As we round a corner and catch our first glimpse of Vejer de la Frontera, a cloud partially obscures the sun, casting deep shadows across the Andalusian landscape. As if by magic, however, the town’s white buildings are illuminated by a narrow strip of light. Perched dramatically on the edge of a cliff, they appear to gleam brighter than ever against the dark background. “It’s officially one of the prettiest towns in the country, according to the Spanish tourist board,” says Cal Jelley, my gravel bike guide, as we stop to take in the view. “You can kind of see why.”
Andalusia is one of the most popular regions of Spain, if not the whole of Europe, for Brits heading abroad. Its Mediterranean coast, better known as the Costa del Sol, is the spiritual home of cheap package holidays, unfortunate sunburn, and English breakfast paella. But the other side of the province, the 250km Costa de la Luz, stretching along the Atlantic, is less known, at least among us Brits. This is somewhat ironic, given that this area – or at least the seas immediately off it – played a defining role in British history. Just a short gravel bike ride southwest of Vejer lies Cape Trafalgar. It was here, 32km offshore, that Admiral Horatio Nelson fought the definitive naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars.
Yet, despite the fact that our capital’s central square is named after the Cape, and Trafalgar Day is celebrated every year by the Royal Navy, few Brits could point to its location on a map – and even fewer come to visit. Away from the coast, the area around Vejer de la Frontera has long been something of a no-man’s land. An area of salt marshes, sand dunes and inlets, it sat on the border between Christian Spain, to the north, and the last remnants of the Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus, around Granada, to the east.
Biking along a steel bridge
Bad luck strikes twice as Kennedy faces two flat tyres during the bike ride
“There’s a whole string of towns here that are still called de la Frontera – ‘on the frontier,’ in English – even though they’re nowhere near a border,” Jelley explains. And although the dividing line with the Arabic-speaking world shifted across the Mediterranean to Morocco over 500 years ago, the area is still sparsely populated. This, along with the relative lack of tourists, particularly in the springtime when we visit, makes it an ideal place to ride gravel bikes.
Gravel bikes are basically beefed-up road bikes, with fatter, mountain-bike style tyres, and frame geometry that’s better suited for steep descents. They have exploded in popularity over the last decade and a half, in part because they’re ideal for bikepacking – multi-day, off-road cycle touring trips. But also because they allow ordinary road cyclists to tackle more adventurous routes – involving dirt roads, singletrack MTB trails and, crucially, fewer cars.
A dusty pink sunset on the beach at Zahara de los Atunes on the Costa de la Luz
“Gravel biking is road biking, but without a lot of the bullshit,” is how Jelley puts it. Born and bred in Yorkshire, he first moved to Spain to work for Evil Bikes, a mountain bike brand based in Madrid, and has little time for the lycra-clad, performance-obsessed culture of road cycling. However, it was his love for surfing, not mountain biking, which first brought him to Spain’s Atlantic coast. Jelley’s wife, Marina Nieves, is a trained surf instructor. Although she’s originally from Seville, her family has a holiday house in El Palmar de Vejer (‘the palm grove of Vejer’, in English), the seaside village that’s just a stone’s throw from the town. Marina grew up surfing here, and once she’d introduced Jelley to its mellow waves and its even mellower, surf-centred community, the pair decided to move here permanently.
They bought a farmhouse between Vejer and El Palmar with one-and-a-half acres of land and three yurts in the garden, and set up their own surf camp. The Sea Retreat, as their surf camp is called, has kept the couple plenty busy, with Marina taking care of the coaching, and Jelley organising, driving and doing most of the share of cooking. So it was only after a couple of years living here that Jelley realised just how perfect the place was for cycling – and for gravel bikes in particular. Which is how their newest venture, Gravel That camps, was born.
A yurt at camp
“The best weather for riding bikes is spring, which we figured would fit nicely with the winter surf camps,” says Jelley. Certainly, the temperatures when we visit, at the beginning of April, are ideal. There are a couple of brief showers in the five days we spend with Jelley and Marina, but they roll through within the hour. The rest of the time, it’s warm and dry. Crucially, it’s also not so hot that you can’t ride through the middle of the day. “Of course you can ride here in the summer, but you have to be up at the crack of dawn,” Jelley says. “This is way more chill.” And yet, more than the weather, the real thing that makes this place special for gravel bikes is the terrain.
“What’s great about here is it’s not the Alps,” Jelley explains as we look out over the landscape. “You don’t get high mountain passes, they’re little rolling hills. Don’t get me wrong, there are some nasty bastard climbs, but it’s not constantly up and down.”
Our first ride of the week winds along the sandy dirt track outside the yurt camp and up onto a tarmaced climb. It’s quiet – in 30 minutes, we encounter perhaps two cars as we pedal gently upwards through lush pastures filled with brown cows and smells best described as ‘agricultural,’ and punctuated by the white-painted pueblos blancos, or white villages. Before long, we’ve ducked back off onto the kind of dirt road that gravel bikes are built for.
“One of the cool things about riding in Spain is there are a lot of these,” explains Jelley. “They’re called Via Pecuaria, and they’re these dirt tracks that have been used for driving livestock for centuries. You’re actually legally not allowed to asphalt them.” The track leads us up and over a hill covered in stone pines, and after a brief stop for a puncture – which Jelley fixes with a speed that demonstrates his 15-plus years of working in bike shops – we cruise down a long, winding descent through the forest and into the fishing village of Barbate.
