9 July 2022

I got up early and had a life-shortening experience washing and de-knotting my sea-salty, matted, impossibly tangled hair. I returned to the bedroom two hours later, a broken woman, to find Ryan half awake and wondering if I’d died in the bathroom. I think part of me did. We left the apartment and headed through Old Town to Eat Sleep Cycle, a modern, reassuringly English-sounding bike shop, intending to hire bikes and spend the day pedalling away the trauma.

They didn’t have any standard mountain bikes to fit Ryan, which I suspect was to his relief as we ended up with a couple of gravel e-bikes. We nipped down the street to a Spar for food and drink while they prepared the bikes and set off on our ride about midday, pleased with the helpful, friendly service at the bike shop. They recommended taking the Via Verde (green path), a disused railway line turned into a cycle route, southeast towards the coast, and joked that they’d buy us a beer if we made it to the beach and back by the time the shop closed at 7pm. It was game on.

Girona to St Feliu de Guixols (25 miles)

We headed out of the city along cycle paths (the cycling infrastructure seemed much more comprehensive than in England) and followed the river south. We were so excited to get going that we hadn’t really listened to the directions and struggled to find the start of the route, so we carried on along the river until we found a Via Verde sign. We managed to go wrong again at a slight fork in the path and ended up heading towards a different part of Girona, so after cycling up a twisty hill we turned around, went back to actually look at the sign, and righted ourselves onto the route.

Finally back on track, we rode out of the city and through hot, dry, golden fields on a wide, flat dirt path. We passed through a residential outskirt of the village of Quart, which was very clean and eerily quiet given that it was midday on a Saturday – what we think of as prime time for people to be out enjoying their gardens, but the hot Spanish sun lacks the novelty of its English counterpart and seems to inspire indifference. We popped out at the other side of the village and rode south for several miles through more open fields.

The landscape was a patchwork mosaic of golden wheat, tall green corn, orderly vineyard and leafy woodland with the occasional farm or miscellaneous building scattered at random, separated by rows of thriving trees and hedges. The horizon was dominated ahead, behind and to the right of us by a long chain of rolling, hazy blue mountains, which must have been the Massis de les Cadiretes, Massis del Montseny and possibly the easternmost Pyrenees. It was stunning, tranquil, and very hot.

We loved the electric bikes. They had three power modes which we used conservatively, saving the battery for the way back, but we tested them a few times and the controlled acceleration of high power mode was a real buzz as I pushed down on the pedals. For the first time ever, I understood the appeal – it meant we could still have a long day of pedalling while being able to travel much further than on normal bikes, and I liked that I could turn the power off to make it harder.

We went slightly wrong at the town of Cassa de la Selva as “we” assumed directions instead of stopping to properly look for signs, and ended up cycling along a fairly busy road through the slightly shabby town. Luckily we spotted the flat, straight path across some fields after passing through, rode along a dusty drive past a memorably lovely house looking over fields and mountains that reminded me of something I might once have built on the Sims, and continued back on track through the agricultural patchwork.

About halfway along the trail we were tempted by a café at Llagostera, a pretty, quiet town with tree-lined streets and some impressive allotments, but decided to press on to get to the coast and back. After Llagostera the landscape changed from flat farmland to undulating forest. We cycled east parallel to the main C-65 road that cuts between the Gavarres and Cadiretes massifs through the Ridaura valley, then down a long, fast, curving hill into the thick trees. The forest was loud with the panoramic, cricket-like buzz of cicada insects and lush with vegetation, including bark-shedding eucalyptuses and partly stripped cork trees.

We emerged from the forest at a small town called Santa Cristina d’Aro, where we managed to get lost thanks to a poorly signposted section of the route. We rode through the quiet, dusty streets out to a large roundabout, turned around instead of joining the main road, explored all exits of another roundabout, cycled past the same bar four times – probably to the great amusement of the customers – and realised that if we’d gone straight on from the forest we’d soon have found the signs. Frustration turned to bemusement and we continued on the route, which now took us through a patchwork of residential streets, small industrial estates and little patches of farmland as we approached the coastal town of Sant Feliu de Guixols and the end of the Ruta del Carrilet. I was particularly taken by the view to our left, where an array of houses nestled sporadically in amongst trees high up on the thickly forested hillside.

We continued through this urban sprawl towards the town centre and decided that Sant Feliu looked too large and busy for our liking, so we took a left and cycled down a road to Platja de Sant Pol, a small beach that follows the curve of a pretty, C-shaped bay enclosed by land on three sides. The beach and all the little seafront restaurants were pretty but all very busy so we snapped a couple of photos, grabbed some cold Fantas from a shop and headed back the way we came.

Return to Girona

We made our escape from the peopley place and opened up the power on the bikes to get back to Girona for 7pm. It had taken us about three and a half hours to cycle the 26.5 miles there and the time was 4pm, so we had 3 hours to get back and were feeling the pressure a little – there was no room for error. Luckily we were flying, and now that we knew the route we were less likely to get lost. We went back through the forest, up the long hill to Llagostera, back through the fields (notably past an old farmer pootling along on an ancient red tractor – a postcard-worthy image) and towns and into Girona. The panoramic mountain views in the hazy afternoon light were stunning, and although we’d cycled past several other bikers on the way there was barely anyone coming back. It felt like a fairly substantial distance – I mistook a couple of urban areas a few miles out for the edge of the city and kept being surprised that we weren’t back yet. The additional power took the brunt out of the hills and allowed us to really open up on the flats, and by the end of the day we were enamoured with the electric bikes.

53 miles later, we made it back for 7pm. We dropped the bikes off and went back to the room to relax, listen to the Catalonian song we’d heard a couple of nights ago and wash the thick layer of dust off our skin. We headed out for dinner at 9ish, wandered around deciding where to go, and settled on the Indian restaurant recommended by a friendly man who’d chatted to us about Bournemouth in an ice cream queue. It was a tiny place in one of the narrow streets of Old Town, and we sat at a table out the front. The toilet was hilariously quirky – the smallest room in the world with a nail and a twisted paperclip for a lock – but the curry was amazing.

After dinner we walked through the bustling streets of Old Town, crossed the river and returned to Placa de la Indepencia  one last time. I decided that I couldn’t have an abroad holiday without a cocktail, so I indulged in a fruity, rum-based “Rastaman” from Fockviu, one of the many bars spilling along the edge of the large square. We sat, people watched and drank, feeling very satisfied. Full and tired, we left the square, crossed the river at the red cage bridge, paused halfway across to watch the lights of the pretty buildings dance and shimmer on the calm black water, walked back through the warmly lit little streets and collapsed into bed about midnight.