Crossing the Pyrenees: Catalonia, Andorra, Aragón and the French side

The Pyrenees are only about four hundred kilometres end to end, and you can cross them in a day if you insist. We took a week, on cruisers, and went over the range and back again — up through Catalonia, into Andorra, west along the Spanish flank into Aragón and Navarra, and home down the French side. Three countries, one mountain range, and almost no traffic once you leave the valleys.

Starting in Catalonia

The eastern approach climbs out of the Segre valley through Montferrer i Castellbò, where a timber viewing platform hangs out over the drop and you can see the whole valley you have just ridden up. It is the moment the trip stops being a transfer and starts being the trip.

From there Andorra is half an hour away, and worth the border queue for the climb rather than the duty-free. The road up is wide, fast and relentlessly uphill, and the temperature falls the whole way.

The Spanish flank: Val d'Aran to Aragón

West of Andorra the range opens into the Val d'Aran, which drains north into France and feels French for it. Baqueira Beret is a ski resort, which in summer means good tarmac, empty car parks and a road that keeps climbing past where the lifts stop. The peaks here are proper mountain-range peaks, grey and broken, and the road threads underneath them.

Carry on west and the character changes again. Aragón is drier and more agricultural — you ride past stacked hay bales and cut fields with the mountains as a backdrop rather than a wall — until the road tips you into a side valley and you are back among lakes like the Ibón de Tramacastilla, up above the Tena valley.

Navarra, where the range runs out

The western Pyrenees are lower, greener and much wetter. On the NA-140 between the Salazar and Roncal valleys the signposts start carrying two names apiece, Spanish and Basque, and the mountains stop being rock and start being forest. It is the least famous part of the range and one of the best parts to ride.

Coming back over the top

The French side is the one everybody writes about, and it earns it: longer passes, better surfaces, more of them, and stone villages where the road becomes the main street and you ride through at walking pace. It is also busier. Go early, and take the smaller of any two roads offered.

Doing it on a cruiser

Most of these photographs show cruisers and a chopper, which is not the obvious tool for a mountain range and is a large part of why the week was fun. Long bikes work here if you ride them honestly: brake in a straight line, be early rather than fast, and accept that you will ground something on a hairpin. Bring a bike you like sitting on, because the days are long.