Guestbook

I can’t thank you enough for how well you’ve looked after me this week in the Alpujarras... pampering me, showing me the area you live in, feeding me like a queen, sharing your home with me and most importantly helping me discover just what I can be capable of on my bike when I try!

Having just returned from a week with Vamos Cycling, I can say honestly, it has been the best training experience of my life. The locality provides some of the most beautiful scenery you are likely to encounter in Europe. The road surfaces are perfect, and there is a wide choice of agonisingly hard (Hors Categorie and Cat 1) climbs, climbs to above 2000m, and flatter riding on the coast to do. I also particularly enjoyed riding with a couple of local teams, though by the end of the week, wasn’t much competition. I have ridden across Europe, in France, Italy and other parts of Spain, but my experience of Andalucia and Cadiar shows the area to be one of the finest for road riding Europe has to offer. Off the bike, Gary and Sarah’s lovely house was a welcome home I didn’t want to leave. Every day we were confronted with a fantastic selection of food, in a relaxing and comfortable atmosphere. Chilling out off the bike is one of the most important parts of a training camp, and I could not have been better able to unwind if I was at home. Testament to both this and the quality of the roads are the 900km we rode during our stay, averaging 2500m of ascent each day, including 2 days on the relative flat of the coast road. Not only am I happy to recommend Vamos Cycling for a training base, for accessing races in Spain or for leisure riding, I am also planning to go back this year to take advantage of this wonderful location. Thank you Gary and Sarah, and anyone who is considering a visit – stop considering and start booking – you won’t regret it!

I have just come back from a great week of riding in Spain. We stayed with Gary and Sarah who run Vamos from their really nice house in the village and I can thoroughly recommend it. The whole week was amazing - brilliant rides with a real variety of scenery, Gary rode with us every day and showed us the routes and we usually stopped for a coffee or some lunch depending on how we felt. There is also some good trail running nearby, or flatter running along the riverbed of the valley they live in - if you considered going, I would focus on the biking though. The roads in the area are almost entirely perfect blacktop - I think it is something to do with EU funding to try and repopulate the area, with the result that the surfaces are perfect, and there are few cars. Good for climbing and awesome for descending. Climbs varying from a few kilometres to 20k or so - a couple of Cat 1 and one which would be HC if it was classified, so enough for anyone. You can also roll (or be driven) down to the coast for a nice easy spin out on a couple of days. We rode with Gary's Spanish club on both Sundays which was good fun - some seriously keen lads there and really welcoming. The food was also great - we either ate in or went to a local restaurant each night, plus porridge/lunch/cake/tea etc when we got back from riding each day, plus a big breakfast - whatever we wanted really. We rode about 920k of mostly hills, so it was a solid week - but a lot easier to do in 20degree sun than in the cold drizzle of Surrey. If you are thinking of early season warm weather riding this year or next, I would give this a really good look, there are also sportives out there as well. Having gone to Spain before to ride, both the area and Gary and Sarah made this a much better week than I had elsewhere and also a lot cheaper. Ian Crabtree Many thanks again for making our few days away so amazing. Great hospitality, spectacular rides Gary, as was your cooking Sarah. I only wish we could have stayed longer. I very much hope to see you again next year.
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Thanks again for making us feel so welcome in your home. I am sure we will be back. You did a grand job looking after us, we really did appreciate your hard work and efforts.

Just a note to say thank you for a great weekend. We had a really enjoyable time with comfortable accommodation, excellent riding and plenty of sunshine.