May is the time to be cycling in Sierra Nevada National Park. Today it\u2019s 22\u00b0C with a slight breeze \u2013 heavenly conditions for riding up mountains \u2013 and yet I\u2019m still guzzling through water like the 75,000 acres of Almer\u00eda\u2019s fruit and veg greenhouses that lie just a few kilometres east of where we ride today. They use around 48 Olympic swimming pools of water per day; I should get by on a couple of litres.<\/p>\n
Our base is in V\u00e9lez de Benaudalla, a small town of around 3,000 people that\u2019s nestled between Granada in the northwest and the mountains of Sierra Nevada in the northeast. It\u2019s a tight-knit town, the kind of place where patrons will abandon a bar because a non-local has taken it over, but friendly nonetheless. Things feel instantly familiar when I\u2019m greeted outside Cycle Sierra Nevada by Charlie, a sinewy teenager in a Westport Gaelic football shirt (I get half my genes from County Mayo). His razor-sharp tan lines teeter between freckled, brown and just plain red on arms and thighs. This must be the neo-pro ride partner I\u2019ve been promised for the day.<\/p>\n
The owner of Cycle Sierra Nevada, and Charlie\u2019s boss, is Cormac Keeney. To call him pretty handy on a bike would be a serious undersell. In 2018 he set the then-record for the Donegal Ultra Race, which covers 555km with over 6,000m of climbing. His average speed was 29.5kmh.<\/p>\n
From his immaculately appointed bike workshop and coffee bar Cormac makes us an Americano and lays out today\u2019s route. It incorporates a reversed portion of Stage 13 of the 2026 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, but unlike the pros, our main climb will be La Ruta de la Cabra \u2013 that\u2019s \u2018The Goat Road\u2019 in English \u2013 which will take us up to 1,360m above sea level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May is the time to be cycling in Sierra Nevada National Park. Today it\u2019s 22\u00b0C with a slight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[223959,4985,217023,640,101,56,54,55,247610,223961],"class_list":["post-749537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-best-bike-rides","tag-cycling","tag-cyclist-magazine","tag-spain","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vuelta-rides","tag-western-europe-rides"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}