Last light on the Coll de Merolla
Some rides are about training. Intervals, zones, numbers on a screen. This one was about light.
There is an hour at the end of a summer day when the mountains stop being green and grey and turn gold. The shadows get long, the air cools just enough to make you want to ride forever, and every pine by the roadside looks as if it had been lit by hand. Photographers call it golden hour. Cyclists just call it the best part of the day.
Chasing the sun uphill
The plan was simple: roll out late, climb through the forest and reach the top before the sun dropped behind the ridge. Not too hard. Not too easy. The kind of pace where you can still talk, but mostly don’t want to.
The road winds up through the pines in long, patient bends. Every time it turns west the light hits you full in the face; every time it turns back you ride through a tunnel of shade and cool air. Warm, cool, warm, cool. It’s almost hypnotic.
A sign in the trees
And then, between two bends, the sign. Coll de Merolla. Brown board, white letters, a few stickers left by the riders who came before. No finish line, no crowd, no clock. Just a sign in the trees and the quiet satisfaction of having got there.
Nobody ever regrets the evening ride. Not once.
Why pink at sunset
People ask us why Ráfaga is so pink. Ride it at this time of day and you’ll understand. Against the deep green of the pines and the gold of the low sun, it glows. Every photo from that evening looks as if it had been colour-graded on purpose. It wasn’t. That’s just what the light does to it.
The descent was cool and fast, with the sun already gone from the valley floor and the last of it still burning on the peaks above. Lights on, vest zipped, big grins.
Some rides you forget by Tuesday. This one we’re still talking about.
