Mane

Anna R and her friend had decided to ride up to Castell Sant Miquel. They kindly allowed me to join them. I was very eager to join, because I had rented a mountain bike and wanted to use it. I also did not want to go up the mountain blindly without any proper maps. I did that on Wed and ended up pushing my bike up a hiking path. Not fun. The brave group Today's ride was fun. We started late, only well after (Finnish) lunch time  (which gave me time to visit the Girona Cathedral in the morning, a very impressive building). I was surprised to find that there is a not-so-steep path up. For once, I was the fastest (happens very seldom in Girona). But that was not the point, the point was to enjoy the ride, the forest, warm weather (27C, sunny), and company of others. We did enjoy and made out way up without any real difficulties. at 339 m Telegraph tower Views east The others decided to return to Girona, which was kind of OK, because I was embarrassingly slow r...

I bought my first mountain bike in March 1990. It was a nice Bottechia. It got stolen in two weeks. I bought another one. It was also a nice one, a bit more hybrid type of bike. I rode it all the way from Gdansk to Istanbul with Kössi. We survived and the bike did well. It then took it to Berlin for a traffic politics conference and it got stolen. Brave man ride, not run So, I bought yet another mountain bike. Now it was already spring 1991. I rode the bike for a while, but mountain (off-road) cycling never felt like my cup of tea, so I sold it. And bought a road bike. I have not been riding a proper mountain bike in about 21 years. It was maybe time to try riding one. I rented a Cannondale mountain bike with front suspension and decided to ride it up to Castell De Sant Miquel, which is the nearest 300+ meter hill here in Girona. It had been told that it takes some 40 minutes to climb up to the castell. So, I took a look at the map and decided that the shortest route must ...

Some mountaineers say that "the mountain being there" is a good enough reason to climb it. Same applies to cyclists. Wherever there is a mountain with a road up to the top (or a high pass), cyclists just have to ride all the way up and down . Near Girona, one of the toughest climbs is the climb to Rocacorba. I had read about it (e.g. here ), many local people had already told me about it, some even had boasted having climbed it. I had to try climbing Rocacorba myself. It had become a matter of honour. So, I set out in the morning. The weather was nice, quite cool at 9 am, but getting rather warm when I got closer to the mountain. The guidebook has the following information. It seems that the road to the bottom of Rocacorba would be rather flat, or at most very modest uphill. It is not. Rather, there are rolling hills (bigger than anything close to Helsinki!), which made me wonder what I was really doing. My legs felt tired, I was not feeling fresh at all. ...