at constant medium speed, open moorland passes, and not a metre of gravel in the week.

Where this is

The Picos de Europa sit across Asturias, Cantabria and León, on the northern edge of Spain. They are not the Pyrenees and they are not the dry interior. They are grey limestone standing straight out of wet green pasture, cut by gorges, and close enough to the sea that cloud comes up the valleys in the afternoon and sits on the passes.

That proximity is the whole character of the place. You can leave a valley in sunshine, climb for twenty minutes and arrive at a viewpoint inside a cloud, with nothing below you but white. Then it clears and you are looking sixty kilometres over a country that has no business being this green.

The approach

Nothing about getting there is scenic. From anywhere in Spain with an airport worth using, the Picos are a long motorway day — the meseta, the wind, the heat, the same rest stop three times. It is the one part of this trip worth planning your way out of, whether that means starting early, breaking it in two, or having the bikes waiting at the near end.

The reward begins the moment you leave the motorway. The roads narrow, the surface improves, and within half an hour the mountains are in front of you rather than on a sign.

The gorges

The signature road here runs along the bottom of a gorge with a river on one side and a wall of rock leaning over the other. There are several of them, and they are the reason to come. The tarmac is good, the corners are constant and medium speed, the temperature drops several degrees the moment you enter, and every few kilometres the rock closes in far enough that the road goes through it rather than around.

These are not roads to attack. They are single carriageway, they carry tourist traffic and the occasional truck, and the rock face means you often cannot see far enough to overtake. Ride them at three quarters and look up.

The passes, and the weather on them

Above the gorges the roads climb out onto open moorland, and this is where the Picos stop feeling like Spain. Broad grassy tops, stone walls, cattle, and cloud coming through at head height. The viewpoints at the top of these passes are built out over nothing — a circle of stone, a rail, and on one of them a bronze deer that we reached in cloud so thick the valley below had simply been deleted.

Carry a layer you would think excessive for a Spanish summer. The difference between a valley at twenty-five degrees and a pass sitting in cloud is not a few degrees, and wet limestone is worth respecting on any bike.

Fuente Dé

At the head of one of the valleys the road stops against a vertical wall of rock several hundred metres high, with a cable car running up it and disappearing into the cloud. It is the one genuinely touristic thing in the range and it is worth it, because the road in is beautiful and because the wall itself is the clearest possible statement of what these mountains are.

It is also a dead end, which means you ride the valley twice, in both directions, in different light. No complaints.

Livestock owns the road

Above a certain altitude the fences stop and the animals do not. Horses, cattle and sheep stand on the tarmac because it is warm and because nothing has ever given them a reason to move. They will not move for you either.

Slow right down, give them room, and expect a foal to be on the far side of its mother where you cannot see it. This is the single most likely way to have a bad day here, and it is entirely avoidable.

Why choppers, and why the route followed

A chopper is not the obvious machine for a mountain range, and that is most of the appeal. What these roads actually ask for is exactly what a long V-twin does best: constant medium speed, wide open corners, torque from low down, and long stretches where you hold one line and do nothing but look. The gorges and the moorland passes are made of that. Nothing here is tight, technical or loose.

So the route came second, and was drawn to fit. Tarmac from start to finish. Days short enough to stay comfortable on forward controls, with the distance in the morning and the viewpoints in the afternoon. Passes chosen for their sweep rather than their hairpin count. Stops where getting off the bike is the point. Ridden that way, a chopper is not a compromise in the Picos — it is a very particular kind of good day, and it arrives somewhere nobody expects to see one. Every conversation at every fuel stop started with the bikes.

An adventure bike or a tourer covers more ground per day and opens up the gravel that this route deliberately left out. Both are real trips. They are simply not the same trip, which is the argument for deciding the machine first and building the roads around it.

That is how this one was put together: a private trip, planned backwards from what we wanted to ride. It is the same way we build a route for a client — starting from the bike, the daily distance and the things you actually want to see, rather than from a fixed itinerary that happens to have a seat free.

Practical notes

Season: June to September. The north coast is wet in a way the rest of Spain is not, and the passes hold weather even in summer — a week here will include rain, so plan for it rather than around it.

Format: four days inside the range, plus a transit day at each end. Less than that and you spend the trip on motorways.

Fuel: stations are in the valley towns, not on the passes. Fill up before you climb, particularly on a bike with a small tank.

Beds: the valley villages are set up for walkers, which means there are places to sleep and eat everywhere. In August, book — this is where northern Spain goes on holiday.