Mystery ride/hike around Girona

Officially the tour was due to start at 2pm with a guided ride into the hills near Madremanya to make sure the bikes had survived the journey. It was a beautiful sunny morning but storms were forecast for the afternoon, so our two person ‘group’ decided to pedal off and see Girona. I found a good route on Strava/Garmin but apparently the technology thought we were on gravel bikes (nothing to do with the technology operator obviously). I also managed to miss a turn so we had to do a u-turn before we found Girona - James the guide will be in charge of navigation from tomorrow! 
This was the not exactly circular ride:


And this is Neil with his beautiful road bike hiking up an off-road hill - oopsies 

Despite the navigational challenges, we had a great ride. Girona is very pretty and there are friendly cyclists everywhere.

When we finally made it back onto a paved road, we climbed up to Els Angels, a classic cycling climb with spectacular views of the Mediterranean coast and the foothills of the Pyrenees.



The descent to Madremanya was delightful with smooth tarmac and hardly any traffic. 
We then met up with James the guide who was on the Iron Curtain trip last year, so it was great to catch up over a yummy tapas lunch. 
Dinner tonight is a ‘degustation’ which looks rather spectacular - I think I’m going to need all those calories for the start of the ‘proper’ riding tomorrow.






Comments

  1. Cathy VSeptember 1, 2020 at 7:58 PM

    I hope that menu was as good as it looked on paper.
    Say hi to Neil đź‘‹

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 9 Bedoin to La Motte Chaloncon

Image
Well that was rather a hard day... Mont Ventoux was a brutal climb, 12.5 miles with hardly any let up for the screaming legs and back. I had to stop a few times to get the heart rate down a bit and stretch out my lower back that really doesn’t like steep gradients. One of my breathing points was at the memorial to Tom Simpson, the spirited and stylish English cyclist who collapsed and died during the ascent of Mont Ventoux in the 1967 TdF. Fortunately I have avoided the amphetamines and alcohol. The top of the mountain is being rebuilt which makes it a bit of a chaotic finish line, but the obligatory photo still has to be taken (once I had stopped puffing and swearing). The view from the top is every bit as spectacular as expected. We descended to Sault on a fabulous sweeping road with a smooth road surface and I surprised myself by really enjoying it instead of hanging onto the brakes as I usually do on big descents. It was a huge sense of achievement doing this iconic climb but the r...
Read more

Day 13 Bourg d’Oisans to La Chalp

Image
That was a BIG day on the bike, ‘only’ 59 miles but 9617 feet of climbing over two cols. The scenery was spectacular but my concerns about famous, tourist attraction, alpine cols were unfortunately proved to be correct. The morning climb up Col du Lautaret was dominated by some sort of old sports car rally, predominantly Porsches which prompted a very apt joke from Neil (sorry Big Bro!): Q: What is the difference between hedgehogs and Porsche drivers? A:  Hedgehogs have their pricks on the outside. It didn’t help that there were lots of tunnels which are unpleasant enough on a bike without being overtaken at speed by said pricks. The scenery however was rather lovely... The Col du Lautaret has been crossed over 40 times by the TdF so obviously one needs another podium photo. The descent was enjoyable as the Porsches had presumably arrived en mass somewhere, and we stopped for a picnic lunch on the way down to give it time to digest before the next bout of climbing. After Briancon w...
Read more

Day 6 Sommieres to Saint-Remy de Provence

Image
Saturday in France means markets, hunting and cycling. There were some navigational challenges around the market in Sommieres and then shooting groups wearing high-vis jackets in the countryside - presumably the boar are colour blind! Out first coffee stop was the local French Oundle Beans equivalent and it was great to see so many older ladies in the groups. This was my TdF moment of overtaking a French cyclist - I think he was probably well into his 70’s! Next stop was the Pont du Gard, a very impressive Roman aqueduct bridge.  It brought back very happy memories of a fabulous weekend in Nimes with Katie when she was au pairing near here for a summer. We hired ridiculously heavy bikes and had a very hot bike ride to the Pont du Gard. Fortunately Bob is more of a lightweight but it was still very warm today. Just before lunch we crossed the RhĂ´ne which is very wide and fast flowing, we had to guess how Hannibal’s army and elephants managed to get across it without being slaughtere...
Read more