El Torcal (via La Joya)

The route

This route follows a similar pattern as the El Torcal route. Instead of going around El Torcal in an anti-clockwise direction, this route takes you in a clockwise direction via the tiny village of La Joya (‘The Jewel’). Also, the does not go west towards the Guadalhorce valley in the second half of the route. The route’s pretty simple: you go to up Villanueva de la Concepción via Almogía, go up via La Joya, go around the mountain, descend back into Villanueva de la Concepción and take the same road back home.

 

The eye-catcher of this loop is the climb of El Torcal via La Joya. Neither village nor climb is a jewel, but rather a diamond of the rough. The good people at Cyclefiesta, the only ones that seem to have properly documented this climb, describe this as a “short and pleasant climb”, but I disagree with this statement.

 

For starters, you’ll have done nothing but go uphill for nearly 40 kilometers just to get to the start of the climb. Once you’re off the MA-3403 (the road you’ve been done all day), the road is very pleasant indeed with gentle slopes and butter-smooth tarmac. The going gets tougher little by little and you’ll get an appetizer of what is to come with slopes of around 10%. When you see the loneliest bus stop in the world in the distance, that’s where the fearsome part of 20% lies. It’s about a 2-minute effort to get across, when the climb just stops and changes character completely. From this point, it’s a lot of downhill but what makes this such an annoying climb is that there are these short but steep bumps of less than 200 meter that you need to climb, and they’re just long enough for you to get back to the small ring and push lots of watts to get over them. To top it all off, once you’re out of La Joya, the climb changes character again and presents a dead-straight arrow with constants gradients of around 8 to 9% with peaks up to 15% at the very end of the climb. This is just a cruel climb, knowing full well there are 70 kilometers and 800m of climbing still to go.

Don’t let the low gradients fool you - this climb is hard.

 

Despite the suffer fest, you’ll hopefully enjoy the drop-dead gorgeous views. From the top of La Joya, you even get a good view of the fascinating Peña de los Enamorados, also known as the Mountain of the Indian as the rock looks like the head of an American Indian man. Stay focused on the descent however, because it’s fast and technical, and the road surface has seen better days.

 

At the junction with A-343, go right. You pass the Wolf park on a road that slightly goes downhill where you can make some good progress with limited effort. The road takes you close to Antequera. At the crossroads, it’s 2 kilometers to Antequera if you decide to go left. Otherwise, go right along the A-7075. This road feels deserted as you pass a set of buildings that are completely destroyed, and other buildings with closed-down shops and restaurants. There’s not much time to contemplate though, because soon you’ll be climbing the last serious climb of the day to the other side of El Torcal.

 

The first part is easy, but after 70 km into your ride, it certainly doesn’t feel like it. And it doesn’t help that you can see pretty much the entire climb in front of you, and it only seems to be getting steeper. And it does, gradients easily go up to 10% with the mandatory peaks to 14%. A few hairpin corners near the top are good for moral, and after one more difficult push towards the top, you’ll be rewarded with spectactular views of the entire region. The ones who’ve lost their marbles or are really in great shape can continue climbing toward the entrance of the natural park, where it gets really steep. Normal human beings will pretend this road doesn’t exist and will just stay on the road to Villanueva.

 

Once you’re back in Villanueva after a beautiful descend, you just take the same road back to Málaga. It’s a lot of downhill but there’s still a bit of climbing to do before you reach Almogía. Same story after when you need to get to Puerto de La Torre from Almogía: there are three more really short but rather steep bumps that hurt after this epic ride.

Fueling up

Villanueva de la Concepción is the epicenter of this ride. It’s a decently-sized town with a supermarket and a few bars on the main road.

Tips

There are a lot of steep sections on this route, so you better come prepared and be in a really good shape.