We just returned from eight days in Mallorca (Majorca), and so I thought I'd write a report on it. During that time, we cycled on six of the days, totaling about 470 km of distance and 7,500 metres each of ascent and of descent.

100,000 Cyclists Each Year
We were certainly not the only cycling tourists there. Mallorca now gets about 100,000 tourists per year who come mainly for cycling (plus about 9 million other tourists), and the number of cyclists is said to be growing by almost 10% per year! Most of these people are from northern Europe, and the peak seasons for them are Spring and late Fall because, just like us, they all come when the weather isn't so great at home. Also, the hotels are quite empty and so are cheap, and the roads are relatively empty at this time of year because there are very few tour coaches or rental cars. In fact, on most of the minor roads THERE WERE MANY MORE CYCLISTS THAN CARS!

Even though there were a lot of cyclists, they were nearly all German-speaking (at least 90% of the cyclists we met/saw were from Germany, Switzerland, or Austria). There are many English-speaking tourists there, but the cyclists from those countries don't seem to know about the great cycling in Mallorca yet.

Touring
We took our tandem bike for it's first real adventure, and it performed almost perfectly. We'd originally planned to stay in one location and do lots of day-rides, but we then changed our minds and decided to give ourselves more freedom by putting on a rear rack with a pair of panniers, added some frame bags and a bar-bag and set off for some lightly-loaded touring. This allowed us to stay in several locations and explore most of the island. Plus, some days we stayed in the same town for two nights so that we could do an unloaded ride (and once we hid our bags in the bushes to do a luggage-free out-and-back route in the middle of a day of loaded touring).

Package Cycling Holidays
Nearly all of the other cyclists on the island were not "touring." Most of them come as part of an organized group or through a package tour company, and stayed in one hotel the whole time. There are several companies organizing such trips for cyclists, the main Swiss-based one seems to be Max Hurzeler.

These packages look like a good deal, the price is decent, you don't need to bring your own bike, and there are lots of other people to ride with. Even if you don't speak German, all of the German-speaking cyclists we met spoke good English. Even if you don't go with one of the packages, you can go to one of the hotels that they use and rent a bike from them for about 70-90 euros for a week. They rent pretty decent road bikes, the lower price being for an aluminum-framed 105-equipped machine, the higher end being for a carbon-framed, Ultegra-equipped machine. They also have hybrids or mountain bikes. I believe the packages also include shuttle buses from the hotel to the start locations for certain routes, but we never actually saw any busses taking cyclists anywhere.

The bigger companies offer various rides at various paces each day, and all over the island we were passed by groups ranging from about 6 up to about 30 riders. On each of a couple of different days, we estimated that we saw about 1,000 riders within an 80km ride plus those that we saw go past our hotel before and after our ride.

Roads
The western side of the island has some serious mountains, many of them reaching above 1000 metres altitude, starting right from the ocean. There are a lot of decent climbs, with the biggest ones that we did being 900m of climbing in about 15km going north from Soller up to the Coll de Puig Major, and 700m in about 10km going up from sa Colobra. But there are many other climbs that are 200m - 400m of elevation gain. On the mountainous side of the island, the road is never flat - we were averaging about 1000m of elevation gain and loss for every 50km cycled there, which is an average gradient of 4% either up or down, so it is pretty slow going.

Despite all of the climbing, even the smaller roads are not very steep - only a few very short stretches hit 10% gradient and most climbs averaged about 6%. The road surface is generally good, with the biggest obstacle being the speed bumps going into and out of the small towns (except for the road going up to Cap de Formentor, which is pot-hole central). On some of the smaller roads, the switchbacks are extremely tight and not easy to navigate around with a 2.5m long tandem that is only just going fast enough to be stable. Make sure you have decent brakes for the descents because there is no warning as to how tight many of the bends will be. As well as the mountains on the west / north-west coast, there are smaller hills all over the island and you are never far away from a decent work-out or a whooshing descent.

As I mentioned above, in early Spring there is very little traffic on most of the roads, especially the more minor ones, where there were almost no cars. However, I can imagine that traffic would be a serious problem at any time that the regular tourists are there.

The only map we found before we left was the Michelin 1:140,000 map of all of the Ballearic islands (Regional Spanish map #579). This is OK for finding your way, but it has very little height information on it or anything else besides roads. It was a couple of days before we found a better one, which was a 1:75,000 map by the Austrian company Kompass just for the island of Mallorca (the English version is WK 230GB, the German version is WK 230). This map is excellent for cycling and has lots of info (e.g., contour lines, spot heights, hiking trails).

Weather
We went during the last week of March. The climate charts said that the daily high temperatures would be about 16-18 C, and that is exactly what we got every day. For our first six and a half days, that was coupled with beautiful sunshine and so it was perfect cycling weather. The last day and a half there was some rain, but it caused us no problem as we only needed to do half a day of cycling in that time, and we managed to squeeze it in during a dry period.

Other Attractions
Of course, there are other nice things to do in Mallorca besides cycling. The sea and air are a bit cool to spend much time on the beach or in the water, but we had a great time exploring some of the more historic towns. Not all of Mallorca is beach, ice cream, and beer, as is its reputation with many Europeans. We also visited the Drach caves, took a ride on a historic railway through the mountains from Soller, walked around an ancient castle in Capdepara, and hiked along a wild coastal trail. We also had several nice meals with some local food in the smaller towns, and in the city of Palma on our last night we found an amazing Indian restaurant in a little shopping plaza.

Summary
Mallorca in Spring makes an awesome cycling destination. The weather is great, the roads are awesome, accommodation is easy to find for a reasonable price, and there are plenty of other riders to chat with. We'd highly recommend it.