One of Europe's great cycling destinations!
You can certainly hire good bikes for a couple of days for about the same price as taking yours, but you also have to factor in the time: if it takes a morning to find the hire shop and get you and the bike fettled, that's a day ride gone.
Most of the best rides need a bit of local knowledge. Without knowing exactly where you are staying or how strong a rider you are, it is difficult to recommend, but here are three classic longer rides:-
- Palma, Esporles, Valdemossa, Deia, Soller, back over the Soller pass on the closed road, Bunyola, Palma.
- Palma, Bunyola, Orient, Alaro, Binissalem, Sta Eugenia, Palma. (Bunyola to Orient is stunning).
- Palma, Calvia, Andratx, Estellencs, Banyalbufar, Esporles, Palma.
If you are a particularly strong climber you can do the Soller pass, then the big climb to Lluc and back through Selva and Lloseta; or in reverse...
If you are hiring a car, you could even drive over to Campanet and do Selva, Lluc, Pollenca, amazing section out along the sea cliffs to Formentor, Pollenca, back road down the Val del Campanet.
If you are not a hill beast, there are miles and miles of deserted roads through rolling farmland, dotted with little hill villages, out in the agricultural plain east of Palma. If you are staying on the west side of Palma, you have hilly terrain with pinewooods, limestone crags and stream vallleys. Puigpunyent is a good spot to aim for; it also has a basic eatery smack in the middle, which does a life-saving chicken and chick pea stew.
Buggrit, I wish I was going....
