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Mallorca Cycle Tour - £1500

The Balearic Beauty Cycle Tour

Our easy-level cycling tour designed for customers who want to enjoy the pleasures of mediterranean Mallorca with its excellent hotels, enchanting landscapes, handsome villages and plentiful sunshine. Starting next to the ocean on the South coast of this Balearic island, we venture inland along stunning and flat country roads. Our relaxing route passes through fertile valleys where oranges and lemons add colour and scent, and where bicycles have priority. This Balearic tour has the added attraction of staying in each hotel for two nights and therefore avoiding the daily packing routine. Our final destination is Pollença, known for its lively port and crystal-clear bay, and sitting at the foot of the northernmost spurs of the Sierra de Tramuntana mountain-range.

Inland Mallorca offers a flat environment where roads criss-cross a rural landscape with diverse scenery. Mallorca can offer cyclists the perfect environment from early winter through to late Spring and is loved by cyclists from all over the world.

Sights and History of Your Mallorca Cycling Vacation

Mallorca, like other major islands of the Mediterranean, has attracted a cornucopia of conquerors, invaders, settlers and tourists, who have all contributed to its richness and vital history. For most Mallorcans history didn't really begin until the Catalans retook the island from the Moors in the 13th century. On the other hand experts date the first islanders to be between 1000 and 1300 BC. The Balearic islands found themselves on the great trading routes that criss-crossed the Mediterranean Sea. Ibiza became an important commercial centre first for the Phoenicians, then the Carthaginian traders. While Mallorca played only a minor part in these 8th and 7th century cultures, there are references in classical texts to Mallorcan honderos (stone slingers) fighting for the Carthaginians in the Punic wars. Whilst Roman culture probably had the greatest impact on Mallorcan social patterns, the influence of the Moors was responsible for important advances in the island's agriculture, along with development of the island's crafts and commerce. It is also easy to pinpoint the Moorish contribution to the island's folklore, language and cuisine.

Food and Wine of the Mallorca Bike Tour

Not long ago every village would celebrate the matanca, the winter slaughter of pigs, with songs and dancing and the making of hams and sausages for the coming year. Sausages come in several varieties - sobrasada (raw minced pork with hot red pepper) and botifarro (cured pork with blood), as well as spicy chorizo from Spain. A side effect of the matanca was frit mallorqui, a fry-up of the most perishable offal with potatoes, onions and tomatoes. Nowadays you find it on menus alongside tumbet, a Mallorcan-style ratatouille of aubergines, potatoes and peppers in olive oil, and sopes mallorquines, a thick broth of thinly-sliced brown bread and vegetables. Other classic dishes include llom amb col (pork wrapped in cabbage with pine nuts and raisins) and lechona asada (roast suckling pig). Paella is not specifically a Majorcan dish but it is widely available; paella ciega (blind man's paella) comes without bones. The local equivalent is arros brat ('dirty rice'), saffron rice cooked with chicken, pork and vegetables. Fish is mostly imported and frozen, but lobster, prawns, sardines and sea bass are all good. The latter, baked in rock salt, is a Mallorcan speciality.

Binissalem is the best known region in Mallorca for wine production. It is here that the re-birth of the industry began in the 1990's. Approximately 75% of the wine produced here is red, of which the most popular is Crianza. This wine is smooth and elegant, and is matured in oak barrels. Pla & Llevant is where the first vines were grown back in Roman times and covers the eastern area of Mallorca. Both single variety and blends are made here. The reds are blended to give a variety of complex and fruity wines, that have low levels of tannins and are therefore fresher than their western counterparts. The mountains of the Sierra de Tramuntana create a microclimate for vineyards on the Western side of the island, which means that the resulting wines are distinctive to this area, tending to be full bodied with aromas of cherries and plums, and are suitable for aging.