We’re sitting in a shady square in the charming golden Mallorcan town of Pollença, halfway through our second pastry of the day after a morning pedalling past palm tree-lined boulevards, luscious green olive groves and mountain goats.
It’s Sunday, market day, and we’re among multi-generational families sitting round for a morning coffee; locals enjoying a lunchtime cerveza, and fellow cyclists, plodding around the markets in their Lycra and comparing notes about whether to take the flatter or the hillier route to get back to the hotels down in the port after lunch. Obviously the hillier one, if you’re after epic views.
Epic really is the word here, if you’ve come for the cycling like my sisters and I have done. We’ve signed up to a trip with British bike tour company Love Velo, and been told about the views, the climate, the respectful drivers — all the things that have made the largest Balearic island a supposed cyclists’ paradise (300,000 cyclists come every year) — but still arrive with trepidation. Sure, we’ve racked up some Rapha stash and like to spend some Sunday winding around Richmond Park, but we’re far the addicts you see on Strava and have always avoided the Alps for fear of feeling as though we’re attempting to join the Tour de France. Would we feel welcome here?
Within hours of arriving and stepping out onto the seafront in Port de Pollença — one of the island’s most popular cycling towns on its northern Mediterranean coast — we forget that this question even crossed our minds. Of course we are welcome here. Everyone is. From girl groups of fair-weather cyclists like us, to grandparents enjoying a couple of days on two wheels between babysitting duties, like the ones we came across during a mountain-top coffee stop.
And that’s the funny thing about this magic place: some of these rides are up mountains, yet somehow it’s surprisingly do-able. Particularly if you stay in Port de Pollenca, just a five-minute ride from the start of the island’s famous Cap Formentor, nicknamed the lighthouse ride for its winding roads up to a Mamma Mia-style lighthouse perched on what is regularly referred to as the Land’s End of Mallorca.
At the lighthouse we find ourselves talking to a group of friends from the US over a coffee as a couple of kittens from the next-door cafe settle in our laps. It’s their fourth year visiting the island for a cycling trip. They delight in the blissfully pothole-free roads, wall-to-wall sunshine and world-class cycle infrastructure. Highlights include: beachfront cycle lanes, cafés with bike racks and signs at the bottom of each hill telling you both the incline and distance to the top. They even have official photographers positioned in three of the island’s top cycling spots, to capture you as you pass.
We log onto mallorcacyclingphotos.com to peep the results, and see scenes worthy of a Le Col brochure. Think moutains so rugged you could be in a US national park, and bays so turquoise you could be in Greece. It’s like a grown-up version of the Île de Ré off France’s west coast — except everything here is bigger, better and rather more steep.
Yet, as mentioned, for someone accostomed to flat London cycling and occasionally venturing onto the South Downs, the hills are surprisingly fine. Yes, they are long — sometimes 10km long, if you attempt the questionably-nicknamed ‘petrol station ride’ up to the old mountain village of Lluc, one of the suggested routes on Love Velo’s app (they’re downloadable onto your Wahoo or Garmin so you can follow from your handlebars). But nothing is so steep we ever have to get off and push.
It just requires a slight mindset (and gear) shift, as though you were hiking up a mountain on foot. I tell myself: ‘Yes I am going uphill for 10km now, but there’ll be breathtaking views all the way up, and we can treat ourselves to a lunch in the grounds of a monastery at the top.’ Suddenly, flat riding feels a little boring.
The other bonus of a cycling holiday here? It doesn’t all have to be about the cycling. You could hire bikes for just half the holiday (or every other day, if you’re being savvy about saddle soreness) or simply ride in the mornings and flop by a pool in the afternoons.
There’s something particularly delicious about sinking your teeth into a peach-jam ensaïmada or a bowl-full of patatas bravas when Strava tells you you’ve burnt more than 1,500 calories that morning. And those Sangria hangovers certainly don’t last long when you’ve can sweat the whole thing out in your first 10K.
And you’re in luck if you’re planning on staying at any of the island’s top cycling hotels, like Cabot Pollensa Park Spa (cabot-hotels.com,from £57 per night) in Port de Pollença and Zafiro Palace Alcudia (zafirohotels.com, from £52 per night) in the next town along the coast, Alcudia. They all have great facilities for cyclists and loungers.
Both hotels offer on-site kit shops. Cabot has storage and repair facilities, while Zafiro has in-house bike hire, repair and storage where you can lock your bike overnight.
Thanks to Love Velo, we were lucky enough to spend three days riding on the same £10,000 Pinarello bikes (pinarelloexperience.com) ridden by many of the pros, and had the added bonus of bumping into fellow cyclists in and around the hotel. Ideal if you’re looking for inside tips and nods to the best coffee stops on the petrol station ride. Try the monastery at Lluc, if you’re after a good iced latte and a secret lido tucked away behind some orange trees — pack your swimmers.
You certainly won’t go hungry at either hotel. Cabot’s all-inclusive offering includes buffet options across its main restaurant and pool bar (the breakfast doughnuts make a perfect top-of-the-mountain treat) and Zafiro’s all-inclusive package includes everything from an on-site Coffee Corner offering posh flat whites to dinner at any of five different restaurants, from Italian to Asian. Book a table at its Mediterranean outpost El Olivo for one night if you can, and keep an eye out for the jars of pick ‘n mix at the breakfast buffet — a perfect hilltop treat after a hard climb.
Both hotels have outdoor pools and spas with treatment options for post-ride recovery (Zafiro’s pool area can become anti-socially loud in the middle of the day, so best to ride over lunchtime), and Cabot offers tennis and padel tennis if you have any energy left.
Various cyclists we bumped into said they treated their Mallorcan cycling trips like summer versions of their annual ski trips: with just as much focus on coffee stops and après as the winding down mountains. Just swap the mulled wine for sangria and sauna dips for beach trips.
All of which makes it sound as though we couldn’t move for fellow cyclists — but this wasn’t the case. We visited during late September, one of the busiest times of the year for cyclists thanks to its low to mid-twenties temperatures and reliable sunshine, but the island wasn’t overrun. We barely passed a single car or cycle between Port de Pollença and Pollença old town, and we never struggled to find a table in any of the top cafés.
Saying that, there is a beauty to setting off on the odd ride with a baguette in your handlebar bag and pitching up for lunch wherever you can find the best viewpoint. Our favourite was in the charming town of Selva, where we stumbled across an immaculately manicured hilltop spot, so perfect it felt as though we were sitting in a postcard. The hotel Can Cota Suites & Spa was right next door and several passing cyclists raved about the sea views from the pool there. It’s already on our list for next year.
And yes, we will be back — maybe even sooner than next autumn. There’s something about Mallorca and its breathtaking scenery, pristine road surfaces, reliable weather and bike-friendly attitude (not a single driver hooted or revved at us all week) that’s strangely addictive. We have plenty of cycling hotspots left to explore: Port de Sóller was raved about by a friend; Palma, for a ride out from the notoriously beautiful capital; and the island’s most epic ride of all, Sa Calobra.
If you could design an island for cyclists it would probably look something like Mallorca. Even those of us who love pootling between pools and guilt-free pastry stops as much as the Pelotons.
