Southern Spain: Road bike tours in Andalusia - Andalusia's Costa de la Luz by road bike
Patrick Kunkel
· 09.12.2016
April in Germany: wind, rain showers, cold - a vale of tears for racing cyclists. My mate Börje and I want to escape it. But not to Mallorca. After a few hours' flight, we land in Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain and step out of the airport building. The sun is blazing. At the same time, a gentle breeze cools the pale, Central European skin on our faces. Börje grins and squints into the sun. "It's about time," he says, "I finally got back on my racing bike!"
The next day: westerly wind. We just speed along. The road between the coastal town of Conil de la Frontera and the fishing village of Zahara de los Atunes winds its way through undulating terrain. On the left are cow pastures and freshly ploughed fields. On the right, the sea roars and powerful waves roll in. It smells pleasantly of damp earth and the salty Atlantic.
Costa de la Luz, the Coast of Light, is the name of the stretch of land between Gibraltar and Cádiz on the west coast of Andalusia. Lush green hills stretch out behind endless sandy beaches, with peaks rising out of the haze on the horizon: the mountain ranges of the Sierra de Grazalema. That's where we want to go in a few days. Today we let the tailwind carry us over the hills and through sleepy seaside resorts. It's low season. There is little to nothing going on on the roads and the beaches are empty. The first serious climb of the day quickly turns into an equally short descent. We hurtle downhill through the natural park "La Breña y Marismas de Barbate", between pine trees whose crowns look like green mushroom heads and next to which junipers grow and gorse blooms in yellow. Shortly afterwards, there is a flash of azure blue between the trunks, and a bend later the panorama opens up: the Atlantic as far as the eye can see - and where the beach turns into rugged cliffs and the waves break on the rocks, there are plenty of surfers frolicking in the water.
- Tour 1: Coast of Light (86 kilometres, 750 metres in altitude, max. 15% gradient)
- Tour 2: Into the hinterland (107 kilometres, 850 metres in altitude, max. 8% gradient)
- Tour 3: Karstic Sierra de Grazalema (126 kilometres, 2,600 metres in altitude, max. 15% gradient)
- Tour 4: Views as far as Africa (92 kilometres, 2,100 metres in altitude, max. 12% gradient)
