Girona Cycling Routes

brownian

Amer is surprisingly lovely in the town centre - all arches and colonnades.

Also gives access to San Marti Sacalm climb (IIRC), which in turn gives an epic gravel descent to the big dam (and a lovely road from it back down towards Amer).

Must check out that spring....

fat bloke

Ah must check that out. I did a cycle that direction and ended up down a cul de sac which had signs for some sort of mineral water alright. I think tomorrow we're doing that big Marie del mort or whatever spin, good and early, cos temperatures are set to soar again to 37C.

That's a funny thing with the shop spins, they seem to leave at ten, which is terribly late and terribly hot! We get up at 6.30 for 7am departure, generally home about 11 or 12 latest. Plenty lads out that early too. Everyone looks... proper as well. Best bikes, top gear, immaculately tanne, shorn and shaved. Velo rules adhered to in full

fat bloke

Well. Back home now. Just in time for the end of or at least a break in the Irish monsoon season!! Thanks all for the advice and tips, they were very helpful. Mare de Deu del Mont was spectacular, and we did another Sanctuari / monastery spin to "El Far" which was even more amazing. Totaled about 1400km over the 3 weeks which equated to 15 days on the bike. We were up at 6.30 am and in the road for 7, which I guess for a lot of people doesn't fit the definition of "holidays" . But when you know you've got sun and tarmac and tasty coffee and fresh orange juice and crisp fresh croissants oozing with chocolate waiting for you out on the road, it's easy get outta the scratcher. Overall it was a fantastic trip and I'd not hesitate to recommend the area.

If I had one criticism of bikebreaks where we got the bikes it would be that they were utterly uninterested in us as customers. Unsmiling, unquestioning, unenthusiastic, they pretty much just provided us with bikes and that was it. When we dropped the bikes back we got a drawled "hola" from behind a computer screen without looking up. We just took tools from the back of the shop, spent 10 minutes removing saddles and pedals, browsed the merchandise a bit ourselves and then just left. Nobody approached us, nobody offered to help, nobody asked us how we got on. Kinda weird tbh.

One thing I'd love to know is what kinda weather you could expect around Girona in Autumn or Easter for winter / spring training camps, as an alternative to Majorca. Eatsleepcycle offer camps all year around, even over Christmas, so it must be OK you'd imagine. Anyone any off-season experience of the place?

Weepsie

I was there in mid April. Weather was perfect. A week earlier though it rained a fair bit.

brownian

Sorry to hear that about bikebreaks. Dave Walsh and his team run great shop rides every Thursday and are pillars of the cycling community there - but maybe they just had a mad busy time?

I spend Jan-March there last winter for work, and had 90 minutes of rain in total - but everyone said it was a freak winter. In general, you expect 5 days a month with some rain, according to yr.no. Easter, I'd expect, would be quite warm by Irish standards. Good if you can get lined up with direct Ryanair flights.

My wife did an ESC camp a couple of years back, and still raves about it.