Badlands of Andalucia

This remote landscape of giant clefts and ravines, is so called for its resemblance to the Badlands of the North American West and we're here to help you explore the best of it. Home to the Badlands Ultracycling Gravel Event, this is gravel riding at it's absolute best.

Our tour starts in Granada, the last Moorish capital, bursting with history and architecture. The beauty of the majestic Alhambra Palace and Generalife gardens are unmissable and we would highly recommend arriving into Granada a few days early to see the sights and soak-up the seductiveness of this wonderful city.

Our route meanders through craggy sierras, passing castle-topped villages with overnight stays in some lovely traditional towns along the way. We'll cover a mixture of terrain, from smooth asphalt to exciting single-track to really take in all that gravel riding has to offer.

Heading out of Granada we'll make our way past huge clay cliffs, through arid deserts, past the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, traversing vast forests as we make our way to the province's capital; Almeria, a great spot to celebrate our gravel adventure in the Badlands.

Highlights

• Spending the night in the magical city of Granada and riding out past the Alhambra as the adventure begins
• Riding through the vast forests of the Sierra Nevada
• Riding the Ramblas and through the incredible scenery of the Tabernas desert
• Arriving at the beautiful volcanic Cabo de Gata coastline
• Delicious seafood, sunset dinner on the coast
• The dramatic empty landscapes of the whole adventure

This is the perfect destination for gravel riding with a great network of hard-packed gravel roads, forestry tracks and fun singletrack. Whilst the majority of the riding is off-road, we’ll skip onto some tarmac at regular intervals, particularly to ease climbing or to break up more technical stretches. Whilst most of the region is relatively dry, there is occasional precipitation which can result in sections of muddy trails and as we get closer to the coast we encounter more sand-based tracks and smooth sandy trails. You can find more information on riding on gravel surfaces here in our Guide to Gravel Trails

We will be travelling through mountainous terrain and whilst the overall gradient of the holiday takes us down from the Sierra Nevada to the Mediterranean coast, there will be lots of up and down along the way, particularly on Day 3 where we’ll tackle over 1600m of ascent over the course of the day. Undulating routes through the week give us plenty of ups but even more descents, with some great smooth tracks but there will also be loose gravel and some technical sections where good handling skills will be required.