Forn Marull

Every catalogue needs one stop that is simply always open, and on the Empordà flat this is it: seven in the morning until nine at night, seven days a week, including the Mondays and Tuesdays when half the good pâtisseries in this list have the shutters down.

It is a bakery first, with a café attached and, behind that, a village shop: bread and pastry made on site, filled rolls, coffee, a terrace, and shelves of everything from cured meat to toothpaste. For a rider that combination is worth knowing: it is the place to fill a jersey pocket as well as a cup, and there is room to lean bikes outside.

Twelve hundred reviews at four stars tells you the other half of the story: everyone stops here, not just cyclists, and at peak hours on a weekend you queue. Mid-morning on a weekday you will not.