[Closed] Majorca,Spanish and some solid STW Advice.

A significant portion of the people on Mallorca don't really see themselves as Spanish, and speak Catalan whenever they can. So you might be disspointed if you learn Spanish!

Edit: for mountain biking, Soller is a good place to be based. The hub for challenging riding seemed to be Bunyola, but there are trails all along the mountain range. Depends what you're after, my observation was that the trails went from easy bimbling to steep / sketchy with not a lot in between.

There is also a mountain bike Mallorca facebook group where some local guys organise rides. They took us out for the day and afternoon paella and beer! The beer and paella time was longer than the ride time.

Firstly whats the best resources for learning reasonable conversational spanish? I'm potentially moving out to Majorca and need to get that sorted.

I had a series of Spanish girlfriends, seemed to work. Ended up married to the last one, though, so perhaps not the best idea 🙂

I also used "[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/Teach-Yourself-Spanish-Complete-Courses/dp/0340946857 ]Teach Yourself Spanish[/url]" to get the basics of the grammar, and then "intercambios" with Spaniards to get conversation practise. (Basically you meet up at a café or bar, 30min in English / 30min in Spanish). I also did a few classes, but again in exchange for English classes.

Secondly: whats the spanish legal positon on what type of motorpowered bike you can ride on a UK car licence?

They have exactly the same categories of motorbikes here as the UK, and it also depends on when you got your car licence. But assuming >3 years of B car licence you can ride anything up to 125cc.

If you reside here for more than 2 years you need to swap your UK licence for a Spanish one, you have to pay a charge [s]and take a medical test,[/s] but there's no exam.

Edit: seems there's no medical test assuming your licence is current / valid.

Can't help you on the learning Spanish front, but can help on the trails front.

We have a place on Mallorca and have done a few rides in the tramuntana mountains, just last weekend we did the whole mountain range end to end off road over 3 days staying in hotels along the way, it was pretty good.

As mentioned above the trails are either wide easy forest track or steep narrow tech rock fests, with not much in between. soller is a good base to start from ,but the climb out up to just below puig major is a bugger.

Theres a nice little downhill track in the hills above Puerto andratx,youll find it on strava. And the descent from lluc into pollensa is a really nice flowing bermy swoop trail, again look on strava.

Your best bet to find your way around initially is probably to be guided either paid or something more informal. I can recommend Tony at www.Tramuntbike.com, if you speak to him tell him julian sent you.

I found the Michele Thomas Spanish course very good.

Michael Thomas

I found evening classes helped a lot. Didn;t make enough effort on the homework though and then dropped it when we had kids and work went a bit mental.

Edit: That was Castellano of course, not Catalan.

You dont need to change your licence after 2 years anymore either, just when it expires.