A Story Written in the Dirt

The story of Bera’s bike park began thirty years ago, in the pine forests on the border between Spain and France, not far from the Bay of Biscay.

While other kids played football or pelota, the local Basque ball game, there was a small crew with different dreams.

Dreams big enough that they spent all their free time digging in the dirt. No funding, no support, just passion.

This is the Basque spirit of auzolan, community work shared by everyone, rooted deep in these valleys.

The local riders kept shaping their trails and jumps, spending wet afternoons watching VHS tapes of freeriders from legendary places like the North Shore, then heading out to recreate what they had seen. That is how they learned. That, and by crashing and by getting up again to try once more.

From those early lines in the dirt, the riders from Bera went from national races to international circuits. They competed in World Cups and World Championships with the Spanish national team. There were magazine features, videos and more.

In the women’s category alone, they competed in 31 World Cups between 1996 and 2007 across different continents, earning two Top-5 World Cup finishes and six Spanish Championship golds. All this without support. Other sports got the funding but the bike trails never did. It is a story all too common.

This is exactly why Orbea’s Trail Tales project exists. With a little help, the local riders formed an association, Bikedasoa, run by volunteers who give their time to lobby councils, find funding and organise the work. Trail Tales funding not only pays for new trails, it gives the local riders something concrete to propose when they meet with local government.

By putting some money on the table themselves, they can ask the council and regional government to match it or add to it. This turns a small local budget into a bigger shared project and means there is an official plan to maintain and support the trails in the future.

Today Bera Bike Park has been rebuilt. Almost fifty kilometres of trails are now officially recognised, with a plan to care for them year after year. That alone is success.

But the success of these projects isn’t measured in kilometres. It’s measured in the kids you see riding, the families gathering, the moments when someone falls, tries again and grows stronger for it.

Bera’s trails are not just scribbles on the forest map. They are places where people can feel like kids again, where the community comes together, where futures take root.