Drive through the Pays Basque, Aragon, Navarra and the Sierra de Guara

Route suitable for most 4x4s and off-road / dual sport motorcycles

Rallyraid roadbook format with 200 plus diagrammes and more than 300 GPS waypoints

Camp out in the mountains for three nights each week... enjoy the food and traditional hospitality of the Pyrenees for 4 nights!

After a lot of reserach the first stage of our 21 day off-road journey through the Pyrenees is ready. It's a spectacular route traversing the mountains of the Pays Basque, Alto Aragon, Navarra and the Sierra de Guara. On the way you'll drive through some truly stunning scenery on a variety of graded and un-graded pistes and tracks. You'll see vultures soaring high as they search for carion and Eagles hovering as they hunt prey.

We test drove this route in August - the hieght of the summer holidays and on most days we saw few people and virtually no other traffic. The trail is hard in places and can feel quite lonely if you're riding a bike solo, but how many places are there in Europe where you can drive a vehicle in such a remote setting ?

Stage one includes five days of predominantly off road driving, 4 nights accommodation in small hotels and three nights rough camping up in the mountains.

STAGE ONE
St Jean Pied de Port to Boltana

This is a ‘Rally-Raid’ style Roadbook and is designed to be used in an A5 Roadbook Reader on a motorbike, or as a booklet by a co-driver in a 4X4.

There are five stages to the route:

St Jean Pied de Port to Ochagavia (95km)
Ochagavia to Longas (83km)
Longas to Aguero (70km)
Aguero to Sabayes (64km)
Sabayes to Boltana (60km)

Each stage is a mixture of small roads and ‘off-road” – mainly gravel tracks / pistes- occasionally very rough and rocky and sometimes a bit overgrown. All are open to the public to drive and none are on private land.

St Jean Pied de Port to Ochagavia
This stage is in the Pays Basque and crosses the French Spanish border in the Pyrenees. Once over the border you follow a series of small tracks through the Sierra de Abodi to the pretty Basque village of Ochagavia.
Accommodation: you stay in a small traditional Basque inn at Ochagavia.

Ochagavia to Longas
This section of the route heads south out of the main Pyrenean chain to the Santo Domingo mountains of Navarra. Two or three key sections cross the Camino de Santiago – the famous long distance road / track from France to Santiago de Compostella in the northwest corner of Spain. As well as some great tracks and open pasture land across the Areta mountains, the route includes a nice road section through dramatic gorges to the village of Sigues.
Accommodation: we arrange accommodation for you at the Parador Nacional in Sos del Rey Catolico – a medieval city at the heart of the old kingdom of Navarra.

Longas to Aguero
From Longas you enter the Santo Domingo mountains and the most remote tracks in this roadbook. There are more than a 100km of tracks here and all sorts of variations are possible. You’ll see lots of Griffon vulture (bring binoculars) as well as Golden Eagles and, if you’re lucky, the odd Egyptian vulture. We’ve planned the route with a 12km side trip to the summit of the highest mountain in the area with fantastic views of the Pyrenees to the north and the plains to the south.
Accommodation: rough camp 1

Aguero to Sabayes
From Aguero to Arguis you travel on remote tracks and past some very dramatic sites. You pass the Mallos de los Riglos, Loarre Castle, the Sierra de Loarre and finally along the Rio Gellego to the little village of Arguis. Lots of opportunities for watching vultures as you cross from the province of Navarra to Aragon.
Accommodation: rough camp 2

Sabayes to Boltana
The final stage of your journey traverses the stunning scenery of the Sierra de Guara. Great mountain views and a variety of tracks – some quite steep and rocky, a few very remote and in poor condition. You pass the abandoned village of Lusera and visit the strange Dolmen of the Sierra. The route ends at a friendly hotel in Boltana from where you can head back to France via the Bielsa tunnel if you’re heading home to the UK.
Accommodation: rough camp 3

Using the Roadbook
There are a variety of ways to use the roadbook but the two methods that are most useable are to either prioritise your GPS’ routing capability or to use your navigation skills by following a trip meter and cross referencing this with the roadbook. Of course you can also combine both methods in a “belt and braces” approach.

