Cádiz to Gijón 646 miles
In April 2019 I cycled a Spanish End to End, from Cádiz to Gijón, with my chum Nigel.
There’s no standard route for crossing the Iberian peninsula. But a candidate has emerged recently based on the Vía de la Plata, one of the traditional pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.
It’s now the N630 highway, which runs all the way from Seville in the south up to Gijón on the northern coast – over 800km. Thanks to being bypassed by the new A66 autoroute running parallel to it, the N630 offers a good lightly-trafficked road the length of Spain.
The N630 was the basis of our route. Our total distance from Cádiz to Gijón (including a few back-road alternatives) was about 650 miles, via Seville, Monesterio, Mérida, Cáceres, Plasencia, Salamanca (my favourite town in all of Spain), Benavente, León and Oviedo.
We spent ten days cycling (about 60–80 miles per day) on touring bikes and took three rest days en route, making a two-week trip in all. Blog posts are listed below.
Day -3: Gatwick to Seville
Day -2: Seville to Olvera
Day -1: Olvera to Arcos de la Frontera
Day 0: Arcos de la Frontera to Jerez (to Cádiz)
Day 1: Cádiz to Seville
Day 3: Seville to Monesterio
Day 4: Monesterio to Mérida
Day 5: Mérida to Cáceres
Day 6: Cáceres to Plasencia
Day 7: Plasencia to Salamanca
Day 9: Salamanca to Benavente
Day 10: Benavente to León
Day 11: León to Oviedo
Day 12: Oviedo to Gijón
Day 14: Bilbao
How-to guide and more information
More details are in the Guide to Cycling Cádiz to Gijón which explains how best to do and enjoy it, and links to the full route stage by stage.
Related rides
I’ve also ridden across northern Spain on the Camino (Frances) de Santiago. For details, see the Camino de Santiago index page.
Cycling Plus article
I wrote about my experiences on the trip for the August 2019 issue of Cycling Plus. You can read the article here.