Two to Tango - a little break in Aragón and Lleida

[Turbofurball]

In September, after getting rained off twice, me and my other half changed tack from a moto camping trip - we packed light and stayed in hotels and hostels instead. We set off with two weeks and no plan past having our first night booked ... these photos were all taken on my old phone camera, sorry for the quality!

The first day involved lots of getting rained on, to the point it got through the rain gear and everything was soaked through. This photo was taken near Escaladei, we stayed in a small town by the Ebro.



The Aragón steppe is just lovely, there's loads of trails and windy roads. This is just above Mequinenza, with the morning mist lifting.



After a couple of days of mucking around there we headed north and passed through several different environments in one day (partly because we were just following a compass and got lost a bit). Near Ontiñena:



In the region of Sariñena:



Then East a bit over the Ebro delta (very bumpy roads, very flat, lots of corn farming), and up to Parque Natural Guara:



There's no off-road motorbiking to be had there since it's a protected nature reserve, so we did some hiking instead. Just before dusk if you're in the right place you can see throngs of eagles all returning to their nests, they're pretty intimidating given the adult ones can grow up to a 2.3m wingspan. I didn't get a photo of them

We decided to head East next. From the Parque we used the paved roads though Puente de la Sierra ...



... then over the border to Lleida ...



... to get to Àger, a little and very historic town which is home to both farming and outdoor "extreme sports". After a break of 10 years my other half went cross-country paragliding for the first time with an "instructor" (she used to hold a European cross-country paragliding record, but you can't just go flying alone with an expired license, lol) and they managed to go further than the instructor has been in 25 years from that spot. Meanwhile I headed South and got lost on little trails, so it was a good day all around.

After that we had a couple more day-trips from the town, there's both cracking roads and some nice easy trails too to the North and East.



Then it was off home again, though the trip back was mostly uneventful with half being across dull flat farmland and the other half being our local area that we've already ridden lots. We covered about 1500km in total.

20 mins away from home got treated to seeing some vultures fighting in a field ... we've never seen them in the area before, just the occasional Eagle and little stuff like Buzzards and Falcons, so that was a rare treat



Maybe next year we'll actually get to do the camping ... and we didn't even set foot in the Pyrenees. There's so much more to see!

[Turbofurball]

I watched a Spanish video on youtube of a group of 3 bikers who went from the south of Andalucía up along the Portuguese border and into Galicia. A lot of it looked really beautiful and the trails appeared pretty chill so I'm sure you'll have a great time!

April in Bilbao might be a bit rainy though, lol