Just Back From The Trials Park In Sabadell

[psycholist]

Spent a chunk of last week in Sabadell playing in the trials park there - here's some information for anyone planning on taking a trip there:

Flights were Dublin to Reus (Cheaper than flights to Barcelona - though presumably this depends on where you're starting from) with Ryanair. Ryanair at least have a consistent policy on carrying bikes and allow you to book them in with their web booking thingie (45 Euro return or so), so we had no problems travelling. Reus airport is pretty small, so very easy to find everything - and the departure lounge restaurant does nice chips .

We used a hire car from Sol-Mar to get from Reus to Sabadell (About 100km - 1.5 hours if you can follow the extremely dodgy signposting, a lot more if you get badly lost like we did, getting back to the airport was very easy though, mainly because we stayed off the motorway until after the junction we got totally lost at near Barcelona). the hire car had 15km on the odometer when we picked it up, so basically brand new and it took two boxed bikes easily - we booked a focus estate and got a 307 people carrier with a very nice turbo diesel engine .

A note on the signposting for anyone planning to drive: For some reason that is completely unclear to me, the same road is named lots of different numbers at the same time, only some of which are on google maps (Or any given road sign), making it nigh on impossible to work out where the correct turn off for anything not signposted by name is. Using google maps certainly wasn't enough to allow us to find our way along the motorway - GPS might be the way to go here... Sabadell is full of one way streets too, but once you get used to it there's no problem getting around and you can ignore all that on a trials bike anyway, the footpaths are huge, everyone cycles on them and there's the odd bike path around the place too.

We stayed in the Husa Vallés hotel about a mile from the trials park and it was brilliant. Plenty of car parking behind the hotel (We weren't charged for using a space there either - I think the hotel website said we would be) and they allowed us to keep our bikes in our room - we made very sure not to lean the bikes on the white walls in the rooms - leaving them upside down was the easiest thing to do to stop tyres or handlebars marking the walls (Those with hydraulic disks might not find this as good an idea though). The rooms are air conditioned and our room had a sink, two cooker rings, a fridge and a microwave but no cookware. They'll do washing for you too... what's an undershit?

Microwaving stuff is about as much cooking as can be done (But better than most hotels). Breakfast is brilliant too - cereal, tea/coffee, all the orange/multifruit juice you can drink, croissants, pain au chocolate type thingies, meat and cheese, toast etc. served on an all you can eat buffet so no problem getting enough to last till lunchtime. If you look up the location of the Hotel on Google maps the arrow points about a block away from the hotel though - not a big deal, just annoying thanks to a couple of one way streets there.

The trials park is fantastic. The obstacles range from stuff beginners can do all the way to obstacles that will challenge world class riders. The park is right in the town centre too, so there are piles of places with seats out in front (so you can mind your bike) to go for lunch etc. There's a McDonalds directly across from the park which conveniently has an Irish woman working there, which made life very easy for ordering food (Given we have no Spanish to speak of - not everyone has English, so I'll have to learn a lot more Spanish for next time) when we called in there. Other places we tried and recommend are the Viena Pizzeria Restaurant at the corner of the park (The chocolate mousse dessert comes highly recommended, the other desserts we tried weren't great though, good pizza though) and the Tragopan restaurant (Head from the trials park past Corte Ingles on right, restaurant is on left a few blocks up) which does the best Death by Chocolate cake I've ever eaten. About 10-15 euro will cover eating out for one person in most restaurants.

Sabadell seems to be very quiet and safe to walk around at all times of the day and night too, we saw no trouble while we were there. I have heard a few stories about the cops being very harsh on people caught riding street in Barcelona, so straying outside the trials park might not be a good plan without local guidance. Not really an issue though given how much there is to play on in the park. There's also a set of BMX/skate ramps beside the trials area, so if you like skate park stuff it's all there to be ridden. Only thing that was really strange was that in 3 days hanging around the park we met a grand total of no other trials riders - possibly we were out at too quiet a time (Weekdays), but given that trials has a higher profile in Spain than pretty much anywhere else, I was expecting to meet a few other people riding trials.

For spares there's a sports shop on the top floor of the shopping mall beside Corte Angles overlooking the park which stocks basics like tyres and tubes, but thankfully we didn't even need anything while we were there. We did notice our brakes losing bite over a couple of days use thanks to the dust from the soil around the course getting on the rims. I thought it was just the grind wearing off or tired hands until I was out in a rain shower back in Ireland today and my brakes came back 100%. Wiping the rims down every so often is needed to keep the brakes at full power while in Spain then... The weather in March was perfect for trials - not too hot at 15 ish degrees, but more than warm enough compared to the Irish weather, and the sun shone for almost the whole time .

Next trip will be for quite a bit longer I think .

Edited March 26, 2008 by psycholist

[Luke Rainbird]

Sounds like you had an awesome time, and a great review to boot, good work

Have considered heading across at some point perhaps. If anything ever comes of it, I'm sure I'll be reading back through this lot!

[psycholist]

Have a talk to Aaron Chase on this forum too - he's based in Sabadell but wasn't around while I was there unfortunately. The trip wasn't cheap but well worth it for some heat and sunshine .

[TrAsHeR]

It does sound really good and tempting.

But how far if Sabadell from the beach?

And do you have to be 21 to drive as a foreign driver ?

[psycholist]

It's something like 11km from Barcelona which has some coastline . Not too sure what the story is with minimum ages to drive overall, but Sol Mar takes over 23's only... http://www.solmar.es/carhire/faq.php - they were a lot cheaper than the other hire companies I found though. I know with a lot of car hire companies you have to pay extra if you're under 21.

Edited March 24, 2008 by psycholist

[dan_addison]

Sounds like a good holiday, any pics??

[Alex@Flawless Bikes]

wow sounds like alot of fun! How much did the trip in total roughly cost u? Its something i would love 2 do.

[psycholist]

Flights (2 people and 2 bikes) were 313 Euro, Car rental 210 Euro (Both of us were added as drivers at no extra cost) -they've now refunded me 66 Euro for not crashing the car while I had it, so 144 Euro for the car, Hotel 215 Euro (3 nights, Wednesday to Saturday). Fuel was about 25 Euro (Would have been a lot less if the signage was better).

Not cheap, but it definitely had to be done, especially good to look back on after yet another spin yesterday was ruined by heavy rain about an hour in...

I only took a couple of pictures - I've added them to the original post now.

Edited March 26, 2008 by psycholist