Off on family hols to Pollensa in July/Aug. I’ve booked my bike on the plane and bought a guide book but have a few questions:

How horrible will the ride from Palma airport to Pollensa be if I can’t fit the bike in the hire car with the family?

Is that guide book any good?

Any must-do loops/descents?

Is it really worth taking an MTB (Reign) or would I actually be better off taking a road bike? (I’d much rather take the MTB).

The ride from Airport, well that would not be nice on the road, and would be a real long off-road ride (if you could navigate it)
Why not consider a ‘Seasucker’ rack for the rental car? Then you could just get to Pollenca, where the riding should be good.

We have a family villa near Pollenca but ive never taken the bike there. I reckon road riding would actually be quite nice around there.

surely the answer is simple
Put the bike in the hire car and make the kids and wife get a bus 😉

Following this thread – we went to Pollenca a few years back and I spent the entire week wishing I had my bike, any bike. Pretty sure ST did a thing on biking around there recently?

‘we went to Pollenca a few years back and I spent the entire week wishing I had my bike, any bike’

There’s about 4 million* bike hire places in Pollenca alone.

*estimate

I’ve used that guide 3 times now over the last 3 years. The descriptions are superb!

The Soller ride up to Balitz and Fornalutz is great although quite short.

The Esporlas ride is a great day – some excellent “secret” singletrack and a great descent after the scenic shore-line section.

The Arta ride is away-from-it-all but only has one good bit, but that’s actually a really good descent down to a lovely inaccessible beach.

All the stuff around Lluc is well worthwhile, and there’s loads of other options in that area as well. You can ride up from Pollenca via Binifaldo off road, do one of the loops from the guide and return the same way. All good. The offroad route between Lluc Repsol Garage and Cairmari is a favourite of ours!

The ride near Palma (Na Burguesa) was also good, and I bet there’s a lot more in that area to explore as well.

Nothing’s mega technical in those rides, though, but they’re all good days out and you’ll hardly see anyone off road.

Take the MTB. There’s too many road bikes on Mallorca already 😉

GR221 Trail is pretty good fun and plenty to explore.

Also some great routes around Bunyola (But a 45 min drive from Pollenca)

Best i rode was from Soller to Port De Sa Calobra along the coast … you can also get the boat from Soller and ride back from Sa Calobra.

thestabiliser, yeah, I know. The kids were tiny, so I didn’t really have the time.

You could try http://www.chainguidemallorca.com
They should be able to help with routes. I rode with them last year. Thier hire bikes are a good standard, but you might want to take your own unless you are ok with euro brake setup.

Passed a fair few mtb slogging up to the filling station at lluc today. I hoped that there was something on the down to make it worth it.

I was on skinny wheels.

the best MTB routes arent very well publicised, and you’ll need a bit of local knowledge to get the most out of it.

I can recommend Toni at tramuntbike, he’ll come to where you are (or meet you somewhere suitable) and take you on a days guided riding.

Home

The mountain biking there is decent, but hard to find

Thanks all. I’ll take the MTB then and try my luck.

Good to hear that the guide is OK. I did email someone about guided riding but was told they weren’t doing any this year. Not sure if it was Tramuntbike so I’ll check that out. That rack looks interesting but a bit spendy for something I’ll only use once.

There seem to be lots of roadie-focused bus services but does anyone know if there’s anything that would take me and bike from Palma to Pollensa?

They should be able to help with routes. I rode with them last year. Thier hire bikes are a good standard, but you might want to take your own unless you are ok with euro brake setup.

Speaking from painful experience the one moment you want your reflexes to work is when you don’t want to have to think about what hand you’re using. I managed to endo into a gorse bush several times in Portugal doing this… The last time I hired a bike – in the US so backward brakes again – I checked that they could swap them!

off to Majorca (Alcudia) end July/August
Will it be too hot for any particularly strenuous biking?
Hotel is just round the corned from the Chainguide place so quite fancy the opportunity to slip away from the family for a day

It will be exceptionally hot at that time of year,I wouldn’t want to be biking then.

Will it be too hot for any particularly strenuous biking?

I’ve always gone crack of dawn when I’ve been there (7am or earlier), mainly because it fits in better with family holidays, as I’m back for breakfast, but also because of the heat. Added bonus is quieter roads, some of the best rides are pretty busy roads during the day.

Last year I found that by 9am on my rides it was getting too warm for my liking, but it was unseasonably hot when we were there, and I am used to cold Scottish weather!

I ended up doing a few mornings of unguided impromptu MTBing with no proper gear and a rather mediocre bike and still had a great time. It’s bloody hot in June but where we were staying was rocky and spiky as hell, properly techy fun natural trails – as soon as I saw the landscape I knew I needed to get hold of a MTB!

If I go again I’m booking a better bike, bringing my pads and gloves and flats and shoes and getting some guiding. You’d have to pay me a lot to ride around on tarmac instead of riding gnarly terrain like that. It’s very very hot in the summer, which is another good reason to do some laidback winch-up, plummet down stuff off-road.

You’d have to pay me a lot to ride around on tarmac instead of riding gnarly terrain like that

Going to be honest, I always feel exactly the opposite about Mallorca, I love the roads, they are well surfaced, interesting and if you are not dicing with German tourists in the middle of the day, pretty safe. Whenever I go I fall in love with the road bike, then come home and realise that doesn’t translate to this country. I haven’t even touched the road bike here since I went to Mallorca last June!

I have also used the guide and found it really good. Personally I wouldn’t bother taking your own bike, by the time you have paid excess baggage costs etc it is almost as cheap to hire a good one and then you don’t have the hassle of getting it to and from the airport at each end.
From memory (it was a few years ago) I was out there at that time of year and didn’t find the heat too much but obviously avoid the middle of the day.