Planning a cycle tour route – northern Spain by ebike from Bilbao to Finisterre and back

In a little under two months I’m taking the eBike to northern Spain and the Basque Country for a 2000km cycle tour. I’m well into the planning and here I explain how I plan out a route in stages starting with a very rough route to which I then add points of interest to visit which often radically alters the route.

I use Cycle.Travel which is great for finding quiet back roads but also has the major benefit of showing elevation of each days clue allowing me to ensure that days with a huge amount of climbing do not also have long distances. This trip will take advantage of low accommodation costs in Spain to be hotel based so I’m currently booking hotels for each night and sp dividing up my route into day long segments. I first worked from my start point to near the half way point at Santiago de Compostela but then switched to working backwards from my last night near Bilbao along the northern coast & mountains. This avoids the risk of planning the entire route just to find the last days are either far too long or far too short.

The method described here would work for anywhere but the details of this trip is initially crossing the mountains to Burgos to take advantage of the warmer & drier May weather, then following the Eurovelo1 and Eurovelo 3 routes to where they diverge at Fromista. After this I’m on Eurovelo 3 for 3 days through Leon and Ponferrada but then split north and south, then north again of the route to visit Bronze Age villages in the mountains, Neolithic dolmens and Roman gold mines. From Santiago de Compostela I may head west to Finisterre if time allows or instead head north to A Coruna and the north west coast before returning roughly following the coast but with long detours into the mountains after Ribadeo.

Route planning thanks to the excellent https://cycle.travel/

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