GIRONA Goes Big Girona, in north east Spain, has a reputation for being a cycling paradise. A training base for many pro riders, it’s now got a week-long cycling festival with a Gran Fondo Words Kenny Pryde, Photos Graeme Brown
G
iven the rise and rise of the Gran Fondo, sportive, Etape du Tour; mass participation rides all over the world, it was surely only a matter of time before the Catalan city of Girona decided it too was worthy of such an event. In the last decade the popularity and reputation of the city – 60 miles north east of Barcelona – has grown to such an extent that there are often close to 100 pro men and women riders living and training on its fantastically varied roads. If you want high mountains, then the Pyrenees are only 60 miles further north towards France. There are undulations and shorter, steeper two and three mile climbs on your doorstep and, if you fancy an easy day and some ice cream at the beach, then the blue Mediterranean Sea is 35 miles due east. Whatever you want, Girona has it – and that includes clement weather almost all year round. From a professional bike rider’s point of view, the weather, the roads, the high-speed rail connections to Barcelona and Madrid, the proximity to Barcelona airport (as well as Girona’s own) all add to the appeal. Additionally, unlike many parts of Spain that are temporarily colonised by itinerant professional riders, Girona feels like a real city, not some breeze-block, concrete justbuilt tourist trap. Girona is, indeed, a medieval city with a bustling student population and the feel of a ‘real’ city.
Cycling World
The team behind the Girona Bike Festival and Gran Fondo are Dave and Saskia Walsh, an English – Dutch couple who moved to the Catalan city over fifteen years ago and ‘went native.’ The pair built up a bike shop business in the old town, hiring top-spec road bikes for enthusiasts and hybrids for more sedate tourists, offering guidance and advice as well as repairs for the locally-billeted road pros, lost without recourse to their team mechanics.
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“I was watching all these other Gran Fondos spring up all over Europe,” explained Walsh, “and I just thought that Girona was an ideal location for one. Given the fame – or notoriety – that Girona developed through Lance Armstrong, a lot of ‘sporty’ riders knew about it; it wasn’t a totally unknown location. And of course, after Armstrong left, it was still a popular place with other pros – there are lots of Australians, Canadians, British and Dutch riders here.”
Walsh was enthusiastic and persuasive enough to get the local council on board with his project and attended any number of council meetings to ‘sell’ his project to the sport-loving Catalan locals. Happily, Walsh can speak Catalan himself, which came in handy when explaining the project to the various small village mayors around Girona. From the initial idea to run a Fondo road event, Walsh expanded the concept to include a timed hill-climb on closed roads up a tough local climb popular with pros as well as the World Tour Volta Cataluña stage race – Els Angels. Then there’s a nocturne race around the cobbled Medieval centre and a spectacular urban downhill mountain bike event too (Walsh initially came to Girona to race with a Barcelona-based downhill race team). In the end the Fondo has grown from a one-day event to a week-long festival of cycling. For riders looking for quiet roads shared (by and large) with considerate drivers wellused to sharing space with cyclists, Girona was already an appealing destination. The fact that the cost of living in this corner of Spain is among the cheapest in Europe means that coffee stops and eating out aren’t going to break the bank either – this isn’t France’s Cote d’Azur, not in terms of the cost of coffees or over-busy roads either. In the end, you don’t really need a cycling festival of any kind to visit Girona and ride your bike. The location isn’t insanely popular with professional riders for no reason; it boils down to the roads and the people. However, if you are looking for a little bit of a nudge, something to tip you over the edge, then the Festival is as good an excuse as you need.
THE FONDO
The highlight of the week is, obviously, the Gran Fondo itself: 125km starting and finishing in Girona. “I’ve had a lot of experience of riders coming here from all over Europe and asking for route advice,” says Walsh, “and almost all of them say they want to do 100km as soon as they get here. I always try to explain to them that the roads here are really demanding, in that there’s not really a lot of flat and that 60 or 70 kilometres will feel like 100. Mostly they ignore me, go out and ride themselves into the