This was the end of season two day trip I’d been looking forward to for the last couple of months. Two days of riding on the Balearic island of Mallorca staying in the cycling hotspot of Port de Pollenca riding hired bikes I could never afford back home in the UK. Sun, cycling friendly roads, epic famous climbs and descents on expensive machinery and of course beer in the evenings. It was safe to say I was expecting this trip to be the cherry on top of a good summer on the bike.

Like all good plans it was formulated in the depths of a boring nightshift at work. My colleague Carl was waxing lyrically about the 4 days he’d just spent riding on the island, and by the end of the night a tentative plan for a workplace short get away was in place. Websites were perused, the possibility of mooching off for a few days without them was brought up tentatively to our wives and once permission was obtained calendars were consulted and bookings were made. After years of looking at pictures of sunbaked roads and worryingly steep looking hairpin bends in magazines and on social media it looked like I was finally going to get to test my legs and lungs on them. The plan was simple, the three of us myself, very tall Carl and very Liverpudlian Benno would get the evening flight to Palma out of Europe’s least favourite airport four years running (Manchester), pick up the hire car and get to the hotel in Port de Pollença just after midnight. We’d have a leisurely start the next day as befitted our advancing years, pick up the bikes we’d pre-booked via the wonders of the internet and tick off what many consider the best ride on the island out to the lighthouse at Cap Formentor. Day two assuming we’d all survived day one Carl had planned what looked worryingly like a massive 110km loop which took us up and down the famous Sa Calobra climb. I’d looked at the GPX file he’d sent me for that one, uploaded it to my Wahoo head unit and decided to worry about the frankly terrifying looking elevation profile when the time came.

Of course like most well laid plans it didn’t survive long after contact with the enemy – in this case a delayed flight from Europe’s grottiest airport served up with a chaser of a long wait for baggage at the other end and a side order of playing ‘hunt the hire car’ in Palma Airports labyrinthine super confusing multi-storey carpark saw us finally rolling into the hotel at 02:30am. Now I’m usually a bit of a faffer when I check into a hotel, unpacking, seeing what TV channels I can get on the ubiquitously difficult to use wall mounted TV, fiddling with the coffee maker and lights etc, but this time mindful of the two days of possibly unparalleled athletic endeavour stretching out before me I went straight to bed !

After doing more than justice to a substantial hotel breakfast the next morning and listening to Carl and Benno who were sharing a room argue about whose snoring and bathroom habits were the most offensive it was time to collect the bikes we’d hired for the trip from the Pinarello Experience in the town. ( http://www.pinarelloexperience.com ) Now I think the whole bike hire experience and the various pro and cons of hiring vs bringing your own steed are worth covering in a separate post so I won’t go into too much detail here apart from showing you this picture of my ride for the trip. Carbon frame, full 105 12speed Di2 and disk brakes this Pinarello X3 would have set me back about £4500 in the UK so it was going to be by some distance the most expensive bike I had ever ridden.

By the time the bikes were sorted, insurance deposits paid and we’d wobbled back to the hotel to get lycra’ed up it was late morning by the time we set out for the ride up to Cap Formentor. After wending our way out of Port de Pollença’s bustling streets the road kicks up pretty sharply almost straight away as you tackle the climb up to the viewing point at El Mirador de Sa Creueta. It’s not a particularly long or steep climb at about 3.5km with a gradient of roughly 7-8% overall but it’s a great leg and lung opener for what’s to come later. After a quick stop at the top to take in the views and the obligatory top of the hill pictures a fast descent down the other side of the Col de Sa Creueta gave me both the chance to explore my Pinarello’s high speed handling and test the limits of the local car drivers forbearance as I over committed to a rather ambitious overtaking manoeuvre of a small SUV between the hairpins and had a close encounter with a minibus coming in the opposite direction up the climb ………🙈 , lets just say the oncoming driver let me know in no uncertain terms that he was less than impressed with me, it certainly made my heart rate spike and I gave myself a big telling off about taking silly risks going downhill.

