Part 2/6
Thursday 14th
In the morning we were greeted with the same blue sky and sunshine as the day before, and things were looking promising for a good days riding. We’d spent the evening reading the guide book for things to do and places to see, and made a plan of where to go at first bearing in mind that we would need to be returning to the hire shop at around 7pm to change bikes. Studying the map, it was clear that the top left part of the island was the place to be riding. That part of the island is mountainous (Serra de Tramuntana)and spectacular, whereas the bottom right was a more or less flat plain with a few mountains dotted around it. The guide book said that there was a good circular route starting and ending at Andratx, so we based our day around that.
Before getting to Andratx, I wanted to see the BellverCastle in Palma, and the views from the city and out to sea from up on it. We took the coast road as best we could from the bike hire place in s’Arenal back past the hotel in Can Pastilla, and on into Palma itself. Traffic was light, even in the city, but a few road closures by the police made life a bit tricky, although they had plenty of people on the street to redirect traffic and keep it flowing well which was impressive. We easily found our way to the castle and took the winding road to the top of the hill to see it. It is a really smart circular building that is nearly 700 years old but in superb condition, but we didn’t want to go inside as it would take up valuable riding time, although you can for a small fee and even go up onto the roof. We took in the views and continued our ride.
http://www.mallorcawebsite.com/htmls/bellver.htm
We continued on the coast road as far as Palma Nova and stopped for a break by the beach there. We had a bit of trouble parking the bikes as the streets were lined with barriers as there had been, or would be, some sort of cycle race along there it seemed (although our lack of Spanish and Catalan/Mallorquin meant that we didn’t know for sure). I had the first freshly squeezed orange juice (zuma de naranja) of the trip as we watched a couple of windsurfers enjoying the breeze. A quick check of the map, and we were off again to Andratx.
After a bit of a detour past the Casino complex, we joined the main road to Andratx which soon turned into a dual carriageway. The XT660X was not best suited to that kind of road, but it was fun seeing how much could be squeezed out of it by sitting as far back as possible, tucking in and ‘tanking’ it. We arrived in Andratx and followed a sign for Tourist information, hoping that they might be able to advise of somewhere in the area that we could stay. We’d read that there are several places on the island where you can stay in a farm house and have a meal from the local produce, and we liked the sound of that. However, the signs for the information place disappeared and we didn’t see it, but as it was en route anyway we didn’t worry about it and carried on – we would later find out that they seem to put up signs for Tourist Information as a joke to send tourists all over the place as we never managed to follow them and find one in the whole 4 days! Up until this point, the roads had been relatively large and flat, but as we departed Andratx, they were about to take a change for the better.
I’d looked at the island briefly on Google maps before we’d booked up, and the Ma-10 out of Andratx and around the coast to Valdemossa had looked very interesting indeed, and when we eventually got on it we were not disappointed. Traffic free and flowing in a succession of bends that followed the contours of the coastal cliffs it was just what we’d come for. The XT660X was in it’s element here, although the mixed terrain tyres of the Transalp were giving Stu a nervous feeling from the back end. As Stu is new to biking, we swapped and I tried it out and sure enough the cold tyre slipped out from under me on the first bend that I tried to push through a bit. Taking it a bit more gently in the bends, and using the grunt of the v-twin engine on the small straights in between I was able to keep with Stu. We made swift progress along the route and were loving every twist and turn and rise and fall until suddenly we rounded a bend and came up behind 2 slow moving police bikes and a couple of ambulances. What was going on? Up ahead we could see a whole bunch of the cyclists that the signs in Palma Nova had talked about, and they were having a race on our road! As there was no way past the convoy, we stopped for a couple of pictures by the side of the road to let them get out of the way.
On the downhill sections, the cyclists were racing almost as fast as we were riding, so it was quite a while before we caught up with them again. We had hoped that they would take the turning to Esporles, but they continued on the Ma-10 towards Valdemossa – the same route that we had planned on taking. We rode slowly behind them for a little while as they went up the hill, following the police riders that were backing up the group. By this point in the day, several of the following team cars were stopping for ‘comfort breaks’, but as we rounded a turn we could see a couple of the racers had also had to stop. One was propped up on his bike waiting for his team-mate to finish his business, but as we approached the team-mate turned towards me and grinned as he had finished expelling his excess water and looked to be well on the way to taking expelling bodily fluids a little too far! The amount of tugging going on was far in excess of the usual ‘shaking the dew off the lily’ – perhaps the narrow seat and bumps on the road had stimulated his prostate! Anyway, it was not something that I particularly wanted to see, although I had to laugh inside my helmet. We stopped again and let them get ahead while we checked the map and our next destination.
Off the side of the main road was a small road that wound it’s way down the mountainside to a small harbour at sa Marina. We decided to take that and get a snack at the waters edge whilst the cyclists hopefully cleared from our proposed route. The road down to sa Marina was certainly good for honing your hairpin technique, but not much else. Barely more than a car width, it had to be taken carefully in case of oncoming traffic. Luckily we didn’t meet anything, but we did catch several cars, and getting past them was a challenge, but we managed it. Several places in the road were covered in gravel and it was not unusual to again have the back tyre lose grip from underneath you in the corners. Both of us had experienced it on both bikes and it was not pleasant, although we had not fallen off. On one short straight there had been some small rocks that had fallen into the road that required avoiding action – Stu warned me of there presence and I moved to the other side of the road to avoid them, but for some stupid reason I decided to try and clear the biggest one (about the size of a melon) from the road by sticking out my foot and kicking it as I went past. Needless to say that the rock did not budge and I ended up with a very painful foot – good job I was wearing sturdy Sidis! Down the bottom we arrived at the harbour to find nothing but lots of cats!
