Girona is the cycling capital of Europe — the medieval Catalan city where a large share of the professional peloton lives and trains. From the old town's stone bridges you can be on silent farm tarmac in ten minutes, climbing Rocacorba in an hour, or dropping to the Costa Brava's coves by lunch.
Rocacorba is the test — the dead-end climb above Banyoles lake that the pros use as their form barometer, roughly ten kilometres rising steep through oak forest to a shrine and a view across half of Catalonia. Els Àngels is the everyday classic, a perfect-gradient ribbon out of the city that every Girona local rides weekly. Then the province opens up: the Gavarres hills, the volcanic Garrotxa around Olot, the coast road to Sant Feliu and Tossa via Sant Grau, and the long inland flats of the Empordà where a group can ride bar-to-bar for hours. Cafe standards, it should be said, are dangerously high.
Our Girona week is seven days of curated riding from a base in the old city — Rocacorba, the Costa Brava, the Empordà — with the restaurants, coffee and pace the city deserves.