Hi all, hopefully we are doing a European road trip in August and thinking of visiting Andorra and the French Pyrenees.

We are fairly skint and will be riding for over a month so can’t really splash out on hiring guides 🙁 What are our chances of finding good XC routes alone? Has anyone found any guide books or route maps anywhere? Google search always just turns up expensive MTB holiday companies and it seems hard to get any info any other way!

Thanks
Dan

p.s. I bought a general MTB Europe book but it onyl really details the lift assisted routes.. kind of pointless as I guess these will be self evident when you get to the resort! In the UK it is easy enough to get hold of route guides e.g for the Lakes but can’t seem to find the equivalent books for europe. Perhaps I need to look at books in Spanish or French?

Stayed here for a few days the other week, with Mrs Tyred and Tyreds Jr. Its on the French side, south towards Perpignan but not far from Andorra. Half an hour or so away from ski lifts.

Right next to a comprehensive trail network around the Pic de Canigou, for which you’ll find a trail map here. I didn’t have nearly enough time to make the most of it, but what I rode was fantastic.

Can’t recommend the place we stayed highly enough – beautiful place run by lovely people for whom nothing was too much trouble, and they’ve got a trailer and garage workshop too! They do B and B as well as gites and will help you out with anything. I can’t wait to go back.

Yes you need to look in French and/or Spanish. It’s logical to expect there to be way more information available in the native language of the country than in English.

My French is pretty dire but I found this site when looking for routes in the Haute Savoire, there are 5000+ GPX files online. I suppose there are routes for Pyrenees too. You can see maps but to get GPS files you need to register (I failed to manage that but that’s due to me). there is search function by region (dept), mountain range (masif) etc

It’s not so hard to follow …

Itinéraires VTT avec traces GPS – Mountain Bike routes with GPS tracks

utagawavtt

I randomly picked this route near Pau link

A few words to help searches …

VTT (velo toute terrain – mountain bike)
Randonee – a tour
masif – mountain range
dept (department) an area/region

Aren’t there routes in Wikilocs?

BTW the outis option on the top right of the maps allows you to zoom in and out, so you can see the likely singletrack content of the route, also google translate in Chrome allows you to read the very useful comments section from the author.

I am 90% certain you’ll be able to find some good route you just need to work out the department / masif you’ll be riding in.

stuff in the P.O and Andorra

That ought to keep you happy for a few days! 😉

Thanks so much for the help folk! The Pic de Canigou area looks great! WikiLocs and the VTT site are just what I’m after. I could access the trail maps on VTT without registering somehow too.. ocrider, that link seems to be dead fraid.

http://www.biking66.com works fine, ichabod.

Can recommend Val Norrd bike park. Just back from a week In Andorra bike park and natural stuff. Some great routes.