Serra de Tramuntana nord: the official 109 km loop with Sa Calobra in it

Of the sixteen cycling routes the Consell de Mallorca has signposted across the island, this is the one that contains Sa Calobra. It starts at the roundabout where the Ma-13 meets the Ma-2220 in Alcúdia, crosses the Serra to Lluc, drops 10.0 km to the sea at Sa Calobra because there is nowhere else that road goes, climbs back out, and comes home over the coll de sa Batalla and across the plain. The Consell publishes it as 109.4 km of prose. Here it is as a track.

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Distance

108.7 km

the Consell publishes 109.4 km — a -0.6% difference

Ascent

2,105 m

19.4 m of climbing per kilometre ridden

High point

722 m

at km 64.2, the top of the Sa Calobra road

Measured climbs

6

3 climbed, 3 descended

Which part of the island

66.5% of this route’s 108.7 km runs in Serra de Tramuntana. It touches two of Mallorca’s six comarques and crosses a boundary between them twice. The two crossings are the whole story: the route leaves Raiguer on the way up to Pollença and does not come back out until Caimari, so every pass on it is ridden inside one unbroken block of Serra de Tramuntana. The 33.5% outside it is the start out of Alcúdia and the run home across the plain.

A segment that straddles a boundary is counted whole on one side; across this route’s 2 crossings that is at most 191 m.

The two hubs collect what else there is to ride in each — the climbs, the base towns and the other official routes that cross them: Serra de Tramuntana and Raiguer.

Where the climbing is

The shape of this ride is not the shape most people expect. There is no climb at all in the first ten kilometres — 47 m of ascent across the plain out of Alcúdia — and then almost half the day’s climbing arrives in two blocks that are twenty kilometres apart: the long drag up to the coll de Femenia, and then Sa Calobra, which you meet at km 54.2 — 50% of the way round, with 1,063 m of the day’s climbing already behind you.

Ascent and descent come out at exactly 2,105 m each, which is what a loop should do and is a useful check that the reconstruction closes properly.

Three passes, and what the climb databases publish for them

This loop crosses three passes, and quaeldich.de — the German-language climb database, which is what a large share of the riders on these roads actually plan from — publishes all three. Laid side by side the figures look like a flat contradiction: for the Coll de Femenia it gives 7.7 km, 405 m and 5.3%, where ours are 14.0 km, 485 m and 3.5%. Three numbers, three disagreements.

There are none. Both measurements end at the same pass, so the shorter one starts further up our own road, and the check is arithmetic: 515 m at the top minus 405 m gained puts their foot at 110 m. At exactly that altitude our road still has 7,983 m to climb, against the 7,700 m they publish. And take the last 7.7 km of our own profile: it gains 422 m at 5.5%, against their 405 m and 5.3%. Three disagreements have become 17 m and 0.2 of a point.

Three of the four rows land inside 283 m. The fourth is the interesting one: quaeldich starts the Coll de sa Batalla «In Caimari (210 m)» and measures 9.5 km from there, where our road at 210 m still has 7,575 m to the top — 1,925 m apart. Run the same check on the same road against an English-language source that gives 7.9 km from Caimari and it comes out at 2 m. The instrument does not merely say that two numbers differ; it says which of them our road reproduces.

On the height gained it is the other way round: their 369 m from 210 m against our 368 m from the same altitude is 1 m. Two sources that agree to the metre on how much you climb and disagree by nearly two kilometres on how far you ride to do it.

Where a pass sign and a terrain model disagree

A pass has its altitude written down in two places: as the ele tag on OpenStreetMap’s own pass node, and as a reading from our terrain model at that same coordinate. 32 passes on Mallorca have both. They mostly agree — the middle disagreement is 1 m, and 28 of the 32 are within five metres. That is what makes the exceptions legible.

Two of the three are on this loop. The Coll dels Reis at the top of the Sa Calobra road sits at +41 m, 2th of 32; the Coll de Femenia at +22 m is 3rd. Only a saddle on the Formentor peninsula, which this loop does not touch — it is on the lighthouse route — disagrees by more. The third pass here behaves like the rest: the Coll de sa Batalla reads 576 m against 578 m.

That is why the calculation is worth doing at all. The 682 m that almost every source gives for the Coll dels Reis is not an especially well-evidenced figure, and our 723 m is not an especially bold claim — it is that a map and a terrain model which agree to within five metres at 28 of 32 passes on this island are 41 m apart at this one. The whole reconciliation for that pass is on its own page.

And it makes one of quaeldich’s claims checkable rather than merely quotable. It calls the Coll de sa Batalla «der dritthöchste Pass Mallorcas». Our own pass list — every named pass on a paved road on this island — orders the top the same way: Túnel de Monnàber 872 m, Coll dels Reis 723 m, Coll de sa Batalla 578 m. The same three passes in the same order, each pair within eight metres.

The climbs on it

These are matched by geometry, not by name: a climb counts only where the track passes both its foot and its summit and covers the right distance between them. 3 of the 6 you go down, which is a different day out and is marked as such.

The roads it uses

The Ma-10 carries 37.0 km of it and the Ma-2141 — the Sa Calobra road, ridden in both directions — 25.3 km. Between them that is over half the route on two roads.

How much of this you should trust

A reconstruction is published as a track only if its measured distance lands within 5% of the distance the Consell publishes.

This route is accepted: our 108.7 km against the Consell’s 109.4 km is a -0.6% difference, one of the closest agreements of the sixteen. That is a real check but not a complete one — it says the reconstruction is the right length, and combined with 88.3% of it running on the roads the Consell names, that it is very probably the right line. It does not prove that every junction matches the signs. If you ride it and find the signs going somewhere else, that is worth knowing and we will correct it.

Where to start it from

The route as signposted begins in Alcúdia, and the first 10.6 km run out across the plain before the road starts climbing towards the coll de Femenia — so a base anywhere in that corner of the bay puts you on the loop without a transfer. Staying in Palma instead means riding the width of the island before the route even begins, in both directions.

So the bases that put you on the loop without a transfer are Alcúdia and Port de Pollença,

And a hire car from Palma airport, which is the only sensible way to arrive with a bike box. We have no bike-hire relationship on this island yet and are not going to invent one.

Attribution

• Route itineraries, names, distances and difficulty grades — Fundació Mallorca Turisme (Consell de Mallorca). Facts only: route names, the towns each route passes through, and the distances and grades the Consell publishes — none of its text is reproduced here, and its distances serve as the independent check our own measurement is scored against. Its own legal notice claims every content on the site as the foundation’s exclusive property («Tots els continguts del web són titularitat exclusiva de l’entitat») and states no reuse terms at all, which is exactly why nothing beyond those facts is taken.
• Road centrelines, waypoint coordinates and every OSM id on this page — OpenStreetMap contributors. ODbL 1.0 — the GPX files are a derivative database and carry the same licence.
• Elevation — Instituto Geográfico Nacional, coverage Elevacion4258_5 (5 m). CC BY 4.0 scne.es — free for commercial use with attribution.

Source Fundació Mallorca Turisme (Consell de Mallorca) · checked 6 August 2026The itinerary, the published distance and the difficulty grade come from the Consell's own route page, read on the check date. Every other number here was measured by this site.