To ride my road bike. Any advice?

any route recommendations? im planning to ride 5 days, 1 long ride of 80miles and the other will be 50miles.

Going with a cycling mate and wife and kids.

Port Soller is absolutely fabulous, really, it’s just utterly gorgeous. But, and it’s quite a big but (actually after five days riding the last thing you will have is a big but) you’ve got a major climb to get anywhere other than Soller. Whichever way you go, it’s a monster. The only way to avoid that monster road climb is to go via the sea.

There is a tunnel but I don’t think bikes are allowed in it?

Still, I am sure you already know this and chose Soller as your base because you are Luis Herrar reincarnated and will dance up the mountain passes like angels with wings.

Really it is lovely. A great ride would be to head over to Polensa which is a lovely town and on Saturday there is an amazing food market there. It’s a great place to have lunch but it will be busy on the weekend. Puerto Polensa is the beach resort and not as nice. Alcudia is also fabulous.

Hah yeah I full well know about the climbing.

Either Puig Major or Col de Soller. Going to be epic.

I have a long route towards Deia and Antratx which is alittle more mellow.

Not the best location IMHO for the reasons geetee points out, but if you want a long hard day out, a 80+ miler would be.

Soller
Puerto Pollenca
Selva
Bunyola
Soller

Have fun!

You need to do Sa Calobra.

360 Sa Calobra

Just before anyone else says – not the best place imho etc etc. I’m doing it to climb. Not to speed along the flat at 25mph.

Geoffj – thanks for the names!
Righog – Yes Thankyou, just what i need.

I was out there 3 weeks ago, Col de Soller is a lovely climb with a cracking descent down the other side, The Orient is beautiful too, and the Deia ride is a must… Don’t think for a minute it’ll be easy though! It’s a TOUGH road.

Col de sa Bataille is lovely, either from Selva or Pollensa side, and if you get that far, it would be rude not to ride Sa Colabra.

There’s nothing particularly tough in Majorca – they don’t do the 25% gradients that we have in the UK, and the climbs rarely elevate more than 1000m, so whilst they’re long, they’re not “Alpine” long…

I suspect heat might be a big problem so get out early if you can. It was very warm when I was there but not much humidity so climbing was pleasant.

But Soller is very sheltered from the wind, so climbing the Col can be murderously hot.

Have a great time, you lucky, lucky b*****d! 😀

Soller is an awesome location to road-ride from – what goes up, must come down 😉

If anyone has the time, Can you critique my routes I have made.
They are .gpx and best viewed in http://www.bikehike.co.uk

You can use the elevation map to show direction.

Have I missed anything, any other alternatives?

Cheers.

depending on how helpful you lot are, I will send you a few quid to your paypal. gift.

Thanks.

SkyDrive share GPX Soller Routes

I’ve riding the col several times on a mountain bike, heading back to Soller from Bunyola, it’s easy enough from that side. 5% gradient and about 300m – takes me 25 minutes at the end of the day.

The toughest thing about it is the loss of height on the road when riding a mountain bike, but there’s no off road alternative.

It seems to be a roadie heaven though, I’m sure you’ll have fun.

PS – you definitely cant ride though the tunnel!

Have you asked on some roadie sites? As you’re no doubt aware Mallorca is an extremely popular spring training camp destination. I went several times years ago and had the routes the camp guides handed out, but I’ve emigrated since and don’t have them anymore.

It sounds like you’re on the right track though, although I’ve always ridden from the other end of the mountains to Port Soller and then returned on the flat which totals about 180km IIRC including Sa Calobra. I even rode it on my own once when I got bored on my rest day so it’s doable without a helping peloton. Exiting Port Soller the easier way I seem to remember you can climb back up via Bunyola so you could do a figure of eight to break up the flat and still finish with the 20km descent from the Col to Port Soller. Orient springs to mind as nice section too. And just remembered there’s a long quiet back road running fairly parallel to the highway on the flat but the name escapes me.

Soller
Puerto Pollenca
Selva
Bunyola
Soller

A long day out yes, but not hard – even after Sa Calobra the day before 🙂

I personally like the Lluc climb (Col de sa Bataille) from Selva, its fun, and as said above, if you’ve gone that far, Sa Calobra is a must do. Its a bit more climbing from the cafe stop at the top of Bataille before you then descend for 10km ish 🙂 We found some flat roads to Petra and Randa monestary for two flat but faster day rides, but not sure how far they are away from Soller and i cba looking at the map.

