07 Apr 2024 Road Cycling in Mallorca

Trip Data

• Pho­tos: Photo gal­lery
• Loc­a­tion: The Span­ish is­land of Mal­lorca, in the Medi­ter­ranean
• A Few of the Best Routes:
  • Soller Loop (102 miles)
  • An­dratx to Al­cu­dia (101 miles)
  • Sa Calo­bra to Cap For­ment­or (106 miles)
• Trip Mileage: ~400 miles
• Trip As­cent: ~40K ft
• Dates: 30 March - 5 April 2024
• Weath­er: 50-70s, mostly sunny

Brief Notes on the Trip

Dur­ing the later phases of the pan­dem­ic, I star­ted to miss rid­ing in the moun­tains. The long sweep­ing corners of a fast moun­tain des­cent, the rhythm of switch­backs, the jour­ney of an as­cent from val­ley to peak. None of these can be found any­where near the roads around my house.

Fi­nally, after in­sane work and health is­sues, it felt like spring of 2024 might be a chance to go get lost in the big hills on a bike. Op­por­tun­ity and cir­cum­stance came to­geth­er in­to my first trip to Mal­lorca.

With its curving moun­tain roads and idyll­ic spring weath­er, Mal­lorca has be­come some­thing of a rid­ing loc­a­tion le­gend among cyc­lists in the last 10 years. Ori­gin­ally used largely by pro teams for early sea­son train­ing, it’s be­come a place where cyc­ling en­thu­si­asts nearly take over the is­land for a few months be­fore it gets too hot in the sum­mer.

In total, there were 10 of us on the trip. Three of the riders had been to Mal­lorca every year for years; for the rest of us, it was our first trip.

Some set of us rode every day for about eight days straight, on rides as short as 30 miles and as long as 100, fully ex­plor­ing the moun­tains on the north side of the is­land and some of the pic­tur­esque Span­ish towns and hills in the cent­ral and east­ern por­tion of the is­land.

I put in a few jet-lag re­cov­ery and warm up rides, then al­tern­ated days of go­ing hard and go­ing easy for the rest of the trip, ul­ti­mately rid­ing over 100 miles on three dif­fer­ent days.

The moun­tains are gor­geous, the sea is ma­gic­al, the roads are smooth and flow­ing. The climbs are hard, but not ri­dicu­lous. The hotel was great, the ca­marader­ie of the group was won­der­ful, the buf­fet per­fect for hungry cyc­lists.

It was a won­der­ful week, one that I feel blessed to have ex­per­i­enced.

I’m not go­ing to de­scribe the routes or the in­di­vidu­al days… I’ll just let a few of the pic­tures speak for them­selves.

En­joy.