At the bottom of the descent the route forks left at a crossroads and once past a barrier becomes apart from the odd tourist bus which is allowed through cyclists only. The next 16km or so are a fast undulating road up the spine of the peninsula with some sections in the rather sparse woodland which seem to characterise the island which give way to rugged and barren rocky sections where the road seems to cling to the side of the cliffs giving you spectacular views out over the ocean. The amount of cyclists on the road was a bit of an eye opener if your used to riding in the UK, there where small groups of 3 or 4 riders like us, big chain gangs of 10 or more riders carving along at some really impressive speeds, people bimbling along on ebikes, even the odd cycle tourist bedecked with panniers and barbags, truly this was obviously a ride that showcased just how popular cycling is on Mallorca.

After awhile the road enters a short 300m or so tunnel carved into the hillside and then after a few more punchy climbs you round a corner and the end of the peninsula with it’s famous lighthouse is laid out before you. There’s a fast descent to negotiate before the road gives you one last leg burner with a final steep kick up towards the lighthouse and its cafe. Coming down this descent brought me as close to disaster as I’ve been for a long time as the wind coming off the sea really picked up and got into the bikes semi deep dish wheels producing a proper speed wobble at about 60kph which again sent my poor heart rate into the stratosphere and had me thinking that checking the old bib shorts for unfortunate stains would be prudent as soon as we stopped!

After standing in a longish queue comprised exclusively of sweaty cyclists in the lighthouses cafe we allowed ourselves a well deserved slice of cake, a fizzy drink and possibly an ill-advised beer. Sitting on the cafe’s terrance in the late season sunshine gives you a grandstand view both out over the sea and of the endless procession of riders of all shapes and sizes wizzing down the last descent and then toiling up the last switchback hairpins to the lighthouse in a never ending parade of bright lycra colours and expensive carbon fibre bikes. The climb back up the other side of the valley looked horribly deep from our vantage point, but that was a problem for later on…….

This being a classic ‘out and back’ ride the return leg is just a rinse and repeat of what we’d just done but in reverse which simply means the fun bits from before were now painful, and the painful quad cramping climbs where now brake squeezing drops with corners that tested your confidence in your tyres grip levels. The final climb back up the Col de Sa Creueta where I’d got overly friendly with the oncoming traffic coming down it was a bit of a chore, especially when Carl who’d sat ruthlessly on my wheel most of the way up it put in a dig about a kilometre from the top and dropped me like a bad smell …. my excuse was that the ill advised mid ride San Miguel was coming back to haunt me in a big way as I crawled up the final meters of the climb belching like a football fan after his half time pie and pint of warm lager🤢

As we ended up getting back into Port de Pollença mid afternoon ish we even extend the ride a little out the other side of the town and back before calling it a day for some well deserved rehydration time sitting by the sea front in the bike themed Tolos Bar and Restaurant. Apparently a certain Brad Wiggins used to own a controlling interest in this bar and there’s a whole bunch of his framed jersey’s, a couple of his Tour de France bikes and other assorted memorabilia adorning the inside. It’s the perfect stop for the thirsty cyclist with long bike racks outside festooned with a wide range of expensive machines and almost every patron sitting outside under the generous awning being attired in salt encrusted lycra swapping tall tales of holding 500 watts up every climb and descending faster than Tom Pidcock. After a suitable amount of amber coloured liquid refreshment it was time to wobble back to the hotel for a very necessary long hot shower and very probably a serious nap before attacking the evening dinner buffet.

So that was day one of our Mallorca adventure in the bag, 63km ridden with almost exactly 1000 metres of climbing made it a decent day out and reassured me that I was actually capable of getting up some of these longer ascents without requiring some sort of emergency medical intervention 😁. Could I manage almost twice as far with double the climbing the next day? Hmmmmm, the jury was out on that one! As for the ride, well I’d say the Cap Formentor route lives up to its reputation as one of the islands must do rides. The climbs are hard but not too long or impossibly steep and the scenery especially on the last section down to the lighthouse is epic. It’s a great 1/2 day length ride which would make the perfect bookend to any Mallorca riding trip.