As your in Soller you can get a ferry to sa collabra and start from there one day. When I get home I’ll dig out the link for the ferry company ans post it up for you.Sa collabra is a superb climb must do whilst your there. Got to admit I loved the col de soller climb out of soller. Just endless perfect switchbacks . 😀

Just be careful if you go over Easter

http://www.barcosazules.com/index.php?Idi=en

Have a dig around on the above link to find ferry times.

That’s a brilliant part of the world for road riding. Any 50-100 mile loop out of Soller will be great, up or down the Tramuntana. I also went on some flatland rides towards Felanitx but with just five days I’d stick to the mountains. Enjoy.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/309629255
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/306582457
Either way you have a big climb out of soller. Although it is amazing.
Just got back, need to go again.

Me and the wife had a week out there last month and had some great days out riding the shortest was a warm up the first day 38 miles and the longest was 85.
As the others have mentioned there are some great climbs to be had and to be honest the roads on these are pretty decent but I found the cycle routes to get to some of the climbs could be very rough and full of potholes 🙁 which I wasn’t expecting as we usually ride the mainland where they are generally silky smooth.
We where staying in Pollencia which is a fantastic town to visit even if it is just for a coffee. I got myself a mallorca cycling map from Amazon for approx £6.50 (superb value for a plastic coated map) this helped no end in finding new routes midway through a ride if we decided on going further or shorter.
Puig Major was closed off when we cycled there (not quite sure if it open at all to non military personel?)
There where some fantastic views from the big climbs but the best camera shot I took all week was of 2 Locals riding up & over the Col de Soller on Unicycles (I have a picture at home will try & put on tonight)absolutely fantastic watching them ride downhill 😀
One ride which is a must is to the lighthouse on the peninsular past Port a Pollencia, it looks very easy on the map but is a good up & down ride with great views at the end.
I am sure you will have a good time which ever rides you decide to do 😀

If you fancy some nobbly tire action try tramantuna tours in port de soller, they rent trek fuel ex8s and remedys (pretty much only place on the islandnto do full sus) and do guided routes recently did 2days with them – great fun as they drive you to the top of the american road then you come down on singletrack

Oh man, was just out there a few weeks back. We did the Soller – Puig Major via Orient and Bunyola, but from Pollensa. That was the day after out warm up ride from Pollensa to Lluc then on to Sa Calobra. You have to do Sa Calobra if you haven’t done it before. It was a round trip of 70 odd miles from Pollensa with almost 11,500 feet of climbing. Sweet.

If I go again (when I go again – next year!) I’ll be doing Sa Calobra after Puig Major (from Soller) then returning via Caimari (gorgeous descent – and climb) to Pollensa. Rather than turning left at the bottom of the descent in Caimari you could turn right and return via Orient and Bunyola. You’ll have the climb over Col (coz you ain’t cycling through the tunnel to Soller). But it’s a gentle climb with a killer descent into Soller (not killer dangerous!).

I’ve got a couple of routes up on Strava (my name is Neil Storey). If you wanted a couple of routes round there.

Just back from two weeks. Weather crapped out Thursday and looks really poor for this week. Gutted for you. Having said that, my favourite ride of the holiday was in the rain and cloud on Thursday. Early start over the Col de Feminea to Lluc then down to Caimari then back up over the Col de Sabataia. A mixture of pouring rain, very low cloud and then sunshine in Caimari before the return climb. Absolutely brilliant on my Fargo with only a handful of folk out compared to the hundreds of riders out on the sunny days.

I really like Col de Soller and the Orient climb. It’s a bit of a hidden gem though one of the massifs coming down from Orient looked like there had been a massive rockfall recently. We drove past it this morning and from the motorway, it looked enormous.

The ride out to Formentor makes for a great shorter ride with the return climb through the pines a wee gem. 😀

http://mallorcacycling.co.uk/mallorca-cycle-routes/cap-de-formentor-lighthouse/4

This is a cracking ride

Do call in at the tramantuna bike shop in Soller, or at the port. They don’t just rent out mtb’s they have lots of road bikes as well. They also have route guides and can give advice to point you in the right direction of the type of riding you are after. I did both road and mtb last year and am going back in July. Have fun!

looking at going to alcudia next feb with the wife, is there a road bike hire shop in alcudia or is the proshop in pollensa the one to use?

Pro Cycle Hire have a place in Alcudia (might be a workshop only though). But they will deliver your bike to your hotel:

Home

Max Hurzeler: (they also have organised rides of varying speeds)

http://www.bicycle-holidays.com/en/rental-bicycles/rental-conditions-and-infos/