• The dehesa. The largest continuous holm oak dehesa in Europe. A sea of ancient oaks that runs along the whole eastern side of the route.
• Wildlife. You will share the route with cattle, pigs and sheep the whole way. Keep your eyes open, and you will also find red deer, vultures, foxes and snakes—and with real luck, the Iberian lynx, one of the most endangered cats in the world.
• Belalcázar. The most monumental of the 17 villages. The castle of the Sotomayor and Zúñiga families holds the tallest keep in Spain, and the Convent of Santa Clara stands as another mark of the region’s history.
• Sierra de Cardeña y Montoro Natural Park. Natural habitat of the Iberian lynx, and one of the few places on the route where you ride under Pyrenean oak rather than holm oak.
• The parish tower of Pedroche. The symbol of the region, visible from very nearly every village in it.
• Minas del Soldado. An abandoned mining complex that once held the most important galena deposit in the province.
• Miramontes castle. The highest point on the route, and something like an old Celtic hillfort to look at. Watching the sun go down from up there is worth the 0.9-mile climb.
• Village festivals. Whenever you come, you will run into something: a romería, a patron saint’s day, a fair, a livestock show or a food route.
• Food. Los Pedroches produces the finest 100% acorn-fed Iberian ham there is. Cardeña is famous for its suckling pigs. Don’t leave without trying a good beef chop or a homemade dessert such as gachas. And at midday, in every bar, you will find people at the aparcería—the local habit of gathering over a glass of wine or a beer.
• The mountain olive groves. In the north, the route crosses hillside olive groves that produce some of the best organic extra virgin olive oil in Spain.
• The hermitages. More than a hundred small chapels stand alone in the countryside here. They make good places to stop for the night: open ground, shade, and often water and a toilet.
• Starlight Reserve. The region holds Starlight Reserve certification, which ranked Los Pedroches among the best places in the world for night sky observation.
• The high-speed rail station. Few places this remote are this easy to reach. There is a high-speed station on the route itself, with direct trains from Madrid, Seville, and Córdoba.
• The cranes. In winter, thousands of common cranes gather around the La Colada Reservoir on their way from northern Europe to Africa. Seeing and hearing them has become a draw in its own right.
• The waypoints.The 17 plates sit at the most iconic spot in each village. Hunting them down has become a game that pulls in bike travellers from all over.

When to go

• The best months are April, May, September, and October. Winter is cold here (0-2°C / 32-36°F), and summer is hot (36-40°C / 97-104°F).

Logistics

• You can reach Los Pedroches by train. The high-speed station drops you on the route itself. Journey times: Madrid 1h35, Seville 1h05, Córdoba 21 minutes.
• Note RENFE’s bike policy: bicycles must be dismantled and carried in a bag or case. Plan for that before you book.
• If you drive, you can park in any of the villages without trouble. Madrid to Los Pedroches is about 3h30 by car.
• The route is a loop and can be started and finished in any village.

Dangers & Annoyances

• You will pass through many livestock gates. They can be opened, but always close them behind you.
• The dogs are generally mastiffs. They bark, don’t bite, and are thoroughly used to cyclists going past.
• There are long stretches without shade, where you need to think ahead about water. But you are never really alone out here: any local will help you with whatever you need if you just raise a hand.

Travel Basics

• English is not widely spoken in the region. We’d suggest learning 20 or 30 words of Spanish before you come.
• Cards are accepted almost everywhere, but carry some cash anyway.
• Shops open Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 20:00, and Saturday 9:00 to 14:00. Bars and restaurants are open every day until 22:00.

What bike?

• The route is entirely rideable on tyres of 38mm and up. Gearing will not hold you back—you can ride quickly on almost all of it.

• Most of the region is fenced for livestock. Please don’t use private land to spend the night.
• There are plenty of good places to sleep out at the hermitages—there are over a hundred of them across the region—or in the parks on the edges of the villages. The website has a map of every recommended rest area and spot.
• Generally, nobody will disturb your sleep, though you may wake up surrounded by sheep bleating in your ear.
• If you’d rather be comfortable, the route passes a good number of rural guesthouses out in the countryside, hostels, very cheap albergues, and two- and three-star hotels. Prices run roughly €20 to €50 per person per night.

• There are public fountains in almost every village. Bars are open in the morning and afternoon for food and drink.
• The longest stretches without water are Santa Eufemia to Belalcázar (26 miles) and Fuente la Lancha to Villanueva del Duque (26 miles).
• Try the 100% acorn-fed Iberian ham, protected under the Los Pedroches denomination of origin and recognised worldwide. Other things worth ordering: the suckling pig in Cardeña, a good beef chop, and the Córdoba classics—flamenquín, migas tostás, salmorejo.
• Every village has small bars where you can get a coffee or a beer and fall into conversation with the locals. This is where the trip becomes what it actually is.
• You can generally find something to eat up until 22:00.

Suggested Itinerary

locationPozoblanco to Aldea del Cerezo

Day 1 (65 miles, +3,215 ft)

I always start in Pozoblanco. It is the largest town in the region, with the most services. The bike shops here—El Corre and Chavito Bike—will take your bike in ahead of time, build it, and keep your cardboard box in the back room until you come round again. That tells you most of what you need to know about how this place works.

The town lets go of you quickly. Within an hour, I am inside the thickest and finest holm oak dehesa in the region, and I do not really leave it again for four days. I stop in Villanueva de Córdoba at mile 24 (km 38); everyone should. Six miles later, I pass the high-speed rail station itself, standing out in the middle of the pasture, and that is the moment I understand my own region again: a train from Madrid arrives here, and then there is nothing in any direction.

