Brunyola and Vilobí from Girona

South out of the city and straight into the flat quarter of the province: Quart at kilometre five, Campllong, and Riudellots just past fifteen. This is the ground the locals use all winter, when the mountains are cold and wet and what you want is to turn the pedals for three hours without an excuse to stop. In the first twenty-five kilometres the road gains barely fifty metres.

Vilobí d’Onyar comes at kilometre twenty-seven and the day changes shape. The road tilts up through the woods and climbs about a hundred and forty metres to Brunyola, which at a little over two hundred is the high point of the ride: a village on a shelf with a castle and a view back over everything you have just ridden across. There is a kilometre of gravel in this section. It is good gravel and a road bike handles it, but if you would rather not, cut the loop short before Brunyola and you miss nothing else.

The way home runs through Sant Dalmai, Aiguaviva and Vilablareix, downhill in the way these roads are downhill: never steep, just always falling. If you want this same corner with a proper mountain in it, that is Sant Hilari (route 15), which climbs out of Brunyola instead of turning for home. And if you want it even flatter, the flat TT loop (route 01) never leaves the plain at all.