Winter cycling in Spain – In this video, I break down what riding here is actually like when the temperatures drop; from cold morning starts to big midday temperature highs.
I talk through the whats key to staying comfortable on winter rides, what to expect from the weather, and how conditions can change dramatically throughout the day.
I also take you with me on three different rides to show a mix of typical winter conditions and share a bit of everyday life as an amateur cyclist living and training in Spain.
Whether you’re planning a training camp in winter sun, thinking about moving here, or just curious about what winter riding looks like in southern Europe, this should give you a real world look.
My current gear:
Bike – Van Rysel RCR
Bike computer – Wahoo Element Bolt V2
Camera – Insta360 X4
Shoes – Van Rysel RCR carbon road shoes
Helmet – Van Rysel RCR MIPS
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instagram.com/theexpatroadie
[Music] Hello and welcome back to the channel. So, winter cycling in Spain, what is it really like? So, this last week or so, it started dropping a little bit cooler out here. But yeah, I thought I’d make a little video about what is winter riding in Spain actually like. Um, it’s obviously not fully winter yet. Um, it definitely gets a lot colder than this uh in January, February time. Um, but seeing as we’re coming into the winter months, I thought I’d make an early sort of winter video about cycling out here. So, we are currently midway through November. Um, and according to Apple weather right now it says it’s about 15°. Um, it’s half 10 in the morning. So what I tend to find uh out here is that uh early in the morning the temperature can can be really low. Um and by about 9 10:00 the temperature picks up and then um what you find is that you can actually have quite a high temperature through the day while the sun’s out especially if it’s a sunny day only for the temperature to drop again in the evening. I guess that’s probably the same everywhere else um as well. But what I find out here is that the variance in the temperature is pretty high in terms of you know quite cold in the morning and then really quite warm in in the midday sun. As you can see, it’s quite a nice day. Few clouds in the sky, but the sun is poking through, so it’s warming up quite well, actually. Um, it’s definitely going to be a shorts day on the bike. Uh, maybe even short sleeve jersey for this. I know you guys in the UK are probably going to hate me for this video cuz um I’ve heard it’s definitely getting colder over there already. Yeah, I don’t know how you you do it. Honestly, I tip my hat to you guys who who keep riding in the winter out there. So, in the video, what I’m going to do is uh I’m going to take the camera with me for a few rides and hopefully over the course of a week um and hopefully we can show you some different sort of weather fronts. Yeah, as I say, today is a bit sunny and cloudy. Uh but let’s see what the weather’s going to bring us over the next week or two. Um, we’re also going to do a Sunday ride where I usually have to get up quite early. Um, obviously I’ve got a family to look after. So, I don’t want to be out all day on Sunday during midday. So, I get up quite early and go out for a ride. So, yeah, you can see what it’s like getting up early out here in Spain. Yeah, at the moment just taking the dog for a little stroll down the beach. He’s happy. Not sure what he’s doing, but it’s beautiful day today on the cars. Today is uh just a short little zone 2 ride. Um today is a Wednesday, so I’m going to do just a short little midweek ride. Um I think tomorrow we’re going to do hopefully some inter riding and then yeah, we see how the how the week goes. All right, let’s do it. [Music] So, I’m going to head home quickly. um and get kitted up, get ready to go out on the bike for a short little ride. Not quite sure what kit I’m going to go for today. Um as I said, it’s feeling quite warm to be honest. So, it’s definitely going to be short. Um it’s just what I wear on the top. Maybe I’m going to go with a short sleeve jersey and then take my light um windbreaker jacket with me as well. Um what I tend to find for riding out here in Spain, what works really well is having lots of thin layers. Um, so, um, like I said, the variance in temperature can be quite high. So, if you’ve got lots of thin layers that you can take off and pack away, you can start with your jacket on, your your lightweight jacket, and then you can take it off, roll it up, and put it in your back pocket. Um, I definitely prefer doing that rather than wearing, you know, a proper thick winter jacket. Um, cuz if you do that and you start to warm up, you can’t really take it off and and roll it into your pocket. So yeah, lots of thin layers really helps. Like a thin G layer as well. Um, obviously thin gloves to to keep the hands warm. I don’t think I need gloves today. But