Valencia, Spain
Valencia is a city of superlatives with so many compelling sights to explore. It’s Spain’s third largest city; the birthplace of paella; a center of futuristic architecture (you can see Valencia’s City of Arts & Sciences Building in the Andor series as the Imperial Senate Building), and home of Europe’s largest fresh produce market. It’s also a perfect place for cycling, whether you’re exploring the city or getting out into the countryside on longer rides.
Spain’s Vias Verdes (Greenway) cycling routes and the Eurovelo Route 8 offer easy opportunities to explore from Valencia on two wheels. The Vias Verdes are former railway lines converted to paths for bike and pedestrian use, so they’re relatively flat and straight. They offer safe, easy to identify routes for exploring. We rode on one Vias Verde route on our trip to Valencia, and rode on part of the Eurovelo 8. Both experiences left us eager to return and explore more routes and more distance.
Visiting the Source of Paella – Albufera
For our first cycling adventure, we headed south on rented bikes for a self-guided tour to Albufera, where wide, deserted beaches along the Mediterranean lead to the largest lake in Spain and the flooded fields where farmers grow rice for Valencia’s famous paella. Leaving from the bike shop near City of Arts and Sciences in the center of Valencia, we easily found the Eurovelo 8 signs. The paved path led us through industrial areas, over the Turia River then onto the bike path bordering the Mediterranean.
The path offered beautiful views riding along the water, interspersed with stretches where we were in the middle of tall shrubs and grasses that felt like a forest, with no beach in sight. The road offered an appealing location for cycling too – a relatively uncrowded option that we took advantage of a few times when the path had deep standing water from a recent rain.
Cafes and restaurants along the route offer many places to stop for coffee and meals. We stopped for a mid-morning coffee and potato omelette in El Saler on our way south, and ate paella while gazing at the Mediterranean before riding back to Valencia. The 20-30 minutes it takes the paella to cook allow you extra relaxation time to soak up the view.
Roundtrip from Valencia to the end of the Albufera route at Palmeres is about 36 miles/58k. We saw groups of road cyclists riding on both the path and road. Given the number of high-end bikes and fit cyclists we saw, I suspect they’re not all stopping at 58k, but continuing rides further south.
Exploring the Vias Verdes
Another day, we hopped onto the Xurra Vias Verdes route from the north side of Valencia, which quickly brought us into farm fields and orchards. The paved red and yellow path was wide, with plenty of room for all of the people cycling, running and walking on this sunny day. After living in U.S. cities with long transitions from city to suburb to industrial areas to farm fields, the transition from city to orchards in Valencia felt abrupt. You’re in a city, then you’re suddenly in farmland – no sprawl and lots of orange trees.
Countryside Slideshow
As the trail continued north, the well-signed path allowed us to hop off and explore towns near the path. We stopped for lunch at the end of the route in Pucol, then returned to Valencia, for a 32k/20 mile roundtrip ride on our rented road bikes. For a more epic trip, the Xurra Vias Verdes connects to another Vias Verdes route – Ojos Negros – Spain’s longest Vias Verdes.
Even if you don’t have time to ride out of town, Valencia’s extensive network of city bike routes and conveniently located racks of bike share bikes (Valenbisi) make rolling on two wheels the easiest way to explore. We’d add another superlative to Valencia’s list – the friendliest bike city we’ve visited.
Planning Resources
| Location | Valencia, Spain (VLC) |
| Visitor Resources | Valencia Tourism: https://www.visitvalencia.com/en Vias Verdes: https://viasverdes.com/en/ |
| Outdoor Activities | Viator Outdoor Activity Tours: Link |
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