Bikes, blisters and bodegas

A breathless Sean O'Hagan pedalled through northern Spain enjoying the vivid golds of the fields - and the stunning reds in the cellars

Sunday September 3, 2006
The Observer

As I peruse the travel pack for my cycling holiday in la Rioja on the plane from London to Bilbao, it strikes me that this holiday might just have it all: exercise, breathtaking scenery, world renowned wine, great food, religion, art, politics and, though it didn't mention it in the travel pack, a hint of danger.
Here's the deal: you start off in the vineyard-studded Ebro valley, skirt the sun-reddened hills of Basque country, then cycle along part of the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, ending up in the foothills of the ominous-sounding Sierra de la Demanda.

Along the way, you stay in a couple of culinarily renowned guest houses, visit a few bodegas for the obligatory crash course in wine-tasting, and - torn ligaments and the threat of separatist kidnappings not withstanding - end up back in Bilbao, sizing up the Serras and the Schnabels at the Guggenheim, before some tapas and a taxi to the airport.

That's how I sold it to my partner, Lynette, and my mates Kevin and Fiona, anyway - minus the bit about the ligaments and kidnappings, of course. Kevin was, if you'll pardon the pun, the crucial link in the chain. He's a proper cyclist, and thinks nothing of a 30-mile spin around his native Mourne mountains in County Down before breakfast. The sort of guy who does triathlons for fun. Often after a night on the Guinness.

Anyway, I figure that the daily ignominy of trying to keep up with Kevin - and, as it turns out, Fiona - will be off set by his expertise at map-reading and fixing punctures. Plus he has a drawer full of those padded Lycra cycling shorts that I refuse to buy on the principle that I would rather put up with crotch burn than look like a perv on wheels. (How wrong I was, dear reader, how cheek-clenchingly wrong.)

Our base for the first two days of our five-day cycle is the tiny hill town of Abalos, which seems oddly deserted. Everyone, it seems, is out in the fields helping with the grape harvest. We arrive at Villa Abalos in time for lunch, which is a Riojan lamb stew - all meat, no veg - washed down with a cheeky Tempranillo. As we fight the post-prandial urge for a three-hour siesta, Octavio, from the local cycling shop, turns up with our bicycles - four sturdy road/mountain hybrids with those thick tyres that give you the impression that off-roading is not just optional but downright obligatory.

Kevin, who knows about these things, is the first to notice that the bikes are missing a few minor but handy accessories: locks, for a start. And lights. And bicycle pumps. Octavio, who is that rare thing, a worried-looking Spaniard, promises us they will be here manana, and, buoyed by the Tempranillo, we set off regardless. Rock and roll! Half an hour later we have negotiated our way out of the backstreets of Abalos, and are pedalling and panting through a still verdant late summer landscape that undulates a tad too much for my liking.

The view, though, is straight out of Cervantes: windmills and nipple-shaped concrete huts dotted around vineyards that stretch for miles. The harvest is in full swing and the only traffic we encounter for the first few days is a succession of ancient tractors towing trailers full of grapes. Once, we even manage to overtake a trailer of locals who shout greetings - or maybe obscenities - at us as we pass. Whatever, it's hard to look blase when you're wearing baggy shorts over skin-tight Lycra crotch huggers.

As the hills give way to even more hills, and the panting to gasping, we finally sight our destination, 'the castellated hill town of San Vicente de la Sonsierra'. If, while riding a bike through la Rioja, you ever come across the words 'castellated hill town', even if they are accompanied by the promise of a medieval monastery with a 360 degree view, take my advice: turn and pedal in the opposite direction.

Unless, like Kevin, a one-in-eight uphill gradient is the kind of terrain on which you thrive. At one point, having dismounted and decided to push my suddenly lumpen 'lightweight' steel machine up the last furlong, I spy Kevin up ahead, blithely cycling with one hand alongside Lynette, while pushing her up the hill with the other. It's like cycling with the Incredible Hulk. At the top of the hill, only the majestic view across the plain prevents me from flinging my bike across the cobbles and mutating into the Incredible Sulk.

We return to Villa Abalos just before dark, having completed a raggedy 25 kilometre semicircle through the hills, exhausted but oddly fulfilled.

On day two, it rains. It rains so much that even Kevin is loath to climb back in the saddle. After some Bafta- winning fake protestations, I agree to join the other three fair-weather wimps in a taxi to the town of Laguardia, which, wouldn't you just know it, is neither castellated nor hilly. In the rain, the countryside resembles the west of Ireland if it had vineyards instead of bogs - all deep greens and burnished reds.

Within the wall of the old city, the Bodega el Fabulista stands on a warren of underground cellars that extend through the whole town. Here, down in the cool, dry cellars, we hold giant glasses of Tempranillo and red Garnacha up to the light, watching the 'tears' slip gently down the sides, pretending to be seasoned oenologists while necking as much free vino as possible.

The following day's journey takes us through a subtly different landscape, flatter, browner and muddier. The green hills of the Ebro valley have given way to an endless ochre plain, the empty roads to a series of dirt tracks that form part of the famous pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. There cannot be that many cycling routes where the main danger to life and limb is colliding with a devout pilgrim lost in prayer, but this is one of them. All along the snaking dirt road, devout souls appear like apparitions from another century, each wearing the scallop-shell emblem of their pilgrimage.

Few even raise their heads as we pass, feeling like interlopers on their spiritual marathon. Many of them have already walked across the Pyrenees from France and still have several hundred cannot escape the notion, not just that you are travelling though a landscape that the Catholic faithful have traversed for centuries, but that you are somehow journeying back in time.

It seems odd that night to be feasting on three courses of traditional Riojan cuisine, washed down with fine wines from an exceptional cellar, at the ospederia Alesanco, a wood panelled guesthouse in an otherwise nondescript town.

The food is excellent, though, and the service from the husband and wife team that run the place of the old-fashioned formal variety that means you don't even have to refill your own glasses. We wake to find that Octavio has been and gone in the dawn's early light, leaving a lone bicycle pump at reception.

The last leg of the trip takes us from Alesanco to the ski resort of Ezcaray, an oddly Alpine town in the foothills of the Sierra de la Demanda. It's like cycling through a different country, flat and wooded, with fields of barley breaking up the reddish-brown terrain. We stop at Canas , where there is a Cistercian convent full of odd relics, including a ginger Jesus and a Madonna who seems to be squirting breast milk into someone's eye. This is the most relaxing leg of the cycle, and, at one point on a downhill bit, I manage to overtake Kevin for the first time. It's the little victories that count.

The trip ends with an 11-course meal in the Casa Masip, a tastefully modernised mansion whose acclaimed chef, Pedro Masip, specialises in traditional Riojan food with a modern twist. That means a succession of elaborate small dishes, including delicious seared scallops and oddly pungent lamb's trotters.

Once again, the wine list is superb and aff ordable, which brings me to the underlying irony of cycling in la Rioja: that one can return from the holiday both healthier and heavier.

Essentials

Sean O'Hagan travelled with Inntravel (01653 617906; www.inntravel.co.uk) which offers a week's cycling in La Rioja from £548 pp (based on two sharing) including four nights' half board, three nights' B&B, bike hire, luggage transfers, maps and notes. Fly to Bilbao from Stansted with Easyjet (0905 821 0905; www.easyjet.com) or BA (0870 850 9850; www.ba.com); from there Inntravel offers return rail/taxi transfers for £78.