yeah, let’s get home. Let’s get kitted up and then let’s ride. All right, so we’re kitted up and good to go. In the end, I’ve gone with the short sleeve jersey, the lightweight sort of windbreaker jacket, and then I got shorts on as well. So yeah, it’s not that cold at all to be honest. Um, and this jacket will probably come off if I start to warm up a little bit. Right, let’s get out there. [Music] Come on. [Music] So, midday sun is on. We’re about to take the jacket off. sweating underneath there. Super warm now. [Music] All right, that’s today’s ride done. Just a bit of a short wand. Did an hour and a half in the end. Happy with that. It’s warmed up apparently. According to Apple, it’s 19°. Um, but it feels really warm in the sun, which you can see poking through up there. Um, so yeah, I had to take the jacket off. I was feeling a bit warm and a bit sweaty underneath the lightweight jacket for quite a while there and then in the end had to pull over and whip it off cuz it was just too hot. Yeah, this is uh winter in Spain. Can you believe it? Well, it’s not quite fully winter yet, but early winter in Spain, let’s say. Goodbye, Mr. Sun. Welcome to the office. and we’re going to do a little bit of data analysis here. So, I should mention that obviously Spain is a big country. Um, the temperature can vary wildly from the north to the south and all across it. I’m based just south of Barcelona. Um, so the temperature around Barcelona is, I would say, kind of in the middle generally for Spain. Obviously, the south is going to be warmer. Uh, some of the more northern parts, if you go across to uh the Bas country, all that area that’s probably going to be a little bit colder. Um, so keep that in mind when I talk about Spain, I’m talking more about just this kind of area in particular. Um, and what I’ve pulled out from weatherpark.com is the daily temperature range uh across different cities uh around Europe. And what I’m trying to show here is that in the winter, Barcelona has quite a high level of uh range in temperature. Um, so the temperature increases by 8.5° from the coldest to the hottest part of the day uh during the winter. Other places like uh London um the the range on average is only 5°. France is the same. Germany the range on average is only 4° uh at least in Berlin. So yeah, we can see that Spain in general, if you look at Seville in the south, Madrid in the center, and Barcelona here, um the range in temperature is quite high. So that kind of validates what I was thinking on on what I was trying to say before in that um being able to take off your layers while you’re cycling can can really make the difference if you’re riding out here in Spain in the winter. you know, you get out on the bike in the morning and it can be in Barcelona as low as 5° uh if you leave early in the morning. Um I’ve done some rides, you know, around January time where it’s 5° when you leave and then it can pick up to 14 15 and I think actually this can be even higher than that if you’re in the direct sunlight. So, you definitely want to be able to take off your layers while you’re riding to stay within kind of the optimal zone, right? I’m going to get kitted up and head out for another ride. It’s a little bit cloudy today, so let’s see how we go. I don’t know if you spotted this box here behind me, but I’ve got some Elite Wheels uh carbon rims in the box there. And in here, this mystery box contains a group set. So, got some plans for that. You’re going to have to stay tuned to the channel to see what we’re getting up to. All right, so we’re kitted up and good to go. It’s very strange the weather today. Don’t know if you can see it very clearly, but it’s really moody. It’s like quite warm actually. It’s warmer than it should be uh for this time of year, but it’s very cloudy, gray clouds in the sky, and it’s really windy. I don’t know if you can see the trees moving. So, what that means for today is I’m going to head off the coast and inland, which means we’re going to go and do a little bit of climbing. I like to do that when it’s windy because uh you’re quite exposed on that coastal road um to the wind. So, tried to avoid that as much as I can. And yeah, what I’ve got on today is lightweight glay, uh, arm warmers, which I can easily take off if I need to, and then shorts again. [Music] Yeah, it’s super windy today, but quite warm the temperature. So, bit of a strange one really. Approaching the start of the climb now and I’ve done a little bit of a warm up getting here and so I’m going to set myself a bit of a challenge. Once the climb starts, I’m going to basically try and sit at 300 watt for as long as I can. I was planning on doing an interval session today. Um, I think I’ll just use that as my interval. The climb is about 20 minutes long. So, let’s see if I can hold it all the way to the top. I don’t think I will, but give it a good crack. I’m sweating up. [Music] fresh. [Music] Well, I