Oh My God, Girona! I have wanted to bike european tiny towns with cafes & castles, linked by dirt roads, for years & years now. IT’S HAPPENING!! Girona is a Biker’s Town – pro teams riding all over it; bike perfection of hills, road & dirt options; bike paths everywhere. Not to mention it’s utterly adorable Medieval old town & river. Perfect weather. You can be a Fake Pro biker every day!
Hunter found us an amazing apartment rental that was in the Old Town, right on the stunning river, had a “wall of glass” looking onto the ever changing lit river, and had stone walls & a castle-like staircase entrance. The other side of the apartment had tall windows & balconies overlooking the narrow stone streets, loaded with bottom floor commerce & restaurants.
Back when starting to plan a trip to Europe, Kim had told me Girona was a big-time “biker thing”. I started doing research and fell in love immediately from just a few pictures and ride descriptions. Girona is only 40 miles from the French border, in Catalonia, in the far northeast corner of Spain, and on the “Costa Brava”. It had to become a part of my first flight & trip to see Kim in Madrid.
I could barely sleep our first night in Girona, eager to pick up our pre-arranged Trek gravel bikes for a four day rental. I could hardly wait to get out and experience Girona!
Ride research
The main reason why Girona is home to over 100
pro cyclists is because of the amazing riding on offer.
Seeing this had me in sweats:
2. The Coast Loop
Another Girona classic. The highlight of this ride
is the 20 km stretch of road that goes from
Sant Feliu de Guixols to Tossa de Mar. For some,
this is the finest road in all of Catalonia.
It felt like: “Pack your bags! Get me to Girona!” seeing those amazing waters and hills, with that pro squad of riders.
Day One
Since the first group above was focusing on road rides, I eventually found this gem of curated favorite Komoot rides in Girona. The first 3 of our 4 rides and days came from this Komoot list.
https://www.komoot.com/guide/3453961/gravel-biking-in-girona (wayback machine version)
We started with “Gravel-Paradise Girona – Round trip to Amer”
I’m soooo excited. We just had coffee at the super cute, super great Espresso Mafia by our place. Turns out it’s very popular w/ pros & cyclists – we saw a pro squad right next to us. This only added to my excitement.
The bike fit great. I had been mostly off biking for most of 2 months due to 3+ weeks of travel before this and a surgery, so I’m losing my mind to get out riding now!
Soon we hit some stream crossings. I had just plowed through the stream on my bike successfully, so I was very stoked.
Today would be pretty challenging! Definitely some mountain-bike style parts – some chunky stuff, some minor overgrown, and a bunch of needs more gearings like a “climbs anything” mountain bike. We had to walk uphill in a few parts. It was quite warm – hot really – the whole 5 days we were in Girona. So we had quite the adventure since a lot of this was up and over a set of no-cars fire roads and trails, and through various parks to get to the tiny town of Amer.
There were old churches and small castles, with lots of farms like this one which had an old stone bridge crossing.
Dirt roads connected just about every town in this part of Spain!
About a week before this, I had taken a train with Kim from southern France to Barcelona.
Upon entering Spain, the long Pyrenees mountain range was immediately evident.
Rolling green hills everywhere.
Dirt roads going every direction.
It was all I could do to not leap out of the train with “GET ME A BIKE! I MUST BIKE ALL OF THIS!” :)
So naturally, I was soooo thrilled to be finally biking farmlands and dirt roads, with singletrack sections that only locals would know about.
Wrapping up Day One! Our place is right on this River, just past the red bridge behind me.
Pros & other cyclists would meet up on these bridges to do “pick up” rides together. There were also tiny narrow stone tunnel walkways in the old town where there were QR codes you could scan to find rides. I LOVE THIS TOWN!!
We’d get home, shower, relax and internets for a bit, then head out to dinner every night.
There were so many great food and drink options.
It felt like Biker DisneyLand – the Trip of a Lifetime!
