The RiDE Guide to spain and portugal motorcycle routes

Is there a better place to ride a motorcycle than Spain? Well, possibly Portugal… but both countries and their amazing roads are covered by this updated, in-depth guide to touring the Iberian peninsula.

Since our first Guide to Spain in 2014 (and Portugal in our Tour 2016 supplement) we’ve had so many suggestions for other great roads to ride and places to visit that updating the guide had to be done. Though Spain and Portugal are a long way from the UK, the riding is so good and the rest of the experience so outstanding that it is always worth going – and with this guide, touring there should be effortless.

Enjoy the RiDE Guide to motorcycling routes in Spain and Portugal… and enjoy discovering over 60 different routes and our specially put-together 15 tours in these amazing countries on your bike.

Our routes

 

We have motorcycling routes radiating out from 25 locations - from the very north of Italy to Sicily in the south. As Italy is a fair ride from the UK, we have weighted our coverage to the northern areas, most easily reached from Britain.

Rather than just one circular ride in each location, we’ve planned two, three or sometimes four different day trip routes in most locations. This gives you the option of riding to a base destination and then enjoying a couple of day’s riding cloverleafing out fro your hotel each day, rather than having to keep moving.

However, if you want to see more of the country, we have also planned a series of three-day tours across popular riding areas. Why three-day tours? To allow you you to take a relaxed three days to ride to the start point from Britain, take three days doing the tour, then spend three days returning - so the tours can fit in with just one week off work using both weekends.

Of course, if you have more time you can extend any one of the tours by adding one or two of our day trips, as our tours link together the towns where we’ve based our other routes. We also have two two-week tours of Italy, crammed with brilliant riding.

All our route descriptions include the mileage, a riding time and some suggested stops. The riding time does not, however include time spent at those stops - so if a routes is five hours long, expect to add two hours to that by the time you’ve had lunch, a few coffees, filled up ad stopped for pictures. Our routes are structured to be full days in the saddle and we have provided some long-day options as well as shorter ones, bit if you take long stops that will make even short routes into long days.

Rather than filling these pages with long directions, we’ve created google maps and sat-nav files for all the routes, which can be found at the end of each route description. Click on one of the destinations from the list on the right or visit our Italian routes page to search or browse.

Check out our regional SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE tours

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Spanish MotoGP location map
Spanish MotoGP trip routes

Want to ride to Spain to watch one of the MotoGP races? We've created a route to get you to each of the four rounds of the pinnacle of motorcycle racing

Motorcycle touring in Spain and Portugal
Total Touring: Spain and Portugal

We've put together 14 tours of Spain and Portugal in ready-to-ride packages - simply download the GPX files and swing your leg over your bike

All you need to know

Featured
Mark Manning and Simon Weir go motorcycle touring in Spain and Portugal for RiDE magazine
Behind the scenes: how we did it

Months of planning, two intense weeks and 4000+ miles to produce 60 pages… and hundreds of downloadable routes

Motorcycle touring in Spain
Motorcycle touring in Spain and Portugal: the basics

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Please note: This page contains the route files for The RiDE Guide to motorcycle touring in Spain and Portugal which came free with RiDE magazine in July 2018. These website page are not regularly updated, so please check all critical information before you travel. All route files are in .gpx format. Garmin and BMW users can download the main file, which contains all the routes and our recommended hotels as separate waypoints. TomTom users can download the individual routes and use the Tyre software to convert them. For many routes we also have Google Map links. However, as Google Maps will not plot routes over seasonally closed high Alpine passes (such as those in the Pyrenees) when they’re shut, these may not work for every route all year round.