Poor Chris had been up most of the night with an upset stomach and looked decidedly grey. He thought he had picked up some food poisening- maybe the egg yesterday? We had a leisurely start as Sophie only served breakfast from 9am.
It was all downhill to Girona. We stayed in the cycle strip which abuts most of the French and Spanish roads and Chris and I took it in turns to draft.We navigated our way through Girona, stopping for coffee, but seemed to by pass the apparently, lovely old town.
On the eastern side of the town there is one final range of hills, the Gavarres range, to be crossed before the coast.The final climb of the week up to the monastery of Els Angels (470 metres) was evidently a favourite of Lance Armstrong when he was based in Girona with his team - not exactly a ringing endorsement! I had a bit of energy left and pushed hard to the summit - the only time I could beat Chris was when he is not well and then not by much. There were plenty of fit cyclists out on their Saturday morning runs. It took me over 43 minutes to ride to the top of Els Angels, I later noted that the King of the Mountain for the Strava segment is no other than GB professional cyclist Adam Yates who took just under 20 minute to complete the ascent. Phil was listening to the rugby on his phone during the climb and gave us welcoming reports of a famous England victory over the Aussies.
We joined the main road to the coast and the route I had planned from Palafrugell to Tamariu involved some cyclo-cross down a steep stony track to the Med. We arrived just after 2pm and fittingly it started to rain. We checked in at the Hotel Hostalillo, overlooking the pine-backed, sandy cove of Tamariu and much to my relief there were 3 bike boxes waiting for us in the luggage room.
We could now reflect on our achievement, chill out and enjoy the ambiance of the Med before a Sunday evening flight back to Bristol.
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