Aday Palmero, one of the voices behind the podcast La Escapada Cultura Ciclista, chronicles a weeklong cycling journey from Madrid shared by several friends who seek to travel by bike and disconnect from the world and everyday life. Tomás Montes captures the Spanish countryside in a photoset that beautifully illustrates the trip.  

Some trips require little preparation, just an afternoon to get the necessary equipment, load the bike and set off. Others we plan months and months in advance. This trip would not be one of the improvised ones.

The idea came about a year ago, and it took us months to come to an agreement to combine the work and family schedules of six people from different regions of Spain – Galicia, the Canary Islands, and Madrid – all of this in order to get away for a week’s cycling. In the end, we managed to choose the date and destination. We agreed to meet in Madrid, at Javi’s house, to leave from his home in Rivas-Vaciamadrid and start a week of heat, laughter, cold, and suffering in equal parts.

It may sound cliché, but we live in a routine dictated by the work that marks our daily lives, we spend countless hours carrying out tasks that allow us to continue living in today’s society. A part of us refuses to accept it, but we still accept it because we hope to reach better goals, to make life plans that take us away from the repetitive routine of our daily lives, even if it is only for a few days.

Those of us who consider ourselves cyclists have the bicycle as an escape valve, and we dream of pedaling for as long as possible to get away from the hustle and bustle of the cities and the people who crowd them. This is precisely what we wanted to do on this trip. Six friends, six bikes loaded to the brim with clothes, food, and other cycling paraphernalia to escape from our daily lives and ride through places that are near for some and remote for others.

I have always been struck by the diversity of people that cycling brings together. We have temperaments and ways of being that have nothing to do with each other, but that fit together at the rate of pedaling per minute on a bicycle. Everything we are comes with us, not only in our bags, and somehow we mould ourselves to create a new space for the experiences that others bring. We don’t judge, we listen and learn. We embrace the differences to cohere as an entity that rolls together, each one with his freedom, with his space, always on a par with his fellow man.

On the first day, we leave the city and head northeast, taking dirt tracks that gradually separate us from the crowds and the city, leading us towards the province of Guadalajara, passing the El Vado reservoir with its ghost town, created to house the workers responsible for the construction of the dam during the years of Franco’s dictatorship. We advance under the sun and look for shelter when night falls. Shelters or roofs attached to old hermitages are good places to spread out our sleeping bags and watch the stars. The night brings the temperatures down and those of us who are less experienced begin to notice the differences between the equipment we have brought with us.

Although we get up early every day, we find it difficult to get going, we want the sun to come up to warm our bodies and we are not as efficient as we would like to be, which forces us to cycle for longer in the middle hours of the day.

The northernmost point of our journey and therefore the point of return is the Cañón del Río Lobos, in the Soria province, one of the highlights of the route in terms of beauty. The crossing runs along the river along paths covered by an immense forest of juniper and pine that runs between vertical limestone walls, more than 200 meters high, that lead us to the hermitage of San Bartolomé, a Romanesque construction from the 13th century that conserves practically all its forms intact.

Given that the route is circular, we must head south. We take the opportunity to approach the Hoces del Río Riaza Natural Park. The kilometers are weighing us down, the day has been very hot, and between lack of energy and navigation failures, we decide not to follow the river’s route. However, we don’t miss the opportunity to contemplate some of its beauty. We look out over the cliffs where one of the largest colonies of griffon vultures in Europe nests, which makes the place unique and means that it can only be visited for a few months of the year. The days go by, and the mountains of Madrid are approaching. It is our turn to return to the big city, climbing some of its most emblematic mountain passes, such as Navafría and La Morcuera. We play with their descents, either by road or by stony paths. On the last night, we allow ourselves the luxury of sleeping in hotel accommodation to escape the cold of the mountains. It is Ciclo Lodge, a hotel designed by and for cyclists, with the comforts that this implies.

The next day, we have to return to our starting point, leaving behind the calm of the villages to drown in the bustle of traffic, honking horns, traffic lights, and hostility toward the calm rhythm of the cyclist. In the blink of an eye, we are in the middle of everything that, for a few days, we had hidden from.

I would like to thank Javier García (Xinolugo) for making the trip possible, for his hospitality, and for being the reference from which to learn. To Tomás Montes, for his order, his attention to detail, his valuable advice, and for immortalizing the images of this journey. To Pedro Monzón, for his generosity in sharing his life with others and for being a source of inspiration for this text. To Kike, for being the link between two worlds that have little to do with each other, but which have blended to create a whole that we will remember for a long time. To Carlos García, for coming with me from the farthest region with the illusion of discovering and embracing what makes us different. This is our version, a fraction of what happened. For a longer version, you have to join us on the bike, be part of the group, and tell your own story.