My mother has spent years listening to talk about bicycles. And she has learned strange words like track, bikepacking or Badlands.

Anyone who equates ultracycling with titanic efforts, extreme performance, pushing the body to its limits, or all-out competition is falling into an oversimplification.

Balutia will work with Ride with GPS as its official route planner, allowing us to design the route with a high level of detail, add key points of interest, and provide participants with a solid tool to plan, navigate, and understand the territory before and during the adventure.

Just before reaching the town of Hornachuelos, which marks the southernmost point of Balutia, the route passes by the Convent of San Calixto.

PICO joins Balutia as a collaborator for 2026, and that means a lot to us. PICO gels, besides being delicious, share much of Balutia’s identity: naturalness, spontaneity, and authenticity.

At kilometre 525, the route crosses first Peñarroya and then Pueblonuevo del Terrible. Two towns born apart, but eventually joined by mining into a single heartbeat. Here, in the heart of the Alto Guadiato, one of Spain’s greatest industrial epics unfolded.

This blog was created to pause for a moment and take a calm look at the land that gives life to the route.

Here we want to tell the stories hidden in each valley, each village, and every path — to show what makes these places so special, and why they deserve to be travelled through with eyes wide open.