Several cars came down in the time that we were there chatting to a couple of German guys about different places to go and roads to ride, so a café would have had a bit of business but there wasn’t one to go in. Disappointed with the lack of refreshment, but armed with new knowledge we headed back on up the hill after swapping bikes back again. I had a bit much confidence in the grip from the Yamaha’s back tyre and tipped it a bit too quickly into one of the bends and once again had the back end slip out. My inner foot instinctively came off the peg and hit the road and I stayed upright but clattered my ankle on the foot peg – again, the Sidis did their job and I only had a slight scuff to show for it.
Back on the road again and we were headed for Valdemossa for a bite to eat, which I had heard was quite a nice little town. We got parked up and walked in to the centre and found a café and sampled the local delights of almond milkshake and chocolate cake.
After a bit of a walk around the town, which was very picturesque, we returned to the car park to get back on the bikes but found the road closed by the police and lined with people to watch the damn cyclists race past whilst a helicopter circled overhead and filmed it for TV. It was slightly annoying to find them blocking our progress throughout the day, but good to see anyway. As an occasional cyclist, I admired their efforts up the hills and the bravery that they showed on the fast downhill sections. When a break in the racers came, we crossed the street to get on the bikes again and find another way out of the town to take the road South and continue our loop.
The rest of the loop back to Andratx via the small villages of Esporles, Puigpunyent, Galilea and es Candella was through the heart of the mountain range on narrow roads that twisted and turned along the hillsides and through the valleys between the peaks, sometimes with a series of tight hairpins as it climbed over the peaks in between, but the roads were too small and the surfaces too unpredictable to be taken too enthusiastically. We arrived back in Andratx having not found anywhere to stay for the night along the way (although we were not looking all that hard).
We were scheduled to return to s’Arenal to Rent Zoom to change bikes at 7pm, so we still had some time left before we needed to head off when we got back into Andratx. I had read in the guidebook about a small island off the coast of Mallorca at Sant Elm, just to the West of Andratx, that is supposed to look like a sleeping dragon. The island is called ‘Sa Dragonera’ and is a National Park and I thought it would be interesting to see from the coast – there was no point in taking a ferry there for the one road that runs along it – so we headed across to Sant Elm. From where we ended up on the coast, disappointingly we could not see the ‘sleeping dragon’, just a smaller island, Es Pantaleu. Parking up at a café for another ‘café con leche’ I forgot what country we were in and spoke half Italian to the waitress.
After that, it was time to head back to the bike shop to swap bikes. I intended to swap my XT660X for a Suzuki V-Strom, so that we both had similar bikes, but after the insecure feeling that I’d had on the Transalp’s semi-knobbly tyres, we both decided to go for something more road orientated. When we got there, we saw that they had two Yamaha FZ6 Fazers and thought that they would really suit the roads that we had seen so far. Whilst our friend in the bike shop sorted out the bikes, we went in search of a hotel nearby after a couple of suggestions from him.
With all the German winter visitors, and the huge influx of cyclists and their support crews, the few hotels within walking distance were all fully booked. We weren’t too bothered, we knew that we would find something, somewhere as there is an enormous amount of accommodation available on the island as there has to be for peak season, but not all of it is open during the winter months as they get renovated. We could not stay at the Anfora where we had stayed the previous night either, as they were fully booked with trainee air stewardesses that we had seen at breakfast.
We returned and picked up the Fazers and headed off along the one way street, and as luck would have it soon came across another 3 star hotel. This one had a room for the night, or 2 if we wanted but we planned on staying in the monastery at Lluc for the next night. We took the room at half board for €75, and went and changed out of our bike gear to go for the buffet dinner. As it was self service, the cyclists staying there that had just finished the race were absolutely stuffing themselves – some going back for 4 desserts!
The short ride between the bike hire shop and the hotel had got Stu excited about the Fazer. The vague feeling from the Transalp, and the uncomfortable single cylinder XT were not his cup of tea, and the four cylinder naked bike felt more like a proper bike to him. It was still early after dinner, so we got kitted up again to ride into Palma during the night for a bit of cool night air riding on the near empty streets. The cathedral sits high up in the old streets above the town, so we headed there for a couple of pictures. It was a bit of nightmare to find the way there along the very narrow and cobbled one way streets but we wound our way through the maze and somehow popped out right by the side of the cathedral that overlooks a pond with a fountain and got our pictures. Then it was back to the hotel to make a rough plan for the next day and get a good night’s kip after a good day of riding.
This map shows the route that we took during Thursday, and the link below takes you to Google maps for an interactive version where you can look at the road map or an aerial view of the landscape and zoom in or out as you like.
http://tinyurl.com/35r6tl
Last edited by foreigneRS; Mar 7, 2008 at 05:38 AM.