Guides

• Crashing in Mallorca — 112 connects from a phone showing no bars, the island's loneliest road is 44 km from an emergency department, and the card in your jersey does not cover the flight home

  What actually happens after a crash on a Mallorcan climb: the number that works without your network, the four hospitals that take you, how far each one is from every climb on the island measured over the road, and the three things the European and British health cards name as excluded — one of them mountain rescue, on an island whose fire service carried out 349 of them in a year.

• The Ma-10 is the quietest road in Mallorca's crash register — and the flat road you cross to reach it is three and a half times worse

  Spain's national casualty register puts every accident with victims on a road reference and a kilometre point. Divided by the measured length of each road, the Serra de Tramuntana spine comes out lowest of every road on the island with enough crashes to rank, and the flat Pollença–sa Pobla link comes out highest. Two years, 2,830 accidents, 89 roads measured.

• What a week's cycling in Mallorca costs — four lines decide it, and only one of them is a number this page will print

  The bed, the bike, the seat and the tax. Three of those move every week and are linked here rather than quoted. The fourth is set by the Balearic parliament, is charged per person per night at the hotel desk rather than by the booking site, and quadruples on 1 May — six days after the Mallorca 312 is ridden.

• Cycling Mallorca without a hire car — the train takes four bikes, charges nothing to carry them, and ends nine kilometres short of Platja de Muro

  Most riders book a car they never need. The island's trains carry bicycles free of charge, four to a train, all year; the buses carry them by a rule keyed to the shape of the vehicle, and one shape takes none at all. Which of the 32 cycling bases work car-free, read from the operator's own database and the rules in the official gazette.

• What to pack for Mallorca: the jacket is for midday, not for the morning

  Nine published Mallorcan packing lists, read and counted — and not one names a temperature or a height. Two weather stations 1,007 m apart, paired across 27,536 hours, say what they cannot: the mountain–coast gap is 1.2–3.4 °C at eight in the morning and 5.1–7.2 °C at midday, and a January descent from Puig Major feels like 1.7 °C while Palma sits at 14.4 °C.

• A week in Mallorca: every published week names Sa Calobra, and one town in eighteen can ride to it

  Eight published Mallorcan cycling weeks, read and counted: Sa Calobra and Cap de Formentor are in all eight. Exactly one of the island's eighteen base towns can ride to both inside a normal day, which settles where to stay. The week from there is 501 km, 3,852 m and 36 hairpins over six days — and the shortest day of the year still holds the biggest ride on the island, with thirteen minutes to spare.

• Mallorca's wind is a clock, not a season: the island's own instrument says the hour you leave matters more than the month you book

  Fifty years of hourly observations at Palma, read as a cyclist would read them. The sea breeze arrives between 11:00 and 13:00 in every month of the year, the afternoon is 4.4 m/s windier than the morning in July, and from April to October the wind does not shift during the day — it reverses, which turns the advice everyone repeats about riding out into a headwind upside down.

• Mallorca's cycling regions: the mountains hold a fifth of their road hostage, and how steep a region is barely predicts whether you can loop on it

  Every guide cuts Mallorca by how steep it is. Measured as a network instead — what has no alternative route, how often the road offers a turning, how far it runs without one — the island sorts differently: 21.2% of the Serra's riding road has no way round against 14.9% in the Pla, and the region with the most junctions per kilometre has the least committed road on the island.

• Descending Mallorca: the island's hardest climb is its sixth-hardest descent, and the hardest descent has no reputation at all

  Every ranking of Mallorcan roads ranks them going up. Measured going down — corner radius, the gradient above each corner, the run between them — the order barely survives: across the thirteen climbs a week is built around, the two rankings agree at 0.05. Sa Calobra has one tight corner in twenty-eight. The Coll de Sóller has a two-kilometre run that ends in an eight-metre hairpin.

• Triathlon on Mallorca: the island has one 50-metre pool on the map, and the swim that sells the place is on no map at all

  The three legs of a Mallorcan training week, measured over one road graph. Choosing a base for the bike tells you almost nothing about the swim — the two rankings agree at 0.12 across 32 towns. Nineteen thousand mapped pools, 48 you can get into, one that states 50 metres. And the buoyed channels the whole trade is built around are in no map layer this site can read.

