A ride to Orient

We received some sad news today…..the rental company will pick up our bikes tomorrow at 4:30 pm!! But that is tomorrow’s worry, today we had a great ride to another peak on the island. We climbed to Orient, in the mountainous area in the northwest part of the island. The town is very small, but around it are farms which are part of the agrotourism movement. People come to stay to experience a working farm. The pic shows how the fields are neatly terraced all over this mountainous island.

Some of the towns in the central valley are now familiar friends: Sa Pobla, Buger, Campanet and Selva. Today’s ride took us further west towards Palma and we continued past Selva to Lloset (Yo-set) and then on to Alaro. Café con leche (coffee with milk) in Alaro renewed us as we had already begun to climb into the Serra de Tramuntana (mountains) at Selva. The climb to Orient really begins with a nice view through two very prominent and large peaks. We climb through the valley between those peaks swinging gradually west on the climb. Play the video at the end of today's post to get a perspective on the start of the climb.

At Alaro, we turned directly north, into the mountains for a 5.5km (3.4mi) 5.1% climb to Col de Orient. The major climb took us to the peak and then we had another 2km of gradual rolling descent into Orient where we replenished on cold water and cake. Today’s major climb was actually quite easy compared to some of the others we have done. We are hoping that our legs are in better shape now in our 6th day of riding. We were actually surprised when we checked the altitude gain on the GPS and it exceeded 3,000 feet for today. The pics show the group at the summit of Col de Orient and the profile shows the area where we rode today. (forgive the angle on the