Our goal today is Roque Nublo (1803m) which is more or less located in the centre of the island. We start in Maspalomas at almost sea level. That means we have ~1800m uphill and 1800m downhill to go. We decide to take enough water and enough food with us – all in our backpack. We take road GC-500 and change to GC-505 shortly before we reach La Playa de Arguineguin. This morning it is cloudy and hence it is not so warm, yet. We follow GC-505 for approximately 11km until we reach Cercado de Espino. There we take a short break.
Up to now the road was quite flat. The next 7 kilometres will be quite ascending – up to 14.6%. We don't race up there this morning since our goal is still far away. The sun gets out sometimes, now. Our next break we have in El Barranquillo de Andres.
There we leave GC-505 to the left on road Lugar Barranquillo Andres heading to GC-605 (link).
This part of the road is also quite ascending but it is even nicer than the first part of the course. The road is less broad and there are almost no cars going up there. We follow the road up to Lugar Barranquillo Andres (link).
Here we take another short break. From that point it is less steep – at least for the next kilometres. We change to GC-605 on the right (link) and cycle further up the hill. We wonder if we will see the natives selling fruits and drinks up here again. And there they are – but this time there are quite some more customers around. This time we don't take a break but continue on road GC-605. To the right we see lake Embalse de la Cueva de la Ninas (link).
Then the road gets little steeper again. Now, the sun burns down on us and we are glad that we have enough water with us. This road seems to be endless. From time to time a car passes. Finally we arrive in Ayacata located beside road GC-60/GC-811. Ayacata has a small bar (Bar Casa Melo) (link).
This is a place where we may have bought some water but since we didn't know if this place was even open we had to carry all the water up here on our own. Anyway.... We take a short break again. Then we are ready for the final ascending. We turn left on road GC-600 (link).
The sign shows “Roque Nublo”. We feel that we are quite close to our goal. The last few kilometres are again quite steep. The number of turns seems to be endless and our legs are getting tired. Finally... we arrive at a parking site and a sign saying “Roque Nublo” (link).
But where is “El Roque”? Ah, there is a small path we have to walk up – we can see El Roque maybe 1-2 kilometres in front of us. We decide to follow this path and take our bikes with us. Some tourists give us strange looks since we are carrying our bikes around... but anyway. Even better than walking all the way down if our bikes would have been stolen 😀 After maybe 20 more minutes of walking and carrying our bikes we are finally there. We did it! 😀 Roque Nublo – actually meaning something like cloudy rock - is a quite mystique place. From time to time it is getting foggy and even from 100m away El Roque is almost invisible. It is even getting a little cold up here. We enjoy it to be up there and having the pain of 1800m uphill in our legs makes us feel quite good. And the fact that we have 1800m downhill in front of us makes us even happier 😀
After eating up almost all our food we carry our bikes back to the road. Our plan is to take a different route back to Maspalomas – using road GC-604. This will lead us through Los Cercados (located beside a barrier lake), through the woods and a lonely road back to Degollada de Tia Maria Diaz which is quite close to Maspalomas already. It should be mentioned that the part through the woods should only be cycled with a mountain bike.
And so we are rolling down the road back to Ayacata. There we turn left and follow road GC-815 further down to a junction (link). There we turn right on road GC-604. This road is also very nice – feels a little like being in paradise just rolling down the road and looking down onto the lake. Soon we arrive in Los Cercados. We pass this small village which seems to be at the end of the world. We follow the road which finally changes to some kind of path. From this point a mountain bike is quite helpful. We cycle up the hill until we reach the pass. From this point it just goes downwards... and we are really happy to have mountain bikes (watch our video). After an hour or so the path turns back to a road again (funny thing is that this “road” has the same number – GC-604 – all the time). Rest of the way home is just road – and it goes downwards almost all the time.
Back at the hotel we can hardly move any more 🙂 After 10 hours and ~3600m up- and downwards we are just looking forward for the buffet and for the bed 😀 Looking back this was the longest but also most amazing cycle tour we did so far on Gran Canaria.
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