River Thames

Spent a blissful couple of days canoeing down the upper Thames from Lechlade to Eynsham in "Mary", our homemade wooden canoe.

Bus and Train

Alsa busses are a great way to get around Andalucia. They're cheap, and they seem to go everywhere. No problem taking bikes, so long as you take the front wheel off, turn the handlebars and wrap them up. You also need a 5Euro ticket for them as outsize luggage.






Once compacted down to 120cm x90 our bikes were free on Renfe high speed trains, but slightly worryingly, on some of the trains there was nowhere sensible to put them, so we were somewhat relying on the kindness of the staff not to make trouble.

Cazola National Park

The park is superb, and GR247 is a great mountain biking route, with excellent mapping

Fantastic scenery.

Just a few parts definately not cyclable!
















Lots of Fuente for drinking water, so long as you know where they are.














 Final bivi on the mountain top, before dropping down to the town of Cazorla, to start the journey home

Capo de Gata

Rather disappointing, in comparison to the fantastic Scottish coasts we're used to.  But there was a very nice cycle ride down a long gently sloping track from Punta Negra (closed to cars)

Sierra Nevada

Beautiful white villages.

Dramatic descent into Valor

Grenada

The Alhambra is wonderful. I had a worrying afternoon a month beforehand when I discovered that I'd nearly left it too  late to buy tickets.

Zuheros

On the sustrans-style cycle path along a disused railway to the mountain village of Zuheros.

Cordoba to Grenada

After a rather hot first day's cycling, we camp beside a river.

We discover we've left the tent poles at home, but luckily we're camped next to a grove of bamboo!

Cordoba

Cordoba is lovely.  the Mosque-cathedral is wonderful.

Barcelona

Spent the night and then had most of a day exploring Gaudi's architecture in Barcelona, before getting a late afternoon train down to Cordoba.

Spain

No kayaking this spring, but instead we took the mountain bikes on the train down to Analucia in southern Spain, using our specially invented wheeled bike bags.  As the compacted bikes were within 120 x 90 x 40 cm, they could come with us as handluggage on the TGV for free. (But on Eurostar the size limit is smaller, so slightly tediously, we had to pay extra and check them in separately for the London-Paris bit)

We had a wonderful month cycling from Cordoba to Grenada, then mountain biking in the national parks of Sierra Nevada, Capo de Gata and Cazorla













There are some excellent free online resources available on these weblinks:

GR247 in Natural Park of Cazorla, Segura and Las Villas.

Useful GR247 App:  Android. Also on iOS.

IGN, Spanish National Geographic Institute has free map downloads, by province: see “Maps fpr mobile” here.  They’re in in mbtile  format, zoomable to 1:25k and work well on the free Android OruxMaps, as described here.  Recommended.