The roadbook is made up of a series of ‘pictures’. Each picture frame (they are numbered individually) gives five pieces of information:

The Direction: in each picture an arrow shows which turn you should take at a given junction. For example at a cross roads, one of the four directions will be drawn with an arrow on it. This indicates the direction you must take at this turning.
Section Distance: this shows the distance between this picture and the last one. These are in fractions of kilometres, so the number 10.65 means 10 kilometres and 650 metres.
Total Distance: shows the total distance you should have travelled on this part of the roadbook. (i.e a cumulative total of all the Section Distances).
GPS Point: this gives a GPS waypoint reference number that you can check against your GPS or look up the Longitude / Latitude data given for the point in the Waypoint Table at the back of the roadbook.
Text: specific written instructions and warnings are given where appropriate. Things like approaching obstacles, such as cattle grids are indicated here with a CAUTION ! notice.

You can see a sample page of our raodbook here >

The GPS Routing method
This is perhaps the simplest method to use if you are not used to (or don’t have) a trip computer. We will email you a set of waypoints (pre-coded GPS co-ordinates) that correspond to the roadbook. You upload these to your GPS as a series of five routes and set your GPS to navigate each of them in turn. As you approach each waypoint your GPS will alert you. Then, all you need to do is look at that GPS point in the roadbook and take the direction indicated in the picture. You don’t need to worry about the distance you have travelled because your GPS will alert you when you are in the right place to make the next turn.

The Trip Computer method
If you have a trip computer then it is quicker to use the roadbook by following the Stage and Total trip odometer readings from your trip and follow the directions shown in the roadbook. This is more akin to rally driving and is how the roadbook was written. Each picture in the roadbook gives you an accurate distance travelled reading in fractions of Kilometres. You can of course back this up with the GPS co-ordinates as well for added peace of mind.

Position Formats
GPS waypoints were created using the Hddd,mm.mmm’ format of Longitude and Latitude. You should set your GPS to this format using the Map Datum setting of WGS 84. The GPS we used had a Magnetic Variation setting of 001 degree West but that really won’t make that much difference on this route so don’t worry about it.
You can see the Long/Lat position of each waypoint in your GPS once you have downloaded / uploaded them to your GPS, and you can check them in the table attached at the back of the roadbook.

How this Roadbook was Made
We made this Roadbook riding a KTM 450 Enduro bike backed up with a Landrover 130. Distances were recorded on a Touratech IMOR50 trip computer and written up using Touratech QV4 navigation software. Most of the route has been re-driven by one or two test drivers and their comments and corrections have been included, but from time to time tracks change and landmarks disappear. So please let us know if you find things in the Roadbook that no longer ring true, or if you feel there are things that we should add to it.

Useful Items to Take with You
We don’t propose a full kit list as you will each be on / in quite different vehicles. Suffice to say that you need to be self sufficient and capable of basic mechanical repairs and fixing punctures etc. Your vehicle needs to be in good order as there are no handy mechanics nearby on the route. If you do need advice on setting up your 4x4 or motorbike email Simon at pmtsg@aol.com and he’ll be able to advise. There are a few things that we think are really well worth taking that you may not normally have thought about including:

- Binoculars (you will see a lot of big birds!
- Birdwatching guidebook (specially if like us this is not something you know much about)
- Warm clothes…. Even in the summer months it can be quite cold up in the mountains and sometimes wet.
- Spare water to drink (particularly on motorbikes, make sure you set off each day with at least three litres)Additions to the Roadbook

We will be adding stages to this roadbook each year, first by extending it Eastwards to the Mediterranean and then by extending it south to the Badanas area and Extremedura. Let us know if you would be interested in these new roadbook holidays as they become available.

Copyright
It has taken us a long time to research and prepare this roadbook. We have supplied you with a copy for each 4x4 or motorcycle in your group and we’ve customised your copy so that it leads you to the accommodation that we have booked for you.

We know that it is often tempting to share experiences with friends and we have probably all photocopied things and passed them on for free when perhaps we should not have.
We would ask that you do on this occasion respect the work we have done and not pass free copies of this roadbook to others. If you have enjoyed your trip and want to share it with others why not simply email your friends a link to our website – www.pyrenees.co.uk and ask them to contact us from there ?