Part IV: The Last Five Hundred Are Always the Longest

The last day is the one you have to ride carefully, because you have already arrived in your head. Five hundred kilometres of coast and autopista, mostly flat, mostly straight, entirely capable of ending badly if you treat it as a formality.

The Coll de Rates is the reward and it is twenty kilometres from the door: a climb the cycling clubs have made famous, empty at four on a Sunday, and just technical enough to remind you that you are tired.

Then Denia, the Montgó exactly where the map said it would be, and the strange flatness that follows any arrival. Four days to cover what a plane does in three hours. Worth it, obviously. I will still take the flight next time.