Its looking like I may well be heading to Gran Canaria for a week early October. Anyone got any experience of riding there? Would be renting bikes so recommendations on hire shops etc appreciated also.

http://www.free-motion.com/en/mountain-biking-gran-canaria/mountain-bike-tours/

Did tours with these years ago.
Loved the ride from top of Island back down to the coast

Just don’t do what I did on part of the trail in picture, hit a rock with pedal and tumble of bike and over the side of the path and down the mountainside. I was lucky as I ended upside down in a big agave cactus which stopped me falling any further. Your ear and nose bleed a lot when pierced by the ends of those Agave 🙂

[url=https://flic.kr/p/66xByR]GC 110[/url] by msh_sco, on Flickr

I’m just back from a long weekend there. I didn’t do any riding, but did go for a walk in the hills and the footpaths would be amazing to ride down. Enjoy

Been there loads as my wife is from there but I have only ever road biked there. When we go I’m with the family, staying in Las Palmas so the time I have is limited and road routes are much easier to find and follow. The road riding is ace.

I was road riding at Easter near Frontanales in the north when a big group of MTBers burst on to the road. they were all on trail/enduro type bikes and looked to be having fun so there is good MTBing there but its finding it which is the challenge. Freemotion do guiding but i got the impression some of these are a bit fireroad based?

Went to Gran canaria last year and did a 1 day ride with the Free Motion guys.
really good day out and great value.
Was picked up from my hotel, driven to the shop and allocated a Cannondale rush 29er, back pack, helmet, water and ham roll.
jumped into a bus with loads of other riders and shipped up to the top of a mountain range where we descended down to the seafront (41km). throughout the day.
great terrain to ride in, really hot day though so a welcome beer stop on the beach was taken by all.
had a great day but bear in mind this is run by a German company so the tour guide up the mountains in the coach was only speaking in German and the majority of riders were also German. Not speaking the language wasn’t an issue for me as i was there for the ride and the guide kindly filled me in on what was being said after he’d said it in German.
To get away and do something you love in a foreign climate was a welcome change from just sitting by the pool frying. :-).
Go for it.

Thanks guys, sounds like I should be able to get a decent days riding in. Will check out the Free Motion guys.

I used freemotion last year for a day mtb riding with Fridays group. Picked up in the morning from the hotel in caen picafort, driven to the start shop in playa, then a long 2 hour bus journey up into the mountains. Cannondale rush seems to be the standard bike, mine had shit tyres lacking in decent tread, made life awkward controlling on the slightly damp clay ground, quite a few sketchy moments. The majority of riders and tour guide was German, so German was the spoken language on the bus journey. On the ride the tourguide switched to English to accommadate other non Germans in the group. Some of the riding was good, I found the start stopping to hike your bike to gain height you lost riding down on tarmac tedious. The views to teide and other areas are amazing. This is only my opinion, but prefered the road riding I did 2 days before. You get great climbs and decents with the views. From what I gathered they are slightly restricted on mtb riding. Still better than wet cold windy UK. Off to Lanzarote soon for warm weather riding. Enjoy your time on Gran Canaria.

Thread Hijack……

Those that have done Road riding on Canaries / Balearics, Did you go organized or package trip, hire a bike out there and follow your nose?

Any recommended tour operators? Hire centres?

Open to location, would be a family free middle aged roadie break, 60 – 70 miles / day, average climbing, etc….

I’m out here at the moment as I have family here. I tend to use a diy approach for road riding – I have my own bike out here and a map. In the south there aren’t that many roads so it’s fairly easy to work out the routes. My other half has hired bikes from most of the places with decent road bikes – free motion, cyclo canarias and happy biking but we’ve never used their guiding. He’s never had an issue just popping in and getting something without prebooking but we don’t tend to be here at the busiest times for road cycling and isn’t bothered about getting a specific bike, just whatever they have.

The cyclo canarias maps are best for diy as they have elevation profiles for the main routes in the south.

Today’s ride was 70k with 1300m of climb.

Used freemotion for the road, hired bike, used local tourist map and did my own thing. Did roughly 100km. Not many roads in the south as above, easy to do your own thing.

Just got back from a week on Tenerife, took my own bike and found my own routes which was not really difficult. Wish I was still there, but at least I’m carrying a serious tan in to winter….