looping: mallorca
A pre-Tour training camp.
I’ve never ridden a road bike abroad so a week in Mallorca, the most cliched of places for a spring training camp, seems like an ideal opportunity. Helpfully we’re staying in Port de Sóller which has both an abundance of bike hire shops and is at the bottom of the biggest hill on the island so there’s an obvious place to start.
I’d decided not to go up the main route but instead go via Fornalutx partly because it’s supposed to be pretty and also because it will have water. The slightly circuitous route round Sóller to get to the bottom of the climb is made a bit less uncertain by having driven it the day before on the way to the local, excellent, agricultural coöperative. Once there it’s pretty straightforward up to the village.
It’s shortly after a brief stop for water that I realise I’ve set the navigation going on the garmin but not the recording, a thing I did not know was possible. There is a small period of self recrimination before joining the main climb and settling in to a rhythm.
It’s a nice steady gradient, not too steep so you can if not quite spin, at least not with the gears on the hire bike, neither is it a grind. There’s a few bits it levels off but mostly it’s just up. Where there’s shade or a breeze the temperature is very pleasant and where there’s not it’s warm but not oppressively so. Other than a quick photo stop at a view point I just chug along. There’s surprisingly few cyclists or much in the way of other traffic.
The tunnel at the top comes fairly quickly, at least if you think of an hour as quick. Certainly it’s quick from a perceived effort perspective. There’s a little table with water, snacks and sunscreen at the viewpoint; a reward for those in the tour group that arrives just after me. I take the obligatory bike against a wall photo and then press on through the short tunnel to the other side of the hill.
There’s a few kilometres of lightly downhill roads past a series of hydro reservoirs before another tunnel and the turn off to Sa Collabra. I carry on under the aqueduct and down the hill in the other direction.
Or rather back up again. There is a bit of a climb here I confess to having entirely forgotten about. It’s pretty short and then it’s downhill to the plains. At this point the shortness of the bike and the narrow handlebars make themself known. It’s not super problematic but I’m definitely not descending as confidently as I might. The descent is lovely despite this. Tree shaded hairpins and views out over the plains for miles.
The plains themselves are a bit less flat than I expected and quite toasty, alleviated somewhat by a decent breeze. Sadly the breeze is coming from the West which is the direction I’m heading in. It’s about this time that I start to think about lunch. I’d rather optimistically assumed I’d pass a charming looking cafe I could stop at but I have picked a very cafe lite route. At the third town I decide on a more concerted search for a lunch spot aware that I’m due to turn back into the hills shortly. It is not tremendously successful and I’m reduced to pulling out my phone which leads to me sitting next to a small play park eating a slightly mysterious pizza slice and an excellent apple pastry from the adjacent bakery.
I’m aware that time is getting on — it turns out all the climbing slows you down — so as soon as the food is done I push on. There’s some nice quiet back roads through the olive groves before the turn North towards the hills proper. The next set of climbs are mostly not too steep and not too long but it’s warm and I definitely did not get enough water at the last stop and there is very much nowhere to resolve this for a while. I don’t push it and try to make sure I both drink and conserve water.
It’s mostly very quiet punctuated by a a party of, I think, French schoolchildren hiking who all start shouting “velo” as I pass and a single village which does have some cafe/restaurants where I do not stop. The next bit of rather steep and warm climbing has me somewhat regretting that choice but onwards with the knowledge that at the bottom of the next descent is Bunyola which is definitely large enough to get some water. The climb is one of those where the average gradient on the sign at the bottom hides some less welcome sections in the middle. I am not tremendously pleased about this.
The descent is possibly a bit too technical in places to be entirely enjoyable on this bike but it is cooling and quick. And huzzah, Bunyola has a public water tap in a shaded square. I fill both bottles and drink a chunk immediately.
The next section is along the main Palma to Sóller road so very much a get it done bit. It at least has a wide margin down the side and is less busy than I feared and it’s not too long till I turn up the Col de Sóller and the rest of the traffic goes through the tunnel beneath.
The Col de Sóller is another 5% for 5km climb where the gradient increases as you go up, while the density of road side goats declines. It is also properly hot, at least to me. A south facing slope was possibly not the ideal way to finish my ride. Despite feeling really quite second hand the climb goes fine. I stop briefly at the top to take in the views towards Palma and then head down.
There are a lot of hairpins. I do not count but I can confidently say that there were more than I’ve ridden in my life and enough that I’m definitely beginning to get the hang of them by the bottom. They are very pleasantly shaded and clearly popular with cyclists. I see more going up the hill in the five or so minutes of descending that I’ve seen in the previous five hours.
Regrettably I rejoin the main road which is narrower on this side of the tunnel and has a somewhat disagreeable surface which makes me realise that some of my problem with the bike is the tyres are pumped up really very hard. Apparently the mechanics in the hire place are old school. I wish I’d noticed earlier but it’s not worth letting air out of them now. Once the road flattens out it’s a relatively easy spin into Port de Sóller and then a relatively unpleasant climb to where we are staying at the top of town. I even manage a bit of a sprint up the last of it.
The next day I read the leaflet from the bike hire shop that helpfully suggests cafes in several of the towns I passed through.