It’s not often on an MTB ride that my sides hurt more from laughing than from climbing or bombing down a mountain. But this summer I headed over to Spain with my family on a family vacation where I fortunately also get to ride as many trails as I can find. I knew the region in the Pyrenees I was going to had almost no trails, I had contacted Jackman from Delicious MTB if I could go riding with him. Delicious is Jackman’s MTB holiday outfit, and they offer bespoke MTB holidays where you stay in their accommodation (poolside and beaches nearby) and he and his fellow guides take you to some of the best enduro trails in Spain.
Not only a great opportunity to get to some really good trails, (looking for trails is just really time-consuming and tiring) but to vlog about the experience. I had the Canyon Torque with me (video review upcoming) which is an amazing enduro bike, my wife sent me off with a kiss, so had all my bases covered.
All but the “health” base though, I had had some health issues leading up to my vacation, so I wasn’t anywhere near optimal fitness level, and the 35 degrees Celsius weather hit me hard on the day with Jackman on the mountain. Nevertheless, I had such a blast.
We hit two areas, what Jackman calls “Sugar Mountain” with a huge number of trails set out. We started from the Parc San Salvador of the little Spanish town of Santa Coloma de Farners, a bit south of Girona. (You can check the route we did here.)
The trails were largely natural but with “mildly” man-made features here and there. Flow trails, technical rocky sections, jump features, rock eggs. Relatively short uplifts which you can ride well with an enduro bike, and more time to shred. The works. It was so sweet there, I now understand why Jackman calls it Sugar Mountain.
The only thing stopping us from continuing till dusk was the oppressive heat and my lack of physical fitness. So after a number of lines and stopping to film the experience, we set off to a region nearby, closer to the coast which Jackman called Sun Canyon. The scenery was just incredible, with vista’s to the sea, huge rock formations and trails winding over and around them. And trails with a lot of dust.
Before hitting that final dust, Jackman and I sat down for a talk about what he did and why, and ended up as a kind of MTB philosophy stand-up comedy session, with mountain biking wisdom, a lot of silliness and barrels of fun. To top it off, Scandi flicks on dust sections, smokescreens, and cold beer and tapas to wash it all down.
Never has been clearer to me, that riding a mountain bike, for me is all about having fun in the most fantastic scenery, making friends through the mutual love of the sport. It was a blast. I would recommend riding with Jackman any time and look forward to heading over to the Delicious accommodation in the near future and ride those beautiful dusty trails again. Hopefully this time in better health for more fun.
