Col d’ Orient & Col d’ Soller – Day 2

Col d’ Orient & Col d’ Soller – Day 2

Lots of things can be said about the island of Mallorca - beautiful, rugged mountains, great food, friendly people, good roads, etc. What many people would not expect to hear is that it has too many cyclists. I never thought I would ever say such a thing, but there are way too many cyclists on the roads. THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS. Even on the most remote back roads that are narrower than my driveway, you see cyclists every couple of minutes. Most of the time in large groups of 10-20. It’s absolutely crazy. It like being on the 405 but, if all the cars were bikes.

Okay, enough of the cycling traffic report.

Today was our first real day on our bikes. We did two great climbs, the Col d’Orient and the Col d’Saller. Of the two, the Col d’Saller was by far the most fun. A gentle grade of 5%-7% for about 6 km. The switchbacks were so close together, that the road above us was only a couple yards away. Our Garmin’s keep telling us to do U-Turns because they thought we had turned around. The purple lines were laying on top of each other. Once we got to the top of the Col, we paused of a couple of minutes and then had an amazing decent back to the town of Orient where our sag van met us for lunch. From there, it was a straight 40ish km ride back to the hotel with a little stop in the town of Campnet for half a beer. Yes, you can buy half a beer in Spain. It’s like six ounces. Just enough to propel us back to the hotel.

For some reason, I had envisioned this cycling trip as being genteel and civilized, like a smooth ride south out of Atascadero. I must have read the brochure wrong and misunderstood Trek Travel’s description when it said the trip was for “avid” cyclists. Or perhaps, I was looking just at the length of each day; 65 – 80 miles. Not too bad. Next time, I’ll read the fine print that also describes the total feet of climbing.

Anyway, tomorrow’s forecast is for heavy rain so there may be no riding at all. What do you do on Mallorca when it rains, you visit wineries.