Monday 20 Oct
It was a Monday morning, an early one. At 5 something I crawled out of bed, said goodbye to Ari and started the hour long journey to the Barcelona airport using the cheap but slow public transport.
The reason for this early morning unpleasantness was that I was heading to Mallorca for a micro holiday with George and Johannes aka the balding gang. They were already there and had been for a few days. I was making use of the cheap and quick flights from Barcelona to visit for three days.
Everything went smoothly and I found myself on the bus into Mallorca and not long after arriving I also had a quite acceptable rental bike. I got changed into my lycra mamil (middle aged man in lycra) suit and headed for the hills. The roads out of Palma were busy and somewhat terrifying.
Once out of Palma I followed a cycle way and then a big road with not much of a shoulder and a fair bit of traffic. The motorists were very good though. I began climbing to a col, regretting my decision to bring a tablet for work, along with all the extras like a heavy power bank etc.
I rolled down the other side of the pass, took a right and followed the road to Deia. Johannes and George happened to be just returning to the apartment they’d rented as I rolled up. Perfect timing.
George went for a ridge hike in the afternoon and I drank tea with Johannes, all civilised like before we headed off for a short 40km ride in the hills. Despite it being short it seemed kind of hard, perhaps due to the lack of much cycling recently, or perhaps due to the running last week.
We rode a few nice ascents and a few descents and then returned to the apartment. I got into the npreparation of a rice risotto and we checked George’s updates as it became dark. George was having an adventure and we were briefly a bit concerned that he was lost before his GPS location updated and we saw he wasn’t far from home.
Tuesday 21 Oct
We’d decided to do a big ride. We’d also neglected to get up particularly early – a great combination. We left towards Sóller, the same direction that Johannes and I had ridden yesterday. We stopped for calories and then continued, starting our first climb. It was a good one. We took it very easy, slowly climbing up the well maintained road through pine forest with views at times out to the coast and the blue ocean.
We stopped briefly at a tunnel that lead through the side of the hill at the top and then continued along the road, descending a bit. There were lots of other cyclists, all of them seemingly fitter than we were (or at least I was). It was a slow leg day and we were taking everything very easily. After further climbing and descending, we had a final descent down to sea level and cycled out to the end of the island. We found a restaurant at the sea side amongst all the other many restaurants and ordered over priced food.
After checking the time, we gave up on our idea to head out to the lighthouse. Instead we began to head back on the “flat”. The flat turned out to be quite hilly and some time later we reassessed where we were and how late it was and decided we’d need to start motoring to get back before dark. So we did just that. George and I took turns on the front and we headed to the same pass I’d ridden on Monday.
The sun was already making its escape as we started riding up the pass and it began to set as we rode down the other side. We followed the road around the coast to Deia where we had our apartment. A good ride. Not quite the 180km we’d planned but a solid 145km instead.
Wednesday 22 Oct
George had to lave early to bike back to Palma to catch his plane and Johannes and I cycled back together a bit later on. We headed to the bike rental and left our backpacks there. There was enough time for another ride and Johannes planned a route that took us back into the hills. We had a bit of a climb up through pine forest and then a descent and some undulating riding through a few towns before another nice climb up through forest with almost no traffic. We cut the ride a bit short after seeing that we’d included one ascent followed by a descent the same way. Instead we mashed back down the main road back to Palma.
We returned the rental bikes and wandered out towards the sea. We got ourselves ice creams and then walked along the coast a bit in the sunshine. I dipped my feet in the sea for a bit and we continued to a bus stop, catching the bus out to the airport, and that was the end of our micro holiday. I flew back to Barcelona again.