made it to the top of the climb. I think I managed to hold on to 300 pretty well. There was a couple of moments where I had to dip below it. Um, but let’s see. We’re going to have to have a look at the numbers when we get back to HQ. Oh, I’m definitely not in shape enough to be doing challenges like that. Right, going to take a minute to recover and then we’re going to head back down and stop for a coffee. I think we’ve earned it. [Music] [Music] It’s one of my favorite little cafe stops around here. definitely earned that today. Yeah, in terms of the clothing for the weather today, I think we pretty much got it spot on. It was a bit warm going up the climb obviously when I was putting the effort in. Um, I opened up the Glay. I could have taken these arm warmers off, but I couldn’t really be bothered to do that while I was trying to put out as much watts as I could really. Um, but then coming down the climb, it was spot on. Obviously quite windy today as well and it’s quite a cold wind. So although the temperature is not too cold, the wind is a bit chilly. So having the gle and the arm warmers to help me get down the descent was Yeah, I think that worked out really well. All right, I’m going to enjoy my coffee and move on to another day, baby. Let’s go. Bit of a gloomy, wet day today. Uh very very cloudy and gray, but it’s all right because we don’t actually have a ride planned for today. Um today I’m going to be taking a rest day and just getting round to cleaning the bike a little bit and uh getting it all prepped and ready for the weekend. But yeah, I’m going to throw up the power numbers from the ride yesterday. Super happy with that. I actually managed to hit my uh 20 minute personal best. Um I hit the fastest time on that climb that I’ve done. Uh, and I didn’t quite hit the 300 uh for the whole climb that we uh set, but I hit 247, I think it was. There’s a slight dip in power in the middle of the climb, which is where the climb actually kind of flattens out for a small section. So, I need to know that um next time when I hit that section, I need to try and keep the power turning onto the pedals to try and stay consistently up to 300 for the whole way. But yeah, super happy with that. Lot more training to go, but at least we’re making progress, right? I’m going to get this bike cleaned up and then we’re going to go for a ride Sunday morning. [Music] [Music] Good morning. Happy Sunday. It is uh 7:00 a.m. over here. We got the bike ready to go for a ride. It’s obviously dark. Sun’s not up yet. Um, it’s not too cold actually, but there’s a bit of a wind. So, I’ve got the long sleeve uh like a thermal kind of long sleeve jersey on with my lightweight jacket and then just shorts. It’s probably a little bit too cold right now for shorts, but I know that it’s going to warm up in a little bit. So, I’m just going to have to put up with being cold for the first sort of half an hour of the ride. And uh yeah, cuz obviously once the sun comes up and it starts heating up, you can’t take your bib tights off. Um and I know I’d overheat. So yeah. All right, I’m going to get on the bike and get cracking. [Music] I know. I know it’s I know it’s I know it’s I know I know I know I know [Music] I I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] I love the sun. I know the sun. I know the sun. I know. I know. I love I love I love the sun. [Music] All right, that’s the Sunday ride done. 75k in the end. So, not a huge one, but nice little training ride out and absolutely beautiful weather in the end. It warmed up a little bit, so jackets come off and yeah, super happy with that. Really enjoyed that ride this morning. So nice to get out for a longer ride. And yeah, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look at cold weather cycling here in Spain. Um, it’s not been super cold. It’s not completely winter yet. So, you know, sort of late late autumn, early winter. So, yeah, it’s actually been quite warm for this time of year. I think the forecast says that next week it’s going to start dropping the temperature even more so. So, yeah, it’s not been full-on winter. Um, but I hope we’ve been able to show a little bit about the different weather conditions and so on that that we get out here and what the riding is actually like. Um, I picked up a slight puncture on the front tire this morning on the ride. Um, it sealed enough to get me through. I noticed it at the very end of the ride. So, I limp home without bothering to fix it. So, now I’m going to get it fixed so that I can ride again next week. And I’ve got to clean the bike down again because this morning the roads were quite wet and so yeah, got a load of crud on the bike. So that needs to be sorted again. So yeah, then we move on to another week of training. Anyway, hope you enjoyed that and I will catch you in the next
1 Comment
Хорошая зима там!. Что-ж а я буду катать в своей локации, где 0 градусов сейчас:))