Group mountain biking in Madrid
Madrid is one of the few capitals where you can ride to your mountain biking. No bike rack, no two-hour start: twenty minutes of pedalling and you're on dirt, which is why midweek rides here actually happen.
Where people ride in Madrid
- Casa de Campo
- Half the city's training ground: seventeen hundred hectares of tracks, firebreaks and singletrack, with enough climbing to hurt. You get in from Lago, Batán or the Puente del Rey.
- Monte de El Pardo
- Open holm-oak country, long kilometres, few people. Parts of it are restricted, so riding out with someone who knows it saves more than one turn back.
- Cuenca Alta del Manzanares
- Towards Colmenar and the Santillana reservoir, where the hills stop being urban. The natural step up from an evening ride to a full day.
- La Pedriza
- The big destination, with the sierra's granite involved. You leave Madrid to ride and come back talking about the descent, and here going with people stops being a preference.