Spain Motorcycle Tours

Spain is where European riders go when they want mountain roads without the Alpine traffic. There's more altitude here than most people expect, the road network has been rebuilt over the last twenty years, and the season stretches from March to November. Two regions dominate the touring map: Andalusia in the far south and the Pyrenees along the French border.

Andalusia is the sun-and-white-villages half. The classic circuit strings together Malaga, Ronda, Seville, Cordoba and Granada, and every leg has a proper road attached to it. The climb inland from the coast to Ronda is a stack of fast, well-surfaced sweepers through the Serranía. The Sierra de Grazalema beyond it is tighter and greener, and it's one of the wettest corners of Spain, which is why the tarmac stays dark and grippy. East of Granada the Sierra Nevada has Europe's highest paved road, and the Alpujarras below it wind through terraced villages that look more Moroccan than Spanish. Push southeast for the desert badlands and volcanic capes of Cabo de Gata, or southwest for Atlantic wind and the beaches at Tarifa and Cadiz, with the Moroccan coast visible across the strait.

The Pyrenees are the other Spain: colder, higher, more technical. The N-260, signed as the Eje Pirenaico, crosses the range from Portbou on the Mediterranean to Sabiñánigo in Aragon, and it's essentially a several-hundred-kilometre chain of mountain passes. The Port de la Bonaigua on the C-28 tops out at 2,072 metres between Esterri d'Àneu and the Val d'Aran, and the valleys either side of it (Ordesa, Benasque, Pallars) are full of dead-end roads worth riding purely for their own sake. Cross into France for a day and the Tourmalet and Aubisque are within easy reach, which is why so many Pyrenean tours base themselves near the border and treat it as a formality.