Ciao forumites, been a while since I've been around. <looks in corners> You haven't done much dusting, have you?! 🙄

I'm after some general ideas/ thoughts and pointers for biking in Spain, specifically round the Alicante/ Murcia region. The missus is dragging me along to see her Dad's place in Murcia, and I thought I'd actually make it worthwhile by staying on for a few days afterwards and going to one of these guided biking places – a la joyriders.
Thing is, I can't find much info about such places in that region, I sold my bike bag a couple of years back, and the only airline serving airports round there at reasonable price is Easyjet.
So – anyone been riding round there and how was it? Is taking my bike on Easyjet a sure-fire way to get it smashed? Any other thoughts? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's been riding out that way.
Ta muchly

When I flew to Spain, Easyjet were fine: The bike survived intact and undamaged.

Baggage handling is done by a 3rd party (eg serviceair) so doesn't matter who you fly with, just need to pack carefully and have watertight insurance

Check out Easyjet's weight allowance rules though. One of my mates ended up paying massive excess baggage charges this year. Not sure if that is a common thing or if he was just unlucky. He had booked to take a bike but got charged too.

Still struggling to find anywhere to actually stay/ guide me for the singletrack. Seems the Costa Blanca/ Valencia region isn't as popular a place as Andalucia for biking villa/ guide type places 🙁

joyriders are ace – fact. very laid back and will sort you out properly.
ping them.
easyjet can be awkward wrt to weight ( or actually staff other than easyjet, who don't know the rules ), but buying the bike carriage exempts you from excess baggage so long as you are under 32kg on the box itself.
never had any trouble myself, have heard of others being given refunds due to incorrect charges being applied. read the ts and cs.
have a top time!

Sierra Espuna (closest mountain range to Murcia) has great bike trails, although none of it is waymarked but there are guidebooks written in English.

When I was out there the English folk that ran the hotel in Gebas (say Hebath and spit the H out as in loch) provided a guiding service it's called Hotel La Mariposa.

Or stay up in the village El Berro the (Spanish but English speaking, ask for Andres) guys that run the camping Sierra Espuna are proper bikers (as opposed to the hard tail fluoro lycra mincing down fireroads that most of the locals do) and might take you out if you ask nicely.

I would say tho – the Sierra Espuna starts at sea level and climbs to just over 1600 metres yes thats metres so has correspondingly tough climbs and technical descents, most folk seem to ride Orange Patriots for reasons that will become obvious if you go there and ride with them !

Ah the memories !! Missing the Mille Coin (74,000 corners) climb already !

hels, you're a legend. I did some research about a month ago and mtb espuna is a site that I came across that thought looked useful. It's not very well SEO'd, though, so I couldn't find it when I looked again.
I've now dropped them a line about dates…

I've got some routes round there in English, i'll scan them and email them to you if you want.

Could also be of interest. I'm staying at the in-laws place just up the hill from Murcia, so something to get me out of the house could be very appealing! 🙂

If you do the Espuna make sure they take you down "Salvaje" (I think thats how you spell it I can say all the tracks names in Spanish as those were the words I learned to understand but never learned to spell them)that was my fave kind of a Spanish version of the Gypsy Glen above Peebles with added rocks slopes twistyness and the odd Wild Boar just to make it interesting.

I also learned "facile" and "difficile" very useful when biking with Spanish riders.