Smuggler lanes and donkey trails: e-MTB in Andalusia

What do you think of when someone says ‘Andalusia?’ Sunburn, sangria and lulling off in a sleepy siesta to the muffled clunk-clang of a distant donkey’s bell?

Maybe it’s time to think again, amigo.

We’re here in the Sierra de Aracena, tempted by the promise of minimal trail traffic, secret routes and rooty lines in an area ripe for reconsideration and refuelling on the very best jamón ibérico.

We’re greeted and guided by snow-hound couple Daisy and Eliott who have transported their Alpine mindsets to the gnarlier lands of the sierra to see what can be achieved by introducing e-MTBs into the equation. A fair bit, it turns out. Harnessing the same spirit that Daisy’s parents used to reimagine and carefully cultivate the farm from destitute ruin post-Franco to a flourishing and nourishing place overflowing in flora and fauna, Daisy and Eliott are applying it to old smuggler routes and mule tracks. Their cheat code? The game-changing possibilities of e-MTB.

This is an area veined by ancient and hidden village-to-village routes. An area where the remote pueblos blancos are connected by timeworn trails often unmarked but now privately and personally logged by Eliott and Daisy, offering soulful riding through Andalusia’s rustic heartland.

Those trails join up with the aforementioned narrow cobbled mule tracks (veredas empedradas), themselves remnants of centuries-old trade routes. The stone-paved paths climb and drop steeply through remote valleys, grippy when dry, slick and probably pretty punishing in the wet. Not that we see any of that in the balmy spring sunshine.

Looping all this together are rolling dips, occasional rock gardens and flowy trails through open woodland (where you can ride all day and barely see another human) and paths into la dehesa.

La dehesa is a human-shaped landscape maintained over centuries, deeply tied to rural Andalusian identity and tradition where we now zip through the patchwork of scattered holm oaks (encinas) and cork oaks (alcornoques). The trees are spaced out to allow light (lots of that round here, you know) through, creating a savannah-like environment perfect for grazing and, now we know, trail visibility.

For the lion’s share of the day, the trails are not too dense and not too steep, just the right kind of fast, snaking single track that lets you keep your momentum. In between stops at waterholes and for refreshments, we reach several rolling ridgeline traverses with open vistas. These long, airy traverses above the valleys give stunning views over the lush and green Sierra Morena foothills with the more exposed, wind-whipped sections and sporadic slabby rock gardens to keep us alert up top.

There are sometimes rocky, more technical descents off some of the ridgelines. These have exposed sections with loose baby heads and embedded bedrock requiring pretty precise line choice and solid braking control. But nothing too drastic as to kill the rhythm we’ve struck.

En route to Daisy’s parents’ new farm, some 40km away across the sierra for lunch, we pick up flowy singletrack through the dehesa oak woodland. These undulating ribbons of dirt wind through ancient holm oak groves, with faster, pumpable terrain under a canopy of twisted trunks, scattering the pigs as we pass. We let our guard down for a wee moment dismounting for a gate and one of the more confident swines steps up to try and bite a chunk out of Eliot’s front tyre. A touch of piggy revenge, perhaps.

Daisy’s family roots in the region mean that the local farming fraternity have granted exclusive access to their land and pastures for our e-MTBs and us. That means pretty much every ride carves a new route or at least a new tweak. Today we cut a swathe across la Coronada which is their friend Antonio’s farm. The name translates as ‘the crowned’ and with Spanish spring in full bloom, the pastures are freckled with yellow wildflowers and dashes of purple.

Natural switchbacks crop up on the ancient caminos reales. Hand-cut by generations past, these trails wind steeply through the cork oak forests with tight, uneven turns and loose loam which is perfect for our agile Moustaches.