The last time you can leave, and still get back in the light
Everyone here talks about the last Sunday in October as the day an hour of riding vanishes. It does not. Across that night the light itself shrinks by 2 minutes — the hour is the clock, and it moves to the morning. What actually changes is the time you have to be rolling, and that is a number worth having exactly rather than roughly.
So this page settles it for a specific ride on a specific day: pick where you are staying, the climb you want and the date, and it gives you the last minute you can leave. The ride is the measured one — the real road to the foot, the climb itself and the road home, on the same road distances the base-town pages are built from — and the sun is computed for the day you asked about, not read off an average.
- Light to ride in, shortest day
- 10h 23
- What the clocks going back costs
- 2 min
- Rides that fit the light every day
- 2,267 of 2,400
16h 03 on the longest, 21 June 2027.
The hour moves to the morning; it does not disappear.
0 never fit; 133 depend on the season.
Your ride, your date
Sunset is the sun going down; civil dusk is about half an hour later and is the last of the light you can descend in. Both are given, because they are two different rides home.
What else you could still leave for
From the same town on the same date, hardest first.
How we got this Riding time is the slower of the classic notch’s two published models — 22 km/h on the flat and 600 m of climbing an hour — over the measured round trip, with no stop counted. A pair fits a day when that time is inside civil dawn to civil dusk. The slower model decides, always: being told a ride fits when it does not is somebody on a col in the dark.Computed from Every base town × published climb-side pair with a ridable road — 2,400 of them across 32 measured towns — costed out and home, against the light window on all 365 days of 2027.Computed 7 August 2026.
What the last Sunday in October actually costs
2 minutes. Not an hour — 2 minutes, which is what late October takes off the day anyway.
On the Saturday the light runs from 07:41 to 19:25. On the Sunday it runs from 06:42 to 18:24. Same day, shifted an hour down the clock: the afternoon you lose is handed back before breakfast, and the 2 minutes are the ordinary drift of the season.
Which is why the camps ride early from that weekend on, and why the answer is never “ride less”. It is “leave when you left last week, by the sun rather than by the clock” — an hour earlier on the dial.
The changes, from the rule
| Year | Date | Civil dusk, before → after | Light window, before → after | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 29 March 2026 | Forward | 19:36 → 20:37 | 13h 23 → 13h 26 |
| 2026 | 25 October 2026 | Back | 19:25 → 18:24 | 11h 44 → 11h 42 |
| 2027 | 28 March 2027 | Forward | 19:35 → 20:36 | 13h 20 → 13h 22 |
| 2027 | 31 October 2027 | Back | 19:18 → 18:17 | 11h 31 → 11h 29 |
| 2028 | 26 March 2028 | Forward | 19:34 → 20:35 | 13h 16 → 13h 19 |
| 2028 | 29 October 2028 | Back | 19:20 → 18:19 | 11h 34 → 11h 32 |
| 2029 | 25 March 2029 | Forward | 19:33 → 20:34 | 13h 13 → 13h 16 |
| 2029 | 28 October 2029 | Back | 19:21 → 18:20 | 11h 37 → 11h 34 |
| 2030 | 31 March 2030 | Forward | 19:38 → 20:39 | 13h 28 → 13h 31 |
| 2030 | 27 October 2030 | Back | 19:23 → 18:21 | 11h 39 → 11h 37 |
How we got this The offset comes from the rule rather than from a timezone database — Directive 2000/84/EC Art. 2 and 3 put the end of summer time at 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in October. The two civil-twilight times either side are then differenced. The window changes by the ordinary daily amount for late October; the hour is a change of clock, not of daylight.The dates are the rule’s, not a timezone file’s: summer time runs from 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in March to 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in October, so they move by up to a week a year.Computed from Civil dawn and civil dusk at Palma on the Saturday and the Sunday of the autumn clock change.Computed 6 August 2026.
Light is almost never what stops you here
Costed across every one of the 2,400 base-town-to-climb rides this site has measured — 32 towns, out and home — 0 are impossible in the light on any day of the year. 2,267 of them fit every single day, and only 133 are seasonal at all.
