The last morning. Clear head. Different direction.
The previous two runs had gone north and east and up into the old city. This one went the other way — west and south, out along the Vies Verdes trail network, following the green signs and seeing what the other side of Girona looked like when you’re not nursing a hangover in 30-degree heat.
It looked like countryside.
The Vies Verdes. Green trail network, city crest. The run starts properly here.
Open path, fields, mountains. None of this felt like a city.
Out along the trails
The cycle paths gave way to proper trail quickly — packed earth, roots, ivy climbing everything. The kind of running surface that requires a bit of attention underfoot and rewards it with the sensation of actually being somewhere rather than just moving through it. Sweet peas growing wild at the path edge. An old stone marker half-consumed by a chain-link fence, the inscription barely legible. A blue wave mural filling the entire underside of a bridge — a skeleton in a hoodie clutching a spray can, mid-surf. The quality of the work stops you. You stand under a motorway bridge in a Spanish city at ten in the morning looking at something genuinely extraordinary.
Wild sweet peas on the trail edge. Pink, small, completely unannounced.
Under the bridge. Blue wave, skeleton surfer, spray can. Someone made this.
The stadium
Montilivi appeared on the left — the Girona FC ground, red stands, the club crest large on the fascia. It was closed and quiet, pre-season somewhere in the calendar. There’s something satisfying about running past a football stadium at pace on a Tuesday morning. It felt like something a local would do.
The route curved back from there through open farmland — corn growing, dirt path, the hills behind the city visible properly for the first time. This side of Girona gets no postcards. It should get a few.
Girona Futbol Club. Montilivi. Red and quiet on a Tuesday morning.
The forest
The trail section came just before the turn back toward the city. Two tracks forking through ivy-covered oaks, roots raised above the surface, light coming through in patches. The pace dropped instinctively — not out of tiredness but because running on roots requires a different kind of attention. The forest was close and cool and completely unexpected given everything around it.
It was the best kilometre of four days of running in Girona.
The trail fork. Ivy, roots, oak, dappled light. The best kilometre.
Back in
The red bridge brought the city back in one go. The Pont de les Peixateries Velles — all red ironwork and wooden decking, a family with a pushchair halfway across — and then the full view from the bridge downstream: coloured houses stacked on the Onyar bank, cathedral above the roofline, the whole composition that makes Girona Girona.
Four days. Four runs. Thirty-odd miles on foot across every layer of the city.
The red bridge. Looking along the deck toward the coloured houses.
The Onyar from the bridge. Coloured houses, cathedral, washing on the balconies. The last look.
Girona, Catalonia — 6.21 miles — 54m 42s — 245ft elevation — 8:48 /mi