Santa Bárbara and Puntatxamar

On the way to the Navarrese Pyrenees, in the east of Navarre and with the Esca river flowing through it, we find the village of Roncal, the birthplace of the famous tenor Julián Gayarre and the heart of the valley which takes its name.

The Roncal valley has an MTB Space with 15 decentralised routes through its entire geography. The route suggested here is the sum of two shorter routes in the MTB space. Both can be found at kilometre 15.5 in Roncal, so doing the entire ride as proposed is only optional.

In its entirety, the route accumulates a significant elevation gain with two long climbs up the steep slopes of Santa Barbara and Puntatxamar, but the views easily make up for all the effort. Coming down from the summits is something that anyone with minimal skills on a bike can tackle. The descent from Santa Bárbara is very fast at the beginning and ends up in the upper reaches of the village. The way down from Puntxamar is undoubtedly the descent with the most flow of all the descents in the Roncal MTB Space: fast, simple and fun, it concludes at the chapel of La Virgen del Castillo.