Mallorca Ride 3
Today’s ride was changed from what was in the original itinerary since the road up to Sa Calobra suffered serious damage in the rains earlier this month and will take quite a while to repair. Normally, the climb to Sa Calobra is considered one of the highlights of the week, but I guess I will need to come back to Mallorca if I want to experience it. Instead, we headed west in the interior before heading north into the mountains. I ended up adding some extra miles, so I rode just over 80 miles with about 5800’ of climbing. The photo above was taken in the interior before heading into the mountains in the background.
This morning, there was a bit of high cloud cover, so the sunrise was more peach colored compared with the fire orange of yesterday.
Heading out from the hotel, we mostly rode on very small roads such as the one pictured here. While there is very little car traffic, cars can come from either direction as these roads are not one way. Occasionally, this can lead to challenging situations where one driver needs to find a driveway to allow the other driver to pass.
Here is another photo from the earlier part of the ride.
About every 20 miles, the support van will stop to allow us to refill our bottles with drinks and grab some snacks to keep us fueled for the ride.
Perhaps 10 miles after the first van stop, we began our first serious climb of the day.
Here is a photo of me at the summit. The initial sections of the descent going down the far side required care. The road surface was rather torn up in some places. Also, because it is on the north side, there is not much sun but generally more rain. As a result, there are some places where moss grows on the road which is very slick. Also, there were places which were damp. Consequently, the descent was somewhat slow as everyone made sure to keep their speed well under control.
After passing through a town, the roads improved significantly, and we did get some nice descending. Eventually, we connected up with the bottom of the climb I did the first day with John. Today, I rode the climb considerably slower. Here is a picture from that climb.
As an aside, I take most of my photos while riding the bike. I have a small bag on my top tube that has a compact camera. I can slip the strap over my wrist before taking it out. It has a zoom that I can use to frame the shot glancing at the back display. I usually have the shutter speed set at 1250 of a second or shorter. This allows the camera to capture sharp photos even though the camera is moving around.
Eventually, I made my way to the lake John and I visited on Sunday. This is a picture a bit further up the lake than the one I took Sunday.
On my way back, I took a photo of this building overlooking the water. On Sunday I took a wide angle shot, but this time I zoomed in.
On the way back to the hotel, I decided to take this photo since I realized that somehow I had not yet photographed sheep despite them being almost everywhere.
Tomorrow is a self guided day, so I will likely team up with some of the other riders and pick a route I have not done yet.