• Gravel in Mallorca: 6,849 km of dirt, and 19 of it in a row

  The island carries 6,849.4 km of unpaved track a gravel bike belongs on — and the longest unbroken piece of it anyone can ride is 19.1 km. On 83.8% of the network the map says nothing at all about whether you may ride it, and the law that was meant to settle that ran out of time in 2022. Measured track by track over the road graph, then read against the statute.

• Cycling Mallorca without the mountains: 244 km away from the cars, and one ride longer than 16 km

  Mallorca has 244 km of road a motor vehicle may not use — and it breaks into 91 pieces, of which exactly one is longer than 16 kilometres. The famous flat ride carries 197 m of climbing and three quarters of it is gravel; the genuinely flat one is 12.6 km between Pollença and Alcúdia with three metres of climb on it. Measured over the road graph and Spain's 5 m terrain model.

• The café stops of Mallorca: thirteen guides, one of them copied, and nothing named on Sa Calobra

  Thirteen published café guides to Mallorca, read and counted. Two of them are the same list — the same 15 places in almost the same order, 4.2 standard deviations from chance. 22 of the 37 places rest on a single voice. And on seven of the island's thirteen biggest climbs, nobody names a stop at all, though the map carries between 2 and 64 of them.

• Two bottles or three — where Mallorca lets you fill them

  On the island's eight official cycling routes the longest stretch without a public tap runs from 35.9 km to 81.8 km. Count the bars and the shops as well and the worst gap falls to 21.5 km. Which of those two numbers is your ride depends on the month, the hour and whether anybody has opened up — measured refill by refill over the road you actually ride.

• Cycling hotels in Mallorca — the island keeps a register, and it says the beds are not where the mountains are

  Mallorca registers 1,854 places to sleep and 309,008 beds, and 86.5% of the ones it puts on a map are more than ten kilometres by road from any climb worth flying for. Which is why the hotel decision comes down to two numbers nobody prints together: how many bikes the bike room holds, and how many guests the island says the hotel sleeps.

• Hiring a road bike in Mallorca — the shop's address is the least important thing on its page

  Ten of the fourteen readable hire operators on this island will bring the bike to your hotel, so where the shop is barely enters the decision. What does: seven of them print no cassette at all, six promise delivery without saying what it costs, and the one operator who draws a circle on the map leaves Sóller outside it by twenty-eight kilometres of mountain.

• The hardest climbs in Mallorca, ranked — and the 1,865 m every other list leaves out

  75 climb-sides measured by one script against one terrain model, ranked on a published index: which climb to spend your hard day on, where the island's steepest kilometre actually is, and the 1,865 m of climbing a summit-minus-start ranking cannot see.

• Training for the Mallorca 312 — the hardest kilometre is at km 259.6, and it is not in the mountains

  Every 312 training plan prescribes climbing. The organiser's own GPX says the course's worst kilometre sits in the flat interior, 107 km after the last summit, and that 51.4% of the race comes after the mountains end. What to actually train, which island rides rehearse each half, and why choosing the 226 skips no climb at all.

• Mallorca training camps — the 19 kilometres before the first climb

  Nineteen camps, seven towns. Eight of the nineteen put nothing to climb inside ten kilometres of the hotel door — and the towns that look worst on that test reach more climbing inside 30 kilometres than the classic bases do. Measured on the road, camp by camp.

• One morning in Mallorca — which climb, from where you're already staying

  Three hours of riding, a hotel you have already booked, and one climb to spend it on. From Sóller that buys Puig Major, the highest road on the island. From Colònia de Sant Jordi it buys nothing at all — and the climb every list puts first fits in a morning from nowhere on Mallorca.

• Palma airport to your hotel, with a bike — book the transfer

  The bike box comes off belt 17 and then you have a decision. Of the eighteen base towns this site measures, one has a railway station on the network that carries bicycles — and the island's own bus regulation names a boxed bike as special luggage the driver may refuse. Every transfer measured, longest first: 77.1 km to Cala Rajada, 8.7 km to s'Arenal.

• Where to stay in Mallorca for cycling — eighteen towns, measured from the front door

  Every guide names the same town and none of them measures one. Road distance from eighteen base towns to the foot of all 75 published climb-sides: which eight put nothing inside an easy spin, which three can reach Sa Calobra in a day, and what the famous choice actually costs you.