Mallorca May 2025
Road riding and Aikido!
Aikido has afforded me much in life. One of those is the opportunity to travel. I would never consider Mallorca as a travel destination since I’m not into beaches, partying and road riding… but when Osawa Shihan had a seminar scheduled at the end of May I figured, Why Not?
Once we started researching what to do in Mallorca we decided we’d have to rent road bikes and do what they do there! The roads are great for riding, albeit narrow with no shoulder. The cars are generally respectful, you just had to ride as close to the edge as you could. The area you ride is on the western side in the Tramuntana Mountains.
We flew from Vancouver to Frankfurt to Mallorca on Luftansa, returned via Zurich. We rented a car from Centauro. A Hyndai Beyon. We need a hatchback to fit the bikes. It was a nice car, standard. Driving in Mallorca is sketchy due to the aforementioned narrow roads. Many cars seem to like crossing the center line on blind corners and parking anywhere is a challenge. For our purpose the car was good since we stayed in three different places and parked the car when not travelling. Getting to these areas by bus would be challenging and renting the car was convenient and relatively cheap.
Our friend Peter Weiland has travelled to Mallorca alot. He gave us his road riding strava tracks, we cut those in half and still suffered! It was pretty hot and humid so if we went again I think we’d go in the Fall when we had our riding legs and it was cooler. It’s also cheaper then. Here is a link to our rides on Trailforks.
Peter also said to not rent in the S’arenal area of Palma since it’s filled with drunk Germans. So we looked at more rural hotels. Near Palma we stayed at Son Moli Country House, an old estate that’s been turned into a hotel. Great place to stay and great reception staff! We had the included breakfast, the place also offers included lunch and dinner. We didn’t get these included meals since we like to be more flexible for dinner and lunch. We did have dinner there one night. It was very good. But Spanish, no rush timing.
When we arrived in Mallorca, we got our car. You need to take a shuttle to pick up this car. It took about an hour to pick up the car, drop off was a lot easier. Take pictures since you need to put a deposit down for damages.
Then we went to Rompelberg Bike Hire Aparthotel Fontanellas Playa to pick up our road bikes. You can also pick up at Grupotel Tarus Park. We rented low end Fugi Ultegra aluminum road bikes which were perfect for us. ~100Euros for the week!
For the first three nights we stayed in Deia at the Hotel Des Puig
For the next four nights we stayed in the old walled town of Alcudia at the Forum Boutique Hotel and Spa.
I would stay in Alcudia again next time or Pollenca would also offer a central location. Instead of Deia I would look into Valldemossa which is a bigger town with as much options to ride but more to do. Deia, which had lots of restaurants, was smaller.