Mallorca has the marketing budget. Tenerife has the altitude. Calpe has the cheap flights and the giant peloton in matching kit you see all over Strava every January.
Girona has the entire World Tour quietly living within ten kilometres of the cathedral.
If you've followed pro cycling for any length of time, you'll know the names. The Yates twins lived here. Pogačar trains here in the build-up to a Tour. Tao Geoghegan Hart, Lachlan Morton, half the Ineos roster, most of the EF squad, dozens more. When pros are free to pick a base, this is the city they pick.
Here's why — and why, if you're a serious amateur, you should be paying attention.
What pros actually need from a base
Pros aren't romantic about geography. They need three things, in order: quiet roads, varied terrain, and a runway out of the city that doesn't involve a busy ring road.
Girona delivers all three in the first ten kilometres.
Roll out north towards Banyoles and you're on farm lanes inside two minutes. Roll east towards Sant Martí Vell and you're climbing tempo through olive groves. Roll west into the Garrotxa volcanic park and you're in beech forest on smooth tarmac inside half an hour. There's no ten-kilometre slog through traffic to get to the good stuff — the good stuff starts at the back door.
Compare that to Calpe, where you ride out of an apartment block and onto a busy N-road for the first half-hour. Or Mallorca's Pollença, where you've got the Tramuntana on one side and the sea on the other but everything in between is a flat, hot, ride-on-the-shoulder run-out. The pros don't pick those places because the daily quality of riding is lower.
The four climbs that anchor the riding
Every pro who lives in Girona has a relationship with four climbs. They do them on rotation through the season, week in, week out, all year.
Rocacorba. Eleven kilometres at 6.5%. The bench mark every pro uses to figure out where their season is. Pogačar has a time on it. Froome has a time on it. The summit has a closed café and a radio mast. The view earns the climb back twice. Full Rocacorba climb guide →
Els Àngels. Just under ten kilometres at 4.7%. The everyday tempo climb. Even gradient, almost no traffic, a Sanctuari at the top with a café that's been pouring cortados forever. This is the office. Full Els Àngels climb guide →
Mare de Déu del Mont. Twelve kilometres at 7.1%, ramping to 15% at the top. The big mountain day of the region. The closest thing Girona has to an alpine col, and it sits an easy spin from the city. Full Mare de Déu del Mont climb guide →
Coll de Bracons. The forgotten one. Twelve kilometres at 5.5% through beech forest, summiting above the Vall d'en Bas. Locals' choice when the famous climbs are busy. Full Coll de Bracons climb guide →
That's the spine. Around it sit dozens of climbs in the 4–8 km range, almost all on quiet roads with a café at one end. You won't run out of things to ride.
Two seasons, both real
Girona has two cycling windows: spring (March to early June) and autumn (September to early November). Pick autumn if you can.
Spring is the European pre-season window. Pro teams come down for early base camps, the magazines come down to do the photoshoots, and the place is busier than it looks in October. Daytime sits at 16–25°C. There's an occasional shower. The vines are coming back and the tourist coast is still half-asleep.
Autumn is the locals' season. Daytime 20–26°C, drier than spring, harvest in full swing across the Empordà. Empty roads. The best light of the year. Pool warm enough to swim in after a long ride. October is peak — the locals will quietly tell you it's the month, and they're right.
July and August are too hot for serious training. The pros leave for altitude in the Alps, the Pyrenees or up to Andorra. December to February is rideable on the right day but you'll want lights and a warm jacket.
The gravel network nobody else has
Girona's gravel scene is the second reason most pros stay. The Traka — the longest gravel race in Europe — starts and finishes here. Lachlan Morton trained for the Tour Divide on these trails. The terrain ranges from vineyard service roads in the Empordà to volcanic dirt inside La Garrotxa Natural Park to cork-oak singletrack through Les Gavarres. Coastal gravel above the Med. Forest tracks west of Olot.
