Cycling and Mountain Biking in the Costa Blanca
If you enjoy cycling, the Costa Blanca has a lot to offer, with it's many mountains and windy roads. It's no wonder that many people are coming here for cycling tours, where they can ride on roads from stages of the Vuelta España, Spain's national race.
For fans of cycling and mountain biking, the mountanous terrian of the Costa Blanca are the perfect playground.
Road Cycling in the Costa Blanca
Heading north from Alicante towards Alcoi and even further up to areas like Altea, Benidorm and Denia, there are many routes available for road cyclists of all levels.
If you are a real aficionado, you can take heart in knowing that riders such as Lance Armstrong based team training camps out of Altea and Denia, and that riders such as Tour de France yellow jersey wearer Victor Hugo Peña, Matt White and two time world champion Oscar Friere live and train in the area.
For a glance at what sort of climbs the area has to offer - from category 5's to category 1's, click thru the list of cycling climbs of the Alicante province (in Spanish) over at Rutas de Cyclismo.
Mountain Biking in the Costa Blanca
With so much in the way of offroad trails leading thru the mountains of the Costa Blanca, there is undoubtedly an abundance of mountain biking.
Finding decent information online, however, is a bit more difficult. The following sites offer some trail information and a bit more, however they are in Spanish: Peña el Crocodilo, Misrutas.net.
The folks featured below, Abdet.com, do have a couple of specific routes outlined online (here and here), and they do organize mountain bike trips in the Costa Blanca and can help to rent gear.
More Information
Package trips
These folks out of Abdet, near Guadalest in La Marina Baja, provide accomodation and route information, and can also organize tours and bike rentals. A tour of one of the routes that they feature has been written up here.
For serious riders, check out one of Graham Baxter's Sporting Tours, which offers course that have, in the past, featured riders such as Marcel Wust - a stage winner in all three grand tours - and Alejandro Valverde, Tour de France stage winner and runner up at the world road championships.
Bravo Bike also offer cycling tours in the Costa Blanca, with a 7 day tour that includes an optional day trip and ride on the island of Ibiza.
BikeNBed, operating in La Marina Alta, offer guided cycling tours and accomodation, and in addition they offer guided walking tours and are close to facilities for triathletes (pool and a track).