All dates and details for the 2016 trips are out now. Click on the Trips heading above.

2015 has been the best year so far for the Great Rock trips run in partnership with Basque MTB. All the trips have a mountain bike skills element, which adds to the overall feel of the holiday without making it into a “skills clinic”.

Each day we spend up to an hour sessioning a section of trail or developing a riding technique. The rest of the day is spent riding, but all the time riders are under the eye of Ed, the skills trainer and Doug, the head guide. There is plenty of opportunity to follow or by followed by both of them and the feedback is that this really helps riders to progress their skills, flow over the trails better and take on new challenges.

We have three different trips.

The spring Backcountry Pyrenees has longer hours of daylight for more time on the bikes and concentrates on slightly lower altitude trails on mainly south facing slopes.

The autumn Backcountry Pyrenees trips take us higher into the High Pyrenees, with uplifts regularly taking us up over 2000m.

In the summer we run trips in the Basque Country on and near to the coast. Here the trails are shorter in length but rich in their technicality, beautiful ocean views and always close to the amazing Basque gastronomy to keep body and soul together.

On the Basque coast trips guests stay in one place and enjoy more off the bike time whereas the Backcountry trips involve more driving and staying in different accommodations. If you’ve seen the social media feeds then you know that we like to ride hard and eat well. Every year a good proportion of guests rebook to return again which we think is a great testament to the quality of both the riding, social atmosphere and great food that we like to share.

All photos by Douglas McDonald

Some great photos here taken by Doug on this year’s two Basque Country Trips. On these trips we ride for 6 days and include a skills session of an hour or so into each day to help people get the most out of the fantastic riding that there is in the area. We have a more mellow week which is a bit less technical and has some added activities and tours, and we have a more technical week with more riding time. We’ll be running two weeks again on the Basque coast next summer as well as our Backcountry Pyrenees weeks in the spring and autumn.

I’m just back from another successful Backcountry Pyrenees trip. On this holiday we travel by van to different riding locations each day for 6 days of singletrack  riding and skills progression. The variety is astonishing on this trip with each day seeing us riding very different trails in visually and geologically different areas. Most days have some van uplift as well as pedalling and we also run a skills session for a part of each day. There is plenty of time spent riding and lots of opportunities for good eating and drinking at the end of the day.

This trip is different from the Basque Skills Trip, which is based near the coast, in credit check payday loan that we travel more, see a wider variety of areas and have less uplift overall.

If you want more uplift, more food and less travelling the Basque Skills Trip is the one. If you want to see more remote parts of the pre-Pyrenees, ride very different trails each day and are happy with a bit more pedalling then the Backcountry Pyrenees is for you. Of course we change the trails each time on all our trips to make it fun for people who might want to come more than once and more fun for ourselves. Our high level of repeat bookings is testament to the quality of these holidays and we’re very proud of this!

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It’s that time of year when the Great Rock machine is on the road. Here’s a great video of one of the recent Great Rock / BasqueMTB skills & riding weeks. It was shot and edited by Pete, one of the guys who came along on the trip, who is also the man behind the Mountain Bike Rides website. Thanks Pete!

Quite a few bookings have already come in for next year’s Basque weeks. If you’re interested in getting a taste of northern Spain before then, we have something very special planned for the autumn

Here’s the latest news from Great Rock. I was going to shoot a riding video out my local muddy trails, as a way to illustrate how I’m looking forward to heading off to all the foreign destinations that I’ll be working in this year. But everything was covered in freezing rain making Calderdale pretty much unrideable. Instead I got Victor, our new dog, to do an introduction, then previewed the foreign trips and finished with some product reviews.

Included are Endura MT500 jacket, On One winter soft shell, Teko socks, Gore Oxygen bib 3/4, Continental 2.4 Rubber Queens, Maxxis Beaver 29, plus previews of other kit that will be getting used and then reviewed soon.