Bikepacking routes in the Pyrenees?

Hiya.

Myself and my girlfriend are planning a trip to the Pyrenees this summer and wondered if anyone has any suggestions for predominantly gravel rides in the area? Some road riding is cool too just not too busy would be ideal. We’re hoping to stay in camp sites if that’s a viable option? A combination of easy/medium rides between campsites and challenging day rides that could be accessed whilst based at the campsites would be ideal. I’m aware these requests could be quite utopian and understand if the riding there only comes in one mode only ie hard.

We’ll be flying into Barcelona and I guess taking a train to get out into the mountains so anything within that region would be great. We’ll have around 7 days for riding.

Thanks in advance.

Tom.

Anyone got any info on this at all?

I've been MTBing several times in Ainsa, which is essentially a thousand year old castle-town which now doubles as a trail centre Zona Zero. The Camino de Santiago crosses the area, with the yellow-on-blue signs visible where the Camino overlaps with Ainsa's ZZ routes, which are signed trailcentre-style.

Camping Ainsa is nice.

ask @edscoble , he's done some tours there.

Barcelona means plenty of riding to be had in Catalonia, 7 days isn't enough to explore the whole Pyrenees but plenty for Catalonia.

I would look into the train to Vic, then ride, as riding out of Barcelona is horrendous at times, I'll post more when I'm less weary!

Thanks a lot guys. That’s really helpful!

I am considering the route below myself.
If you lookt at the OSM cycle map on RWGPS, there is one called TP which I can only interpret as Trans-Pyrenees

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/30038482

The N260 between Campo and Ainsa is a fast road, and A138 to Bielsa also. If you don't need to visit Ainsa you can use part of this loop to reach Laspuña:

https://zonazeropirineos.com/en/rutabtt/zz-002-2-back-to-the-pena-montanesa/

Amazing! Will check that out.

Have you looked on bikepacking.com (at least I think that is what the site is called) I think there is a trans Pyrenees write up on there

Oh excellent! That website is brilliant.

Yeah but kind of annoying in a omg I wish that was me kind of way

Very much so

Write up of my trip through the Pyrenees here.
Where did you guys end up going? @Garbles

Excellent write up there.

Our trip was definitely less challenging than yours however. We got the train to La Pobla de Segur and then cycled via roads up to Benasque over a couple of days. The route we’d planned on Komoot turned out to be impassable when we realised it was trying to take us down a 50 degree cliff close the Anetto. Unfortunately there were no other ways around this area so we decided to base ourselves in Benasque and do day rides out from there. I found some incredible gravel routes the most notable being a loop around Sierra de Chia with really stunning views. We had amazing riding but feel like we only scratched the surface of that area and am definitely going to go back to explore more.

A bit late I know but for anyone else, the Vias Verdes is a useful resource:
http://www.viasverdes.com/en/principal.asp

There's a section from the coast north of Barcelona that leads into the Pyrenees via Girona. I've done it in reverse along with the section going West from Irun and both were great.