eBike Bilbao across the mountains to Quincoces de Yuso - day 1 of my cycle tour of northern Spain

#Bilbao to Quincoces de Yuso on day 1 of my Basque Country & northern Spain tour. Because the weather is colder & wetter north of the mountains I’d decided to cross these at the start by heading for Burgos. The ferry was scheduled to arrive at 12.00 when I bought the ticket so I picked a hotel 76km away and 1100m of ascent. Then the ferry time changed to 14.00 which along with last check in being 20.00 made this a bit tighter for time than intended.

I wasn’t looking forward to Bilbao traffic and indeed exiting the port was as nasty as they always are. But I’d spotted the start of a greenway about 12km from the port and it appeared that would allow me to bypass a 20km cycle through Bilbao. Within 2km from the port I was onto narrow if steep hills with the one bust road running by chemical plants having a two lane cycle way beside it. The approach to the greenway did have my steepest hill to date, a 40%!! That was a struggle!

The greenway was the route of an old mining railway #ViaVerde Montes de Herro and it was excellent, through woodland on the side of a steep hill with openings giving views to the valley below. It’s dirt/ gravel so probably not suitable for skinny wheels but not a bad surface.

Coming off it to the small town of #Atxuriaga I was pleased to find traffic was very light even when on the main road at #Sodupe and frequently there were parallel local roads. At about the 50km mark I decided to stay on about 30km of main road climbing to the major pass at #Regollo rather than the planned route along local roads to be sure off getting there before closing. There was almost no traffic on the roads anyway at that point in the evening & all drivers pass cyclists with care. It’s quite a climb to the pass and I was surprised and a little intimidated by the 760m tunnel at the top but after a moment of yikes went through it.

From there it was a gentle descent to the turn at El Canon for Quincoces de Yuso the town I spent the night

Photos from this day at https://www.instagram.com/p/C7GgVvgND...

Route map https://cycle.travel/map/journey/575242