Montañas Vacías Extended - 1.100 km Gravel Bikepacking Tour
It is a landscape that inspires people... people who value silence, solitude and open horizons. It is a landscape far removed from nature's postcard model ... a landscape for the initiated. For strong spirits. For those who understand the difficulties of life in these dry and cold mountains. We are talking about the Sierra de El Pobo in the south of Aragon. We cross this magical mountain landscape
on the 4th stage of our 2-week bikepacking tour around and in the Montanas Vacias ... the "empty mountains" between Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Our loop starts and ends near Tortosa on the Ebro, the second longest river on the Iberian Peninsula. We named our loop “Montanas Vacias Extended” because we want to supplement and refine the well-known “original loop” of the Montanas Vacias with start and finish in Teruel with a few stages at the beginning and at the end. At the beginning we consciously look for some sections that are even more unknown to us and are more adventurous than the well-documented route from Teruel. Here we find few or no reports in advance about path conditions or infrastructure.
We also want to add additional scenic charm with our self-planned stages with extensive, barren and treeless plateaus before we dive into the seemingly endless pine forests of the Montanas Vacias. And our last two stages along the Mediterranean coast up to the extensive Ebro Delta also bring a little more variety and exciting contrasts to the mountainous and forested stages of the previous days. A few words about our setup: We ride on our Cannondale gravel bikes, equipped with a colorful mix of bags and pack sacks from Tailfin, Ortlieb and Topeak. We have the Mavic Allroad S wheelsets, tires we're riding Pirelli's Cinturato Hard Terrain in 45c width, tubeless ... these are really great tires with which we drove many many kilometers through Bosnia and Herzegovina last year, sometimes on very rough gravel roads; We were riding in Italy several times with this tires ... so far at least over 5,000 km without any flat tires. After almost 3,000 km
we swapped the slightly more worn rear tire with the front tire and will only put new tires on next season. Drive/brakes we have a mix of Sram Force and Eagle XX1 - from Sram the electronic AXS gearing 1 x 12... front chainring 40 - rear cassette 10-52. This meant that the steeper sections of the Montanas Vacias were easy for us to ride. On a few parts of our route you would of course have more fun with an MTB than with a gravel bike - especially downhill ...
but overall the tour is definitely also perfect for gravel bikes - of course, like almost everywhere offroad, the same applies to gravel bikes: the more rim and tire width and the less air pressure, the more comfort and fun to ride. What we can definitely recommend for this tour in mid/late May is enough water, enough food supplies and, above all, warm clothing and a good sleeping bag. As in many areas of Spain, there is the wonderful infrastructure of the refuges, i.e. unmanaged huts and houses mostly made of stone, which can be used free of charge by hikers and cyclists to stay overnight, but: on nights often above 1,500 m above sea level, it is extremely cold even in these stone houses in mid-May. Once, early in the morning, we even had a thin layer of ice on our tent, our bikes and all our bags. The temperatures here in May were significantly lower than
back home in the Alps. So far, you shouldn't be too tempted by thoughts of Spain and the sunny, warm south and we definitely recommend taking down jackets and warm sleeping bags with you. And what you should also keep in mind: you are not necessarily always alone on the Montanas Vacias loop.
In our case, there were usually other cyclists at the refuges on the "official" route, which can of course be very nice because you can exchange stories and experiences, but that doesn't necessarily make the nights themselves any more relaxing. When we weren't alone, we slept in our tent outside the refuge, because restful nights are very important to us on our travels, and too often we simply couldn't sleep in various mountain refuges due to unpleasant noises... And what you should also keep in mind: especially on weekends, some of these refuges are popular meeting places for local young people. We were told twice by other bikepackers on the way that they didn't get a wink of sleep because people were partying loudly and for a long time next to them.
Otherwise, these refuges are simply magnificent and an incredible present in the midst of Spain's many remote, natural landscapes. And we gratefully spent a few nights in these wonderful refuges, especially during our Spain Divide in autumn 2021. Concerning water: the supply here on the route varies extremely. In the Rio Tajo area and also in most of the autonomous community of Castile La Mancha, springs and fresh, unchlorinated water are very easy to find. In other areas, springs and fountains that are shown on digital maps may have dried up completely on site.
For us this was especially the case on the first stages around Mont Caro in Catalonia, but also at the end of the Montanas Vacias loop - e.g. at Refugio Hortalàn in Aragon... the signposted “Fuente” was completely dry. Basically, we strongly recommend that you always fill all water bottles in good time (in villages) on this tour in order to avoid any problems. In addition to our drinking bottles, we always filled our 4 liter water bag as late as possible before the end of the stage so that we always had enough water in the evening, in the morning and for the stage the next day. What you also need to know is that most or perhaps all public springs and fountains in the Aragon region are heavily chlorinated. We don't understand how this water can be used. The locals do that...
