The 11 mountain passes of the Sierra de Guadarrama

Taking advantage of the May 1st holiday and the great weather, I finally went for a longer ride that had been tempting me for a long time – a route through 11 mountain passes of the Guadarrama mountains.

Some time ago I came across the Los 11 puertos de la Sierra de Guadarrama route on Julio’s website. I saved the idea, but since I had been focusing more on off-road adventures and was running the DesertX on knobby tires, I kept postponing it. Recently, however, I switched back to the OEM tires for a while and decided it was finally time to do this ride.

The route starts in Torrelaguna and finishes in El Escorial, near the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Interestingly, despite the route being called “11 mountain passes”, I actually counted 12 along the way – and maybe even more, depending on which ones you include.

1. Puerto de la Puebla – 1636 m
2. Puerto de la Hiruela – 1478 m
3. Puerto de Cardoso – 1358 m
4. Puerto de Somosierra – 1440 m
5. Puerto de Navafría – 1773 m
6. Puerto de Canencia – 1524 m
7. Puerto de la Morcuera – 1776 m
8. Puerto de Cotos – 1830 m
9. Puerto de Navacerrada – 1880 m
10. Puerto del León (Guadarrama) – 1511 m
11. Puerto de La Lancha – 1485 m
12. Puerto de La Cruz Verde – 1256 m

The route is packed with curvy mountain roads, many of them almost completely empty. Only the initial section near El Atazar had noticeably heavier motorcycle traffic – probably because it’s one of the easiest mountain areas to reach from Madrid.

The scenery throughout the ride is breathtaking. Along the way, you pass reservoirs, rocky mountain landscapes, dense forests, and high mountain plains. In many places the road cuts through open pastures, where cows casually wander across the route, completely unfazed by passing motorcycles.

The ride also passes many interesting landmarks, including the El Atazar Dam, Puebla de la Sierra – a tiny mountain village – Buitrago del Lozoya with its medieval walls surrounded by river and mountains, and ski resorts such as Navacerrada and Valdesquí.

There are so many interesting places along the route that it’s impossible to properly explore all of them in a single day. You either have to pick just a few stops, split the journey into multiple days, or simply ride the route more than once. The last option honestly sounds like the best idea – it means getting to enjoy all those roads again.

I tried to take a photo at each mountain pass sign, but some passes were not marked at all, and at others there simply wasn’t a safe place to stop.

Some stats: the route itself is around 385 km long. Starting from the Madrid area adds roughly another 70 km to reach Torrelaguna and return from El Escorial, bringing the total to about 450 km.

The ride includes approximately 8000 m of elevation gain and can take up to 10 hours to complete, assuming you don’t make too many long stops.

In the past, I had already ridden through some of these mountain passes individually – usually heading towards El Atazar Dam or doing shorter loops through Navacerrada, Cotos, and Morcuera passes. However, this was my first time experiencing the entire route in one go.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this route to anyone looking for a full-day motorcycle trip from Madrid and who enjoys twisty mountain tarmac roads. I will definitely ride parts of this route again. Kudos to Julio for sharing the original route idea!