Spain: BMW Backcountry Explorer, Moors and Mountains

Six nights of trail riding in Andalucia, opening with BMW-approved off-road training, and this is the beginner-friendly one in the operator’s backcountry range.

Malaga is the fly-in point, with a staging hotel and a welcome dinner, then a full day of training at a private thirty-acre facility. A day-long loop of local trails follows, which is where the training gets used: gravel riverbeds, water crossings, hill climbs and tracks that appear on no map.

The route then runs east to Granada, and the Sierra Nevada loop is the main event. The range holds the highest peaks in mainland Spain, the roads and tracks climb above two thousand metres, and the operator rates the adventure-bike riding there among the finest anywhere, which is a defensible claim: the terrain is varied, the surfaces are mostly good gravel, and the scale is alpine without the alpine traffic.

An optional rest day allows the Alhambra, the Nasrid palace and fortress above Granada that is among the most visited buildings in Europe and needs tickets booked well ahead, along with time for the local food. The route then works back south and west along the Mediterranean coast to the staging hotel for the final night. The headline price is per rider on their own bike, with BMW hire available. For a rider who wants to learn off-road properly and then use it somewhere spectacular rather than on a practice ground, this is the gentler of the two Andalusian options. Six nights also makes it short enough to take as a first off-road trip without committing a fortnight of leave to finding out whether the discipline suits.