La Encigalada

A bikepacking event for riders who want to see more than one valley. Three distances cover wildly different scales of trip - a 200km tour through central Catalonia, a 500km that opens into the eastern Pyrenees foothills and an 800km that adds the western flank.

Self-paced rather than raced, but the clock counts. Stage management is the real skill - each day's effort sets up or undoes the next, and finishing depends as much on sleep and food choices as on legs. Difficulty is medium-high; Catalan rolling-to-mountain terrain at endurance distances does that on its own.

If you've done the one-day events and want to see how the country fits together at bikepacking pace, this is the event for it.