After that, it is walls and gates. Dry stone on both sides, cattle that barely lift their heads as I go by, and a gate every few miles to open and close behind me. I could stop in Cardeña, which has the liveliest square in the region—five bars and more, and the place to eat their suckling pig. But on the four-day plan, I carry on into the Sierra de Cardeña y Montoro Natural Park, to Aldea del Cerezo. There is almost nothing there. That is exactly why I go: it is one of the best places on the whole loop to lie out and watch the sky.

locationAldea del Cerezo to El Guijo

Day 2 (67 miles, +3,480 ft)

Eight miles out of the hamlet, I reach Azuel and have breakfast at Bar Hermanos Ruiz, right at the entrance to the village. Watch what goes on around you while you eat. The bar is the post office, the doctor’s waiting room, the tourist office, and the place where the day gets arranged, because in a village this size, it has to be all of those things at once. If I have time, I walk next door to El Tejar, where a local artist has filled a yard with his own sculpture.

Then the oaks again, and the farms where the Iberian pigs put on the weight that ends up on every menu around here. I look up, and there are usually griffon vultures working the ground above me—and when they come down, they come down close. The track picks up the old mining railway and runs it into Conquista at mile 33 (km 53), where I stop to eat. North of there, the dehesa turns older and less handled by people than anywhere else on the route. This is the stretch riders tell me about afterwards.

Torrecampo comes at mile 50 (km 80), and Pedroche at mile 59 (km 94.7), where the parish tower by Hernán Ruiz II stands over the village and can be seen from half the region. I finish the day in El Guijo: a hostel, municipal buildings that take riders in, or my bivy up at El Calvario, the highest ground in the village.

locationEl Guijo to Fuente la Lancha

Day 3 (66 miles, +4,100 ft)

The hardest day, and my favourite. It opens on the Cordel de la Mesta, a drovers’ road that has been moving livestock down from the north for centuries and is probably the most technical stretch of the route. I am riding a right of way that was here long before any road in this province.

Santa Eufemia arrives at mile 13 (km 21), but the route does not let me go yet: it loops around the Sierra de Miramontes and comes back to its foot at mile 27 (km 44), so anyone who wants it can climb to the castle on top. Waypoint 18 is up there, and it is optional for good reason—0.9 miles with ramps touching 18%. I take it when the light is going. It is the highest point on the loop, and the view is the whole argument.

Down through farmland to the edge of the La Colada Reservoir, where the birds gather; in winter, the cranes, in their thousands. Belalcázar at mile 48 (km 78) is the most monumental village of the 17, with the tallest castle keep in Spain standing over the bridge, and Hinojosa del Duque at mile 56 (km 90) runs it close. The day leaves me in Fuente la Lancha, the smallest village of all of them, which, after Belalcázar, is a useful thing to see.

locationFuente la Lancha to Pozoblanco

Day 4 (66 miles, +2,985 ft)

The last day starts easy, on dehesa tracks used for horse breeding. At mile 14 (km 23) I join the mining rail trail and run flat through cuttings that seem to go on without end, the country shifting between pine and holm oak. The loop brings me back to Villanueva del Duque at mile 26 (km 42), through the abandoned Soldado mining complex—an entire industrial settlement left standing empty, which says more about what has happened to this region than I can.

Then the villages come one after another, and this is the stretch that shows you what Los Pedroches actually is: Villaralto at mile 31, El Viso at 35, Dos Torres at 40, Añora at 44, Alcaracejos at 48. Twenty minutes of riding between each one. You could stop for coffee in all five and still finish the day.

From Alcaracejos, the route turns into the northern hills and picks up the old line of the Mozarabic Way of St James, walked by pilgrims long before anyone rode a bicycle on it. It comes home to Pozoblanco across the dehesa on the Camino de la Guerra, where a last 330 yards of proper mountain bike terrain waits for anyone with something left. Seventeen villages, seventeen waypoints, and the Golden Acorn at the end of it.

Alternatives and options

The route is a loop, so you can start and finish wherever suits you—including at the high-speed rail station itself, which sits on the route. Because the villages are close together, the risk of getting stranded is low, and you can cut any number of shortcuts to trim the distance or add loops to extend it.

I set out four stages here because the climbing is gentle and 65 miles a day is within reach without much specific training. But I would rather you took six or seven. The point of Al-Ballut is not the distance; it is the hour you spend in a bar in a village of 800 people, talking to someone who has lived there their whole life. Ride it fast and you will have ridden a good loop. Ride it slowly, and you will have been somewhere.

Additional Resources

• Everything about the route is on the project website: alballut.com
• A Google Maps layer of lodging and services along the route, which makes planning straightforward.
• Hotels in Pozoblanco stock the printed Travel Guide, with everything a bike traveller needs. It comes with the illustrated map by @el_ciento.
• The project owes its inspiration to Ernesto Pastor, creator of Montañas Vacías. He visited in 2022 and wrote this piece on his blog: montanasvacias.com/2022/06/10/al-ballut/
• The association runs two events a year. Al-Ballut Bike Camp, in spring, teaches a small group of 25 people how to spend the night out with everything they need on the bike. Al-Ballut Bike Routes, in autumn, is a group departure open to riders from anywhere, with one aim only: to pass through the 17 villages. No time limit and no numbers pinned on.
• Anyone who logs all 17 waypoints is given the Golden Acorn by the association.