Cycling in Girona: the roads that made it the pros' home

Girona is a city of roughly 100,000 people an hour north of Barcelona, and for the best part of two decades it has been the place more professional road cyclists call home than anywhere else in Europe. The city council's own tourism pages list the teams that base themselves here before the spring races and the riders who live here year-round. The reasons are not mysterious: a large network of quiet secondary roads, a run of long climbs within an hour's ride, a coast on one side and the Pyrenees on the other, an airport with cheap flights, and weather that lets you train in January.

This is what the riding actually consists of, what the climate does month by month, and what you should know before you ride here for the first time.

Why here, and not somewhere sunnier

Girona is not the warmest place a cyclist could live. AEMET, the Spanish met office, publishes climate normals for Girona airport (143 m): a January mean of 7.1 °C with an average daily maximum of 13.1 °C, a July mean of 23.6 °C with a maximum of 30.1 °C, 728 mm of rain a year and 2,231 hours of sunshine. October is the wettest month at 88 mm and July the driest at 32 mm. Compare that with Mallorca and Girona is cooler in winter and wetter in autumn.

What it has instead is variety and quiet. The Girona city council describes the surroundings as "a large network of secondary roads" between the Pyrenees and the Costa Brava, and the Gavarres massif behind the city as nearly 350 km² of forested hills. In practice you can leave the old town and be on a road with almost no traffic in fifteen minutes, in any direction, and that matters more to someone who rides five days a week than another two degrees in January.

The classic climbs

The Costa Brava tourist board publishes a list of the climbs it considers the region's classics, with lengths and altitude gains. These are its figures, not ours:

Els Àngels is the everyday climb. It starts at the edge of the city, gains under 500 m over 11 km and ends at a sanctuary with a view back over the plain. It is the one riders use for a mid-week effort because you can be at the top and home again in ninety minutes, and it is the climb most often used to test form in the weeks before a race. Our guide to pacing a climb with power applies well here: the gradient is steady enough that a single target number works.

Rocacorba is the serious one: 14 km and 800 m of climbing on a dead-end road to a summit with a transmitter and nothing else. The tourist board describes it as the key training climb for the professionals based in the region, and it is where most of the known test efforts happen. The top third is the hard part. It is a there-and-back, so you descend what you climbed, on a surface that has been patched many times.

Mare de Déu del Mont is longer than anything else near the city, 18 km for 1,111 m, and sits further north towards the Garrotxa. It is a full day out from Girona rather than a lunchtime climb, and it gets cold at the top in a way Els Àngels never does.

Sant Grau and Sant Pere de Rodes are coastal climbs, the second near Cap de Creus at the northern end of the Costa Brava. Both are short and exposed to wind. Vallter is a ski-station road in the Pyrenees proper, 12 km at roughly 9% on the board's numbers, and is only sensibly ridden as part of a trip north rather than from the city.

The coast, and the greenways

The coast road between Sant Feliu de Guíxols and Tossa de Mar is the ride everyone photographs: a narrow road cut into cliffs above the sea, with almost no flat metre in it. In our experience it is also busy in summer and the surface is not always good, so it is a spring and autumn ride rather than an August one.

Less photographed and more useful are the greenways. The Consorci de les Vies Verdes de Girona manages two former narrow-gauge railway lines. Carrilet I runs from Olot (440 m) down to Girona (70 m), about 55 km with a high point of 589 m at Coll d'en Bas and an average slope of 1.5%. Carrilet II runs from Girona to the sea at Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 41.9 km with a high point of just 136 m at Cassà de la Selva. The surface is packed granite sand, which means gravel or wider road tyres rather than 25 mm slicks. They are how you get out of the city without traffic, and on a recovery day the Olot line is as good a Zone 1 ride as exists anywhere.

If you want to know what a route will feel like before you commit a day to it, the Route Builder shows the profile, and any saved route can be ridden in Moveee Indoor on a smart trainer, which is a reasonable way to preview Rocacorba in February before you fly.

The rules of the road in Spain

Spain's traffic authority, the DGT, sets out the rules that matter for visiting cyclists. Drivers must leave at least 1.5 m when overtaking a cyclist. Cyclists may ride two abreast, but must go single file where visibility is poor or traffic is heavy. Front white and rear red lights are required at night and in tunnels. Helmets must be certified; whether they are compulsory depends on the type of road and the rider's age, and the DGT recommends one everywhere. In our experience Catalan drivers are used to bikes and generally give room, and the 1.5 m rule is respected more often than in most countries.

The calendar

Girona's cycling calendar is now dense enough that some weeks are better avoided if you want the roads to yourself.

• Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, 23–29 March 2026. The professional stage race, organised by ASO, passes through the province most years and brings rolling road closures with it.
• The Traka, organised by Klassmark, is the gravel event: 100, 200 and 300 km distances on the tracks around the city. The 2027 edition is 30 April to 2 May. Accommodation in town is scarce that week.
• Sea Otter Europe, 18–20 September 2026 at the Fontajau sports pavilion. A trade show with rides and races attached; the roads around the city are full of test bikes.

The city council also lists Santa Vall in February, Ter Bike Experience and El Piri in June and SGRAIL100 in October, so there is something most months.

When to go, and where to stay

On AEMET's numbers, April to June and September to October are the months with the best balance of temperature and daylight. July and August are hot on the plain, above 30 °C on an average day, and the coast road is at its busiest. January and February are rideable but not warm: an average maximum of 13 °C means arm warmers and a gilet, and the climbs are colder still. Riders who come in winter come for the roads, not the weather.

Base yourself in the city if you want the classic loops and the company. Base yourself further north, around Banyoles or towards the Garrotxa, if you want Rocacorba and Mare de Déu del Mont on your doorstep and fewer other cyclists. If you are new to planning a trip like this, our guide to planning a cycling trip covers the logistics, and how to do a training camp covers how much you should try to ride once you are here.

Girona will not surprise you with the scenery, which is pleasant rather than spectacular. It will surprise you with how rarely you have to stop, and how many roads there are that you have never heard of.