Singletrack, Mallorca-style

Think of Mallorca and there’s a fair chance that you think of Magaluf, bars, discos and drunken British tourists. But you may not have realised that Mallorca has something that should be very interesting to those of us who’d rather ride bikes than drink and dance. Or at least, ride bikes then drink and dance. That something is the Sierra de Tramuntana, a range of mountains that runs the entire length of the island’s north-west coast. That’s 100km of mountains. They’re pretty sizable, too. The tallest, Puig Major, is 1,435m (4,700ft), which is higher than anything you’ll find in the British Isles.

To be fair, our road-riding cousins have been aware of Mallorca’s charms for quite a while – those mountains and the island’s very agreeable spring and autumn climate have made it a popular destination for pre-season training camps or just for riding around for the hell of it. But as far as mountain biking goes, it’s a largely untapped resource. Certainly looks promising on paper, though, so when Spanish hotel chain Acorn Hotels called us up to see if we wanted to check it out, we didn’t have to think for too long. Hell, even if the riding wasn’t too good we’d be able to top up our tans…

As it turned out, though, the riding was pretty good. Some of it was very good and some of it was excellent. Acorn Hotels has teamed up with local adventure sports company S’Esclop to provide guided MTB excursions, and S’Esclop’s Marc Fornés knew all the good spots. S’Esclop has a very handy minibus/trailer combination that lets them easily transfer sizable groups from any of Acorn’s hotels (there are five on the island) to the trails. Obviously having transport like this also means that rides don’t have to start and finish at the same place, either, and predominantly downhill rides are available.

Last one to the coast buys the coffees

We were staying at the Playa Santa Ponsa hotel. It’s one third of Acorn’s hotel complex in Santa Ponsa in the south-west of Mallorca. The Playa is apparently a two-star hotel, but it’s a pretty smart two-star. All the hotels are about 200m from the beach and they all share facilities like the pool. Imagine for a moment that this is a TV travel show and follow us into a typical room – there’s the bathroom, here’s the balcony through the big sliding doors, satellite TV, air conditioning, modern, clean, airy.

But you don’t want to know about hotel rooms, you want to know about bike riding. The Acorn people are justifiably proud of their cycle-friendly facilities – as well as a sizable fleet of decent hire bikes (LX-equipped Univega MTBs, only really let down by a rather weedy fork) there’s workshop facilities and secure storage for 250 bikes, should you wish to bring your own. We had just a couple of days to sample the trails, so after a bit of spanner-waggling to get the right brake levers operating the right brakes it was all aboard the minibus for a short transfer to Puerto de Andraitx almost at the south-western tip of the island.

There’s a lot of development going on down here, with villas springing up all over the wooded hillsides. The first climb was on a recently-graded track, presumably “improved” for access by building traffic and not, in all honesty, all that inspiring. But once at the top, a splendid Meditteranean vista opened up and the trail narrowed, acquired some interesting rocky slabbiness and rolled its way along the ridge of the coastal hills. Some gradual height gain and a short hike-a-bike later and we gained another great spot looking out over Isla Dragonera just off the coast.

Anyone who’s ridden in southern mainland Spain will be familiar with the style of the subsequent descent – twisty singletrack punctuated with rock steps and gullies, complete with mildly distracting views. It wasn’t as technical or as long as an Andalucian descent, but suitably rewarding nonetheless. And as an added bonus it ends up in the coast town of San Telmo, letting us finish the ride with coffees in a beach-front café. Marvellous.

We have to mention the evening’s entertainment briefly. After dinner we retired to the hotel bar to find that it was quiz night, featuring the first trilingual quiz we’ve experienced – every question was delivered in Spanish, English and German. We couldn’t help thinking that the challenge of some questions had been slightly lost in translation – “In what country did French bowls originate?” was a particularly fine example – and it seemed to take a while to get through them all. But the main thing is that somehow the combined intellectual prowess of bike journalists and travel company PRs managed to win… The rest of the evening was spent in a rather fine Irish bar just up the road, complete with very good live music enhanced by dryly amusing inter-song banter.

The following day’s riding was in two parts, north and further north along the mountains and showing the surprising variety of terrain on Mallorca. In the morning we were in the woods, winding upwards on bumpy fireroad before blatting back down on a fun combination of fall-line singletrack and slightly wider trails made interesting by a cool slabby surface that offered up a wide selection of lines, drops and launches.

Then it was up into the mountains proper. There’s some amazing scenery up there. It’s all limestone, so you get lots of water- and wind-eroded shapes, limestone pavements and all sorts of other stuff. A fast and corner-laden partially-cobbled goat-track descent took us to the essential coffee stop, and then it was off through the limestone formations to the top of the last descent of the day, a superb left-right-left-right valley descent down through the woods with big banked turns. Lovely.

No shortage of corners

The Acorn Sport programme doesn’t just include bikes – the centres are set up for hiking tours, scuba diving and kayaking too. And of course you’ve got beaches, watersports, and all sorts of other less energetic attractions, making Mallorca a very promising venue for a mixed bike/other stuff trip, or a family holiday with a bit of riding sneaked in. It’s probably not somewhere you’d visit if you were after a full week of nothing but hardcore mountain biking, but if you like to mix it up and/or you need to keep a family amused, you’ll find some really excellent trails to explore and people ready and waiting to show them to you.

More Mallorca photos in the Gallery.