Escaping winter to find (trail-) gold in Gran Canaria

Given the fact that we live in Switzerland we are pretty spoiled with epic singletrails. What’s missing in Switzerland is an ocean, tough. Both of us like water and love some sort of water sport (surfing or kite surfing). End of November 2015 there was something else missing in Switzerland that should be there: Snow.

Not enough snow to go freeriding, the urge for outdoorsports, the love for the ocean and 2 weeks holidays made us thinking about heading somewhere where we could get some more time on our bikes as well as some time in the water – and if possible it should be warm.

That’s when we started thinking about what exactly we wanted – which resulted in a small list of requirements for the destination:
– good Trails
– warm climate
– surfing possible
– Not too far away (The ultimate destination for surfing and biking – New Zealand – was unfortunately a bit too far away for a 2 week vacation)

Even tough there weren’t too many criteria to fulfill, the list of potential destinations was not huge:

– North coast of Spain / Basque (but too cold in December)
– Algarve (supposed to offer good riding)
– Morocco (decent shuttle options around Marrakech – but too far away from the ocean)
– Gran Canaria (Jimmy, a friend I met while on a Surftrip told me it’s good for biking)
– La Palma
– Finale Ligure or in general Liguria (if you get lucky there are waves in the mediteran sea)

Cheap flights and the word of Jimmy convinced us finally to head to Gran Canaria. We did search for shuttle options and trails in general beforehand but didn’t find a lot. But well, there was the word of Jimmy and we took it for granted.

Read more about our journey on my new website: Mountainbiking MTB in Gran Canaria