Randa is perhaps the Mont Ventoux of Mallorca; the similarity isn’t in the height (Randa is only 546m high), nor does Randa share the barrenness of Ventoux. The likeness rests in the fact that Randa, like Ventoux is a single peak rising from the plain and visible from miles around, with a weather station on the top.
The road of climb turns off the main Algiada to Llucmajor road, and from the point where you turn off it’s 300m of climbing to the top. There are some steep ramps at the start (10%) through the village and out onto the main climb, then it settles down to more like 6% with irregular hairpins to the top (though 10% returns from time to time). There’s an amazing moment when you sweep around a left-hand turn (too sweepingly wide to be a hairpin) to suddenly see the South of the island laid out before you. If you’ve been based in the North half of the island (as all our villas are), and are used to the view of the mountains framing every vista, then it’s like seeing a different world open up: flat and expansive to the sea. It might be your only sight of the other half of the island all holiday!
At the top you pass the weather station and continue along a short section of flat to the monastery (you’re riding left to right along the top in this pic taken from the north). There’s a cafe in the monastery—usually open.