Rest day ride to Randa
This ride is perhaps hard to describe as a “rest”, since it’s 100km long, but if done in the right spirit (and in the small ring), it’s a good ride for an easier day. Early on the route you can have a blast at the Buger sprint, then it’s on towards Llubi. The road from Sa Pobla to Llubi seems more popular with the pros than any on the island, it seems; I wheel-sucked a Team Sky ride there last week, and we’ve seen Astana motor-pacing there, as well as Garmin-Cannondale, Lotto and others. The road from Lloret to Randa is beautiful, as the pic that Steve, a client, took (a rather overcast but beautifully mild day) shows:
The road to the top starts on the right hand side of the mountain as you look at it here, and bends around the back to give you a view first of the west of the island, then of the south and the sea.
Stop for a coffee at the monastery cafe at the top, and then the get ready to enjoy the return route. The road is newly surfaced (with signs that boast about the swathes of EU money it took!) all the way north past Pina, right through to Sencelles. Then it’s on to Binissalem (stop here for the Cilcos Gomila bike shop), or stop for coffee at “es P’dal” (get-it?: P’dal = pedal); their motif is the a penny-farthing, and their pizzas are amazing!
You go up through the square in Binissalem and out of the top-right corner into the avenue (no cars allowed). It’s really beautiful place to soak up some cafe-culture. Then out the back of Binissalem and home over the route I have already described as lovely, though Biniamr, Mancor, Selva and Moscari