Places

Cycling stops in Mallorca

42 places · 10 routes · Spain

Every spring the Serra de Tramuntana turns into Europe's training ground: Sa Calobra, Puig Major, the lighthouse road to Formentor. Between the climbs sit the things that make the island more than a wattage test: Roman bridges, springs, summits, and café stops with more carbon leaning outside than chairs inside.

The cafés cluster where the climbs do, between Caimari and Lluc. Sa Ruta Verda is down in the village, the Garage Café marks the top of the Coll de sa Batalla, and Es Guix sits on the old estate above it.

The Tramuntana is the island

Almost everything worth riding to sits in one limestone range along the north-west coast, and the Ma-10 runs the length of it. That concentration is why a week here works: Sa Calobra, the Coll de sa Batalla and the Puig Major road are close enough to string together, and the flat interior is a way home rather than a destination.

The two roads people come for were built by the same man. Antonio Parietti cut the switchbacks down to Sa Calobra, and in 1925 he engineered the road out to the Formentor lighthouse on the opposite coast. Neither was built for cyclists, which is most of their charm: they exist because somebody had to reach a port and a light.

Where the coffee is

The good stops are clustered rather than spread, and the cluster is Caimari to Lluc. Sa Ruta Verda in Caimari was a derelict building a former London banker rebuilt himself in 2014; Es Guix sits on a former estate above it with a pool below the terrace that riders treat as part of the reward; the Garage Café marks the top of the Coll de sa Batalla. You can hit all three on one climb.

Height is the other pattern. Ca'n Topa is at just under 500 metres, about as high as a café gets on this island, and its winter tables fill with professional teams on camp. Cycling Planet near Alaró is run by David Muntaner, who won Madison gold at the 2014 World Championships and rode two Olympics for Spain; the furniture is boards lifted from the Palma velodrome when it was resurfaced.

What else is up there

The sanctuary at Lluc has been on its hill since a hermitage went up in 1317, and it is still the natural place to break a Tramuntana day. Above it, Massanella is the island's highest peak you are allowed to walk up, which is a distinction worth knowing before planning a rest day around Puig Major.

On the west coast the terraces at Banyalbufar are visible from the road: roughly two thousand dry-stone marjades stacked from the Ma-10 nearly to the cliffs, cut by Moorish engineers and still fed by one connected system of stone aqueducts and cisterns.

The flat half

The Pla is the flat middle you cross to reach the mountains: quiet field roads between villages three or four kilometres apart, and the things worth stopping at there are older than anything in the Tramuntana: the Roman city of Pollentia at Alcúdia, the walled talaiotic settlement of ses Païsses near Artà, the archaeology museum at Son Fornés.

Palma is a ride start rather than a destination, but it holds the two buildings most people photograph without stopping: the cathedral on the seafront and the Almudaina palace beside it. The Miró foundation is up the hill in Cala Major, and the Rapha clubhouse on Plaça del Rosari is where a lot of group rides form.

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