This chart, from Strava, is based on a black box of an algorithm, but the values it gives for fitness, form and fatigue correspond to how I feel over time. By this measure I'm a lot fitter than I have been at any point in the past 12 months, including after riding in the Alps, and in fact the second-fittest I've ever been. I can hold my own in a group of strong riders like this week's, though I'd really benefit in the mountains from losing a few more kg of weight. And if I take John as my example — he's 74 — I could have at least another decade to enjoy this kind of riding.

I haven't shown the form and fatigue lines on the chart, because it gets a bit noisy. Unsurprisingly, they suggest I need some recovery; but that I'm taking good form into riding for the next few weeks: the key thing is not to let the fitness fall away.

The big jumps in fitness in this chart come from the longer rides on the road, especially multi-day rides. Turbo-training serves to keep me fit between times, providing I do enough of it (the rising sawtooth in the middle of the chart, representing January to March 2023, kick-started by the Festive 500 challenge between Christmas and New Year). Turbo is useful in the off season, when the weather is worse, and it builds strength; but not the endurance needed for these longer rides. That's not surprising: a week of turbo-training is about 3.5 hours of exercise. This week, I've spent almost 40 hours riding, prompting increasingly amazed reactions from my watch, which reminds me to stay active.

There is no substitute for time on the bike and miles in the legs, for getting and staying fit. Weather permitting, I now have the opportunity to give that the priority it has sometimes lost among other demands.

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The crinkly coast road: a joy to ride. We shared it with other cyclists and lots of Porche drivers.

Picked out in not-very-visible orange on the map are the roads I've cycled in the past week, from France to the Costa Brava. The total distance was a little shorter than it might have been, but a lot more than I usually do in a week. I mentioned "Everlasting": though it was over a week, not in a single day, the total elevation gained in this week of riding is 1.4 Everests. In total, that burned 17,211 calories, many of which I have replaced.

Patrick, Jo and John, enjoying their cocktails; the old town of Tossa de Mar, and the walls which give the Restaurant Sa Muralla its name. We ate very well there, on traditional Catalan / Mediterranean fare including a Tossa speciality (not in the photographs), Cim-i-Tomba: white fish with potatoes in a garlic sauce.

Meantime, in Tossa de Mar, the first of the mojitos was being served to those who had finished putting their bikes back into travel boxes. It was not the last.

Time-lapse photography: I stopped to take a picture at the viewpoint overlooking Tossa de Mar both times I arrived at it on the last, circular, part of the route. The weather for our week's riding has been spectacularly good, if occasionally a little on the hot side. Ursula tells me I'm in for a chillier experience back in Edinburgh.

I found this injunction just over the top of the day's final climb, and followed it for the final 10 km of the week's riding.

Normal service will be resumed after dinner

Dinner is in 20 minutes, preceded by the obligatory Team Photo, so pictures will appear either later tonight or possibly from the airport tomorrow morning. Those with Barcelona flights (including me) have a 7 am departure. Wish us luck with that; especially those blue-route riders who decided on cocktails over colls for the last two hours of the afternoon.

(They posted a picture of the first cocktail while I was on my last coll, so I passed the time while climbing making up names for cocktails for cyclists. The last of them is an in-joke about Jo Long's experiences last night in Girona, which I did not witness but have been the talk of the peloton.

Allen Key: a Screwdriver, but served in a six-sided glass;

Short, Fast, Distressing Bonk Against the Clock (for time trialists);

Jo Long, Sucker: Bailey's, High Five and a dash of suncream, shaken in a bidon.)

This was for the most part a more relaxed day, as we wound down to the end of the trip, and to sea level.

But first, up. We left Girona by the road to Els Àngels — in full, the Santuari de la Mare de Déu dels Àngels, on one of the highest points around Girona. The road up is a cyclist's joy: smooth, sinuous, and shaded by the pine trees, which are open enough to afford good views. We shared it this morning with an "Everesting" event, which I think means that the people around us were going to ride up it about 17 times, thus climbing the equivalent of Mount Everest. It's always good to be able to point to someone else and say, "No, they're mad."