The longest of them needs 12h 59 in the saddle and still fits most of the year. The island is small, and the reason a ride goes wrong here is a late start, not a short day.
Even on the shortest day — 22 December 2027, light from 07:36 to 17:59, 10h 23 of it — a nine o’clock roll-out brings 83.5% of those rides home before dark at a classic pace. At café pace it is 71.1%, and that gap is the whole winter problem in one number: December punishes the slow rider, not the long ride.
From a 09:00 roll-out on the shortest day
| Pace | Rides home before dark | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Café pace | 1,706 / 2,400 | 71.1% |
| Classic | 2,004 / 2,400 | 83.5% |
| Hard | 2,199 / 2,400 | 91.6% |
| Savage | 2,334 / 2,400 | 97.3% |
How we got this A 09:00 start is the hotel-breakfast one, chosen because it is the roll-out a camp actually manages rather than the one it plans. A ride counts as home when the slower model brings it back by civil dusk, stop time excluded.Computed from The 2,400 measured rides against the shortest light window of 2027, from a 09:00 roll-out.Computed 7 August 2026.
So the question this page answers is not whether you can. It is when you have to be on the road — and in December that is earlier than the breakfast room opens.
Why the evenings are so long for the latitude
Mallorca sits at the eastern end of a clock that stretches to the Atlantic. Solar noon here is 13:51 in midsummer and 12:48 at the solstice — the sun is roughly an hour behind the dial in winter and nearly two in summer. That is why a 39-degree latitude gets a 21:20 sunset in June, and why a June evening ride that would be reckless in Italy is ordinary here.
How we got this The sun’s upper transit, from the NOAA solar-position algorithm, rendered in Balearic local time. Spain keeps Central European Time across a country whose western edge sits west of Greenwich, and Mallorca is its eastern end — so the clock runs the best part of an hour behind the sun in winter and the better part of two in summer.Computed from Solar noon at Palma (39.5696° N, 2.6502° E), reference year 2027.Computed 6 August 2026.
When the answer is “too late”
There are only three honest ways to fix a ride that will not fit, and none of them is riding faster.
- Move the ride, or move yourself. The same climb from a nearer town can be two hours shorter — the base-town comparison is built on these exact distances, so it will tell you which town buys you the morning back. Somewhere to stay in that town: Stay22
- Start earlier than the hotel does. That means a bike ready the night before rather than a shop opening at nine, which is a booking decision more than a kit one. BikesBooking
- Or take the short day for what it is. December afternoons here are for the town, not for a col in the dark. GetYourGuide
How to read these times
Two numbers go into every answer: how long the ride takes you, and where the sun is. Both are stated so you can argue with them.
The pace notches are the ones the trip planner uses, and the slower model in each one is what decides the time. That asymmetry is deliberate: being told you have half an hour you do not have is a descent in the dark, and being sent out half an hour early costs you a coffee.
Your stop is yours and is not in the riding time — set it to what you actually do at the top and in the café, and the answer moves with it.
The sun figures are computed here rather than looked up, and they were checked against the US Naval Observatory’s own service on 24 days across a year: 24 agreed, and the widest gap anywhere was 1 minute — which is the resolution of the comparison, since both sides publish whole minutes.
The same figures, day by day and month by month, sit on the month pages.
Where these numbers come from
How we got this No terrain is modelled. Under the Tramuntana the sun goes off the road long before it goes off the island, and on the western flank it stays on longer — so on a Serra descent, treat these times as the outside edge and start the clock earlier than the page does.Computed from The sun’s position against a flat horizon at sea level.Computed 6 August 2026.
How we got this Every sunrise and sunset this site computes was compared against that service across a year, in UTC so the comparison is on the astronomy alone. Both sides publish whole minutes, so a one-minute spread is the resolution of the comparison rather than a disagreement.Computed from US Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications — Sun and Moon Data for One Day — an independent implementation by the institution that publishes the Astronomical Almanac.Computed 4 September 2026.
One email when something moves
The 312 on-sale date, a restriction that closes a road to bikes, a rule that changes what you may ride. Sent when it changes — not on a schedule.