Day Two
Next up “Cassà de la Selva loop from Girona”
This would be our most chill day. Not too much climbing, lots of farms and little towns, with most of the day on well-maintained dirt roads. Most of the climbing came at the end, followed by a very rewarding downhill to the backside of the main Girona radio/telecom station and (almost suddenly) right into the uphill side of the old town’s main old church (made ever more famous from Game of Thrones film shoots).
Here we are at Espresso Mafia in the little medieval old town. This became our morning ritual.
The bike paths in Girona are amazing.
Here we are on a classic Catalonian farmlands dirt road.
Gravel Bike Heaven!
Farms & orchards, green, gentle rolling hills. So SO good.
Day Three
Today was totally amazing. There are historical fortresses all over this area – this route was put together to bike between all the tiny towns with churches with fortified walls and/or small fortresses.
We’ll even get out to the utterly stunning Mediterranean waters & beaches!
Bike & travel perfection!
We took a quick train (you can just take on your bike, no problem!) north one stop to Figueres to keep the bike miles reasonable…
“Gravel through the fortresses of medieval Empordà”
Every town had something totally beautiful like this. And we’d just roll on up to and through them.
So many great dirt roads – this one paralleled a big river and took us pretty far from everything.
Grin.
Wheeling through old towns - so fun.
STUN NING! We’ve just been riding a ridgeline in the middle of nowhere, and are now approaching the coast and this armored old fortress area.
We rolled right into the beaches of the town of L’Escala.
The waters are so stunning out here.
We splish/splashed around for a bit, then rinsed my feet off with a lucky extra water jug someone had discarded.
Day Four
So we’d been doing ~40 miles of mostly dirt, some hard climbs, for three days in a row now.
Hunter had a small cough starting, and really wanted us to “cap” the ride to 20-30 miles.
I still wanted desperately to do the coastal ride: For some, this is the finest road in all of Catalonia. (more details near the top of this post). The problem was “The Coast Loop” was 86 miles!
Even if it was all road riding, we couldn’t pull that off on the hottest day of our trip, pushing well into the 90s (farhenheit), with possibility of minimal tree cover. I spent over an hour trying to hack down the ride with a train cheat – but it was still too long. Ultimately, I found an alternate return up & over the hillside mountain range from the Tossa de Mar beach town. So it had less of the coast ride portion, but I hoped some of the best bits. And of course we now would have an Unknown monster climb that wasn’t suggested…
Thankfully Hunter agreed to try my crazy plan. 40 miles – but over 3,000 feet of climbing, with about 2200 feet nearly all-at-once climbing out from the Beach. We pull off that kind of climbing on dirt at home, and this would be road riding. So… possible? And so we headed out…
OK, so we made the first 17 miles pretty well. We got passed by a small pro squad of riders (yay) descending down into the Tossa de Mar super chill fun beach town. The kind of place you might just decide to just move to and “check out”.
But it’s really hot. We’re dumping down Cokes & chocolate milks & ice waters for lunch.
Wow! An incredible armored fortress medieval town right on the beach of Tossa de Mar!
Had no idea this was here – today’s already getting magical.
Near the start of the very long road climb. I saw a 📸 icon sign, so stopped at the turn out.
When I turned around, I just instantly burst into tears. It was so bright and colorful and beautiful. I think this might be one of my favorite views in years. It was just like what I’d been dreaming of, for the months before this trip.
That perfect bikeride on that perfect road.
My heart just burst in happiness. I’ll never forget this moment and these four days!!
The roads were amazing and pretty well entirely empty! So we got to feel like we were doing a Tour de France or Vuelta a España pro bike ride (and I mean, we pretty much are 🤩), through some of the most stunning parts of the world.
Road like this 🤌🏼
Yes
YES
We road our bikes to Trek & dropped them off, and walked back to our apartment.
Oh my gosh, these last four days.
I can hardly.
I can’t even.
Goodbye Girona!
We WILL be back!
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