"Undulate" is verb of the week, and we undulated to the coast by way of a detour to take in the climb to Romana de la Selva (323m): not high, by this week's standards, but with a lovely descent. Another great road: Matt and I bonded by descending it fast. As we rode on from the base, he told me he'd sold his motorbikes because that kind of cycling is more fun. Then we were so deep in a conversation about the relative benefits of 23 mm, 28 mm and 32 mm tyre sizes, that we missed the next turn.

By lunchtime at Sant Feliu, on the coast, there was a growing feeling of the ride being almost over. We'd been riding as a group, about half a dozen of us, so we lunched as a group, too. Dave and I, though, thought it was a bit early to start on the fleshpots, so we shared a pizza instead of having a whole one, and agreed to do the extra 40 km of the red route. He'd done all five so far, and wanted an incentive to get the sixth.

So he and I, having thrown in our euros, left the others doing complicated-seeming arithmetic over the pizza bill. There is (it emerged) a difference of about 15 kg and maybe 30 years between Dave and me, so he was faster on the climbs, but I had gravity and experience on my side on the descents. We made it together to Tossa de Mar, then I told him to ride at his own pace up the long climb inland and then back to the Alto de Montagut (475 m). One more hairpin descent, then a reprise of 10 km of the wonderful corniche road, and we were done.

The last day's red route is the same as the blue route, and then an extra loop back inland and up, descending to the Costa Brava for a bonus second go at 10 km of the coast road.

Before we get to the coast, we leave Girona by way of Els Angels, another of the city's iconic rides.

The last 30 km or so back into Girona were not quite the ordeal of yesterday's approach, or I was better tuned to urban traffic. Junction configurations in Spain are ingenious but unexpected, to the confusion of cyclists who think "This route appears to be taking me onto the motorway to Madrid" (at one point) or "... to Perpignan" (at another); but it all worked, if you paid close attention.

My ride took me back into Girona past the Pont de Pedra, or "Stone Bridge" which is where the US Postal riders met for their training rides (and is still the start and finish of the "Hincapie loop" on Stava). If I came back on my own, though, I think I'd look for a base a bit further out from the city: in Banyoles, for example. As I said to Christel, I've left two big climbs unclaimed (Rocacorba and La Mare de Déu del Mont) to give me a reason to return...

But we're not quite done yet. Tomorrow, we head to the Costa Brava, but first we climb high enough to find ourselves among angels.

Continuing to combine architecture and self-preservation, I next stopped at a garage for a chilled bottle of the ubiquitous Vichy Catalan, whom I shall be inviting to sponsor my next ride in Spain. I've spared you another picture of a garage forecourt.

Instead, lots of pictures of the Església Santa Maria de Porqueres, near Banyoles (our route took us back that way, and in fact right past our first night's hotel). The church was consecrated in 1182, and is now a national monument, by virtue of being one of the best-preserved Romanesque churches in Catalunya (though the belfry is 18th-century).

Even better, it was open, and cool. I donated a euro to switch on the lights in order to take pictures, and was thus the unknown benefactor of the eldery Japanese party who came in as I was leaving.

My next stop on the cultural trail was Besalu. It has a quite spectacular 12th-century Romanesque bridge — seven arches of different sizes, and two towers — over our old friend, the River Fluvia, and looks like a fascinating place for a wander on a cooler day. I satisfied myself with an ice-cream in the shade of an early 21st-century café awning.

I have since discovered that our other old friend, Wilfred the Hairy, was the Count of Besalu, among other places; and that Besalu was the birthplace of Raimon Vidal, a famous Catalan troubadour who flourished in the early 13th century. Vidal wrote a thesis about the art of the troubadour, in which he insisted that the audience listen silently and with critical attention, and enquire into what they do not understand. According to Christopher Page (of Gothic Voices), this makes him a seminal figure in the development of the concept of classical music. So I have redeemed my earlier puns with a serious musical reference!

Can Noguer del Segueró set me off on a search for more cultural patrimony, preferably the shady kind. I mean, the kind that offers the cyclist some shade.

The church at Beuda has been there since at least the year 1004, when it was the subject of a legal dispute between the bishop and the count, who both claimed to own it. Today, however, it was firmly locked.

Apparently, there are alabaster carvings inside, a result of this part of the Garrotxa having large deposits thereof, which have been mined since Roman times. The mine was going strong today, too, its activity indicated by the film of white dust over the road where the lorries go in and out.