Palma — Andratx Coastal Loop

Most rides give you a few kilometres to settle in. This one does not. Leave Paseo Marítimo and within a few hundred metres the road is already climbing — Coll de sa Creu, known locally as the Military Climb, rising straight out of the city with no warm-up offered or expected. It sets the tone for everything that follows: a route that asks something of you early and then spends the rest of the day showing you why it was worth it.

Seventy-seven kilometres, 1,356 metres of climbing, two distinct climbs with two distinct characters, and a coastline in between that ranks among the most photographed in the Mediterranean. This is Mallorca doing what Mallorca does best — switching registers entirely within a single loop.

The Military Climb

Coll de sa Creu takes its name from the barracks at its foot, and the climb itself has the same no-nonsense character as its namesake. 5.8 kilometres at 5.3 percent, through forested terrain with hairpins and almost no traffic at this hour of the morning. There is no easing into it. The legs either have something or they do not, and you find out within the first kilometre.

What the climb offers in return is one of the better descents on this side of the island — fast, well-surfaced, dropping you onto the coast road with the day's hardest work already behind you.

Glamorous Mallorca

The southwest shoreline from here to Port d'Andratx is the Mallorca of postcards. Past Cala Major, where the Spanish royal family keep their summer residence, through the fashionable enclaves of Illetes and Portals Nous where the marinas fill with boats too large to need names painted on the hull. Palmanova and Santa Ponça pass in a blur of resort architecture and roadside palms. The riding through here is genuinely enjoyable — wide views, good tarmac, the Mediterranean doing its best work on your right shoulder — but it is also busy, and the traffic through the resort towns demands attention that the scenery wants for itself.

The stretch through Peguera and Camp de Mar is where the road tightens and the cliffs start to earn their reputation. Limestone faces drop to turquoise water in a way that photographs poorly because no photograph can hold the scale of it. This is the section to ride a little slower than the legs want to.

Port d'Andratx

The harbour announces itself before you arrive — the boats get larger, the houses get larger, and by the time the road curves down into the village it is obvious that serious money has found this particular stretch of coastline. It is, despite the wealth on display, one of the most beautiful harbour towns on the island, and the waterfront cafés know exactly what a cyclist wants after forty-five kilometres of coast road. Stop here. Order something. Watch the yachts that cost more than most people's houses idle past while you eat a pastry that costs four euros.

The other Mallorca

From Andratx the route turns its back on the coast entirely. The contrast is immediate and total — narrow roads, olive groves, almond trees, the kind of quiet that the coastal towns spent decades trading away. Es Capdellà arrives as a proper village rather than a resort, and the climb that bears its name is a different proposition from the morning's opener: 6.7 kilometres at 4 percent, smoother and steadier, the bulk of Galatzó mountain rising above the road as you climb. This is the Mallorca that exists independently of tourism, and riding through it after the glamour of the coast feels like being let in on something.

The way home

Through Calvià and into the long descent back toward Palma, the city reassembles itself on the horizon — first as a smudge, then as a skyline, then as a cathedral you can pick out clearly enough to aim for. The final kilometres into Paseo Marítimo close out a day that asked for two different kinds of effort and rewarded both.

Route

77 km · +1,356 m · Road