Dirt tracks called Via Pecuaria have been used for driving livestock for centuries
We dive through an incongruous-looking industrial estate and out onto a wide-open area where tidal inlets separate narrow strips of land. These are the salt marshes which form the heart of the Parque Natural de la Breña y Marismas, a protected nature reserve. Once again, the terrain is excellent for gravel riding, with rough-hewn paths connected by rusted steel bridges carrying us far out beyond the limits of dry land.
“This area is really big for migratory birds,” says Jelley. “This is amazing habitat for them, and we’re so close to Africa it’s like their last stop before heading south in winter – or the first foothold as they head north in spring.” The place teems with life, as grateful transcontinental passengers like the Kentish plover or the curlew take a rest en route to their northern nesting grounds.
Pedalling on a gravel path through salt marshes in Vejer de la Frontera
It’s at this point that I get a second flat tyre – extraordinarily bad luck – and with our one spare inner tube used up, I have to limp to the closest bike shop in Barbate on a bare rim. Thankfully, Breña Bikes is open, and the friendly proprietor fixes the fault in double quick time – with Jelley chatting all the while in his fluent Spanish.
With our ride cut short, we take the most direct route home – following a tarmaced cycle path which skirts the main road back to the yurt camp. “This is the EuroVelo 8,” says Jelley. “If you wanted, you could start in Cadiz and ride this same route all the way to Athens.” As we ride along the Barbate harbourfront, he points out the fishing boats. This area is famous for its tuna, which is still caught using a 3,000-year-old fishing technique called Almadraba. Like most words beginning with “Al” in Spanish – Alicante, Alhambra, Almeira – this comes from Arabic. But the technique actually dates back even further, to the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, who settled this bit of Spain in the centuries before Christ. It’s only when we get back to the yurts that I notice that they’re all named after tuna fishing terms – and ours is Al Madraba.
tuna is still caught using a 3,000-year-old fishing technique called Al Madraba
The yurt camp itself is the ultimate chill-out zone. From the road where you park your car, it’s only accessible via a wooden bridge over a narrow brook – and walking in feels like entering a hidden world. Jelley’s own house sits at the back, with the three yurts set among the shade of mature trees in a lush green garden. In the middle, there’s a wooden building containing a kitchen, dining room, and washing facilities. Pictures of surfers and waves adorn the walls – this is where they host their surf camps – but there are also bike repair facilities around the back. Cal and Marina’s cat, Pluma, roams freely, soliciting cuddles from any guests who are willing. And their dog Cometa wanders in and out, sniffing for treats.
When we visit, Marina is heavily pregnant with the latest addition to their family (Pheobe, a girl born just before this magazine went to press), so the couple are viewing summer 2025 as a “soft launch”. The only other guests we encounter are a young Dutch couple on their own agenda. With a young son of our own, my wife and I find it convenient to cook for ourselves most nights in the well-equipped kitchen located at camp. Jelley and Marina also introduce us to one of their favourite local restaurants, the Venta Pinto. But come next spring, Jelley explains, the plan is to run Gravel That camps much as they do with their Sea Retreat surf camps – with full board catering and group rides arranged each day. “Although of course, we’re flexible if people just want to cook for themselves,” says Jelley.
Jamon at Venta Pinto
Aside from the infinite flexibility and hospitality of our hosts, the main appeal of the yurt camp is the vibe. The tents are insulated, with gas heaters in case the nights get cold, and gorgeously soft double beds beneath their wooden domes. The dawn chorus – rustling trees, filled with singing birds – is worth the cover price alone.
On our final ride, Jelley and I get a glimpse of one of Europe’s rarest bird species – the northern bald ibis. These creatures are so endangered that Austrian scientists have taken to escorting them from their summer habitats down to Andalucia every year in a microlight – a move inspired by the Disney film Fly Away Home. Here, however, we encounter them just feeding by the side of the road. “I love them, they look like death metal chickens,” laughs Cal, whose Gravel That logo features a singular bald ibis proudly wearing a bike helmet. “But they basically shouldn’t be alive. They’re chronically lazy, they don’t feed willingly, and they have a terrible sense of direction. It’s amazing any of them ever make it down here, even with the microlight.”
After a few sections of singletrack challenging enough to keep any mountain biker entertained, we intersect once again with EuroVelo 8, following it to the fishing port of Conil de la Frontera and onto Cape Trafalgar itself. “I like to call this the most beautiful corner in Spain,” says Cal, as we round a bend towards the Trafalgar lighthouse, with the ocean stretching out far beyond in the distance.
On the Cape, the only visible memorial to the famous battle is a waist-high stone sculpture with a brass plaque. The contrast with Nelson’s Column and Trafalgar Square could not be more stark. The words on the plaque, taken from a poem by Benito Pérez Galdós, provide a pacifist counterpoint to the militaristic symbolism of London’s central monument. “Men of both islands must convince themselves that it is a madness to make such terrible wars, and there will come a day when they will embrace each other, all agreeing to form only one family,” it reads.
Hills in El Palmar
It somehow seems fitting that such a consequential event – for Brits at least – should be commemorated in such an understated way. After all, this is the land that has seen many empires rise and fall, countless people pass through, and yet still, somehow, stayed wild. We look out to steel-blue sea, watching the waves roll in, the sands shift, and the birds stop by, as they have done for thousands of years. And then we jump back on our gravel bikes, and pedal back towards the yurt camps, a well-deserved cold beer, and dinner.
