Happy New Year from everyone at Hotel Mas Pelegri

First I want to apologise for our New Year email newsletter being so late this year. We have been trying to finish a redo of our websites and the new www.GironaCycling.com should be up in another 2 weeks (Thank you to Pablo, Gareth & Joana for all of their work).

We are now listing all of our activity options (30 in all) as separate buttons with links to brochures so hopefully it should be easier for people to find the activity combination they are looking for, from training camps, to tours, to self guided cycling, gravel biking, family biking, triathlon, hiking and running.  New for 2025 we are also offering a tour in conjunction with Free Range Chalet so that you can enjoy a bike across Catalonia and into France. Staying the first 3 nights at Hotel Mas Pelegri (allowing you to ride to the Med) followed by 1 night in La Seu d’Urgell and 3 nights at the Free Range Chalet in Bagneres de Luchon, France. We still have spaces left for this tour as well as other training camps and tours in 2025, so please contact us. We have 2 gravel tours (mid Feb and end April) with Gravel events at the end of the week, as well as easier yoga and off road cycling, Greenway, road cycling, triathlon and hiking weeks. We have trips for people of all ages and fitness levels. Other tour operators are also organising their camps at Hotel Mas Pelegri, including Tanja’s Up & Active Women’s Bike camp in June and Living Yoga’s week in October. This Winter, as well as discovering more gravel routes, we have also been repainting the hotel, as Mas Pelegri has now been open over 15 years. We also have a lovely German gravel cyclist arriving to work with us from March this year. 

2024 was another busy fantastic year, Hossnia, Domi, Eli and Hannah all worked so hard to make our guests have great stays. We met so many people lovely people from all areas of the world and all ages, many of whom are overcoming extreme obstacles and are still getting out there and enjoying outdoor adventures. The aspect of human tenacity is so inspiring.

This year I want to dedicate this newsletter to my tenacious mother. 7 years ago she herniated 2 discs in her back and ended up in hospital for weeks. She had a long recovery with a lot of physical therapy. She regained most of her fitness but then Covid hit and along with the virus and being forced to stay at home she became very weak and unable to get off the floor. As I was doing the online Zoom yoga we asked her to join in. Slowly she built into doing more of the postures and regained her strength and fitness. She usually joins yoga 3 to 4 times a week. Amazingly, she also dropped both her systolic and diastolic pressures by 20mm. My mother being a doctor said maybe she is just an outlier but this outcome has also been revealed in other studies including a study which looked at the difference between aerobic exercise, Zumba and yoga on blood pressure. Interestingly, yoga had the largest effect and reduced systolic and diastolic pressures on average by 10mm and 14mm, respectively (Packyanathan JS, Preetha S, 2020) among women of 30 to 60 years old. Last March my mother returned to skiing at the age of 81. This Christmas she also enjoyed a swim in the Med with us. By her tenacity to get back going again she was able to return to her younger fitness levels and abilities and also increase her overall health. 

All forms of sports and also being outdoors makes us healthier and happier and we want to encourage everyone to maximise and realise their potential no matter their circumstances. If anyone wants to join our small and very friendly group for morning yoga on Zoom please let me know and of course you can come and join in in-person at Hotel Mas Pelegri.

We are continuing to try and protect our environment and keeping to zero carbon usage. We increased our renewable electricity usages to 92% in 2024 (90% in 2023), we kept our water usage below the required per person usages for drought and we served more vegan menus to interested guests. Interestingly I found my blood estradiol levels dropped from 30 to below 5pg/ml with a more vegan style diet. Diet and exercise really do increase our health and well being. We also engaged with the local area, schools and at cycling expos and festivals with ideas of how we can all help our world and ourselves to become healthier and happier.

This February (14th to 16th) we will be in Utrecht, Netherlands at FIETS EN WANDELBEURS and in March (22nd & 23rd) we will be at the NEC in Birmingham, UK at the National Cycling and Outdoor Show, I do have a few tickets available if anyone is coming to either expo.

We reopen tomorrow and we cannot wait to see you again. Have a great 2025.

Reference: Packyanathan JS, Preetha S. Comparison of the effect of Yoga, Zumba and Aerobics in controlling blood pressure in the Indian population. J Family Med Prim Care. 2020 Feb 28;9(2):547-551. doi: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_607_19. PMID: 32318379; PMCID: PMC7114029.