None of it requires a mountain bike. Most of it is comfortable on 40–45 mm tyres.
The quiet truth is that the road and gravel networks interlock. You can ride a Catalan back-road loop, drop onto a vineyard track for ten minutes, climb a paved col, and roll home down a coastal dirt path — all in a single morning. Girona is one of the few places in Europe where a pure gravel bike is the most useful bike to bring.
Girona vs the alternatives
You'll have heard the case made for the other big European cycling bases. Here's the honest comparison.
Versus Mallorca. Mallorca is steeper terrain in a smaller area. Sa Calobra. Puig Major. The big Tramuntana climbs are spectacular and fully on the doorstep. The cycling-tourism economy is huge — multiple cyclist-only resorts, dozens of bike shops, packed peloton on the road every January. If you've never done a cycling holiday before, Mallorca is the easier first trip.
But the riding density per square kilometre, off the Tramuntana coast, is lower. You ride between the climbs on flat, sometimes busy roads. The good gravel is limited. And in peak season the route choice can feel scripted — everyone is on the same loop you are.
Girona is wider terrain, quieter roads, less infrastructure. You'll see fewer riders in matching kit. You'll see more roads you didn't know existed. The serious-cyclist density is higher — when you're at La Fábrica at 11 a.m. and half the room is World Tour pros, that's not a marketing pitch, that's a Wednesday.
Versus Calpe. Calpe is the January option. Cheap flights from northern Europe, a long flat Mediterranean coast for steady-state work, big alpine-ish climbs (Coll de Rates, Cumbre del Sol) within an hour, sea views from every café. The cycling-resort economy is built into Calpe in a way it isn't in Girona — apartments full of cyclists, restaurants stocking pasta and porridge, bike storage as standard.
But Calpe is a holiday town first. The roads are busier than Girona's. The terrain is more concentrated — you do the same loops more times in a week. The gravel is thin. And the food and coffee culture is the cycling-resort one rather than the working-Spanish-town one.
If you're going for January base miles, Calpe is fine. If you're going for a serious training week any time after February, Girona is better.
Versus Tenerife. Tenerife is altitude. Hotel Parador up at Mount Teide is where the World Tour goes for pre-season altitude blocks. The riding off the volcano is limited, the airport runs are long, and the climate is North African rather than European. Pros stay there because of the altitude exposure, not because of the riding.
If you're doing a planned altitude block, Tenerife. For everything else, Girona.
What it costs
A week in Girona, done well, runs €1,000–2,500 all-in depending on accommodation. Hotels in the old town start at €120 a night. A Mas-style farmhouse rental sleeps six to eight at €80–150 per person per night. Bike hire is €60–110 a day. Food is cheap by northern European standards — €3–5 for a coffee and pastry, €15–25 for a long lunch with wine.
That's before you factor in flights, which are short. Most major European hubs are an hour to Girona-Costa Brava (GRO) and 90 minutes by train south of Barcelona-El Prat (BCN).
For a structured week — bikes, support car, two pace groups, follow car, in-ride nutrition, airport transfers, dinners — you're looking at €1,500–2,500 per person depending on the operator. The Roadman camps run at €995 per camp because the housing is private and we keep the team to three. See the camps →
The lifestyle bonus
The other thing about Girona that nobody quite explains is that it hasn't been ruined yet. Cheap rent. Decent coffee. A fifteen-minute flight to most of Europe. Twenty minutes to the Mediterranean. A Spanish-speaking, Catalan-cooking, cycling-literate working town that hasn't been priced out of itself.
The pros aren't here because it's pretty — Catalonia has prettier towns. They're here because the riding is unreasonable, the coffee is good, and on the rare day they have to do an interview, the journalist can fly in for the morning.
That's a working setup. It's also a quietly perfect setup for a serious amateur looking to do a real week on the bike.
If you've never been, October is the month.
See the Roadman Girona Training Camps — Road & Gravel, October 2026 →
