Travellers’ tales: Glorious greenways in Spain

If you’ve been to Spain, you’ll know it’s mountainous. Even on a city break in Barcelona or a costa beach holiday, the peaks are visible inland. Hills can be great when you’re cycling, especially downhill, but I’d say a change is as good as a rest.

Vías verdes (‘greenways’) enable you to escape hills and traffic. There are almost 3,000km of them around Spain. They’re on former railway lines but, unlike Sustrans routes here, they don’t seem to be linked into a network. Some are only a couple of kilometres long but I spent more than a day following one.

I’d climbed for a few days from Almería, then had a further climb and a search around the city of Jaén to find the start. I was then rewarded with two days of peaceful cycling. Named the Vía Verde del Aceite, then the Vía Verde de la Subbética for the last few kilometres, it goes for an impressive 128km from Jaén to Puente Genil.

The name roughly translates as ‘the oil line’. It’s less industrial than this implies, as much of its cargo was olive oil en route to the port of Málaga. There are more embankments than cuttings and so there are many good views, often over hillsides of olive shrubs.

The railway line was built in the 1880s. As well as new bridges across busy roads there are several original viaducts and old stations; the one at Doña Mencía offered cycle hire.

My hotel turned out to be only a couple of minutes from the line, but you pass close to several towns with places to stay and without too many other visitors. After Puente Genil I was back in traffic and hills, and I reached Algeciras a few days later. The vía verde was one of the highlights of the tour. These routes are well worth exploring.