Filtering the water doesn't help either. The chlorine taste remains. This means that in these areas we have always bought bottled water or filtered water from an unchlorinated source, but never used these public fountains with RED signs. And it's not always that easy with the food supply either: many of the bars and grocery stores are not open at the specified times, which is particularly tough if you are only in a small town somewhere where there is basically a shopping or eating option once or twice a day.
For us it was particularly tough on a Wednesday: all the bars and supermarkets were closed that day and we were really happy that we had enough of our own food in our bags. So if you want to be on the safe side, you should have at least 1-2 days' worth of food in your bags and take advantage of every opportunity to replenish the food you've already consumed. Of course, you can also be lucky and always be in the right place at the right time and then you will probably think that everything is not so bad anyway and that we are just talking nonsense... but it can also be exactly the other way around. In order to introduce you to the first 5 stages of our loop, which are not part of the Montanas Vacias original route, we have edited together some short sequences from these 5 days.
You can find detailed information and pictures about all the individual stages of our tour on our weblog - the link is in the video description. Here is an approx. 3-minute BestOf of individual video sequences from the route between Tortosa and Teruel. Then we present our personal highlights of the "official" Montanas Vacias loop and then finally we show a few pictures of our final stages across the coast back to Tortosa. After a night in Teruel, we continued on the official Montanas Vacias loop for the next 7 days.
If we can give one tip for the first stage from Teruel, it would be: get up early and start riding early in the morning. Because the first absolute highlight awaits you shortly after Teruel and is particularly impressive in the strong morning light of the rising sun: the reddish rock formations of the canyons just a few kilometers west of the city. Even afterwards the first stage from Teruel offers a lot of varied landscapes and slopes and Albarracín, another town worth seeing in the middle of the sierra of the same name. Here you can enjoy wide, unobstructed panoramic views before spending the next few days mostly passing through seemingly endless pine forests. In the lonely highlands of the Alto Tajo Natural Park on the edge of the Sierra de Albarracín, there are always short passages with clearings and a little more all-round panorama, especially at the Refugio next to the beautiful Eremita San Lorenzo, for us definitely one of the most beautiful places for a night on the Montanas Vacias Route. On our 8th stage, around the small mountain village of Chequilla, we were surprised by a variety of spectacular, sometimes bizarre red rock formations right next to the road.
Shortly afterwards we pass impressive rock faces on the wonderful gravel road along the picturesque, deep green Rio Tajo. Here we leave the “original route”, which continues along the Rio Tajo for about 25 km, for a short time as we already know this section from our Spain Divide in 2021. We also already know some of the gravel roads through the Serrania de Cuenca on our 9th stage.
Here we had our only rainy ride in 2021 during our 1,880 km across Spain. And this time too we were caught in almost the same place at an altitude of almost 1,700 m - a few kilometers before the Refugio Alconera. A highlight of a slightly different kind follows shortly afterwards: one of the most relaxed descents of the Montañas Vacías loop: 13 km long and 350 meters downhill, most of it on a freshly asphalted, lonely forest road. 2021 was still a gravel road here... we're cheering even louder this time because it's going so unexpectedly smoothly and quickly for us. Our 10th stage takes us through some pretty nice landscapes, but we can clearly feel the anticipation of more treeless regions starting tomorrow.
Today last night's heavy rain forced us to take a small detour, as the probably very beautiful off-road section along the Rio Zafrilla in the deep clay ground would unfortunately be pointless for us. The next real highlight for us comes a few kilometers later on our 11th stage: the magnificent climb to the Refugio Collado del Buey in the Sierra de Javalambre. We spend a night at an altitude of 1,720 m and start early the next morning on the magnificent panoramic climb to the 2,020 m high Javalambre summit.
From the summit of the Javalambre it is a very smooth and varied descent of 900 m, down into the wide plains south of Teruel. We enjoy our best stop at a bakery in Linares de Mora. Here we buy a colorful selection of sweet and salty delicacies and taste most of them on the spot with two cups of strong coffee each. Immediately afterwards we leave the official Montanas Vacias loop and head for the picturesque town of Puertomingalvo. Immediately afterwards, for us a beautiful gravel road begins with wide panoramic views back to the hills around Puertomingalvo. We spend the night at the free camping area “El Planàs” near the pilgrimage site “Sant Joan De Penyagolosa”.
with a few impressions of our last two stages along the Mediterranean coast north to the Ebro Delta our video of this fantastic journey through and around the Montanas Vacias ... the empty mountains in the bikepacking paradise of Spain ends.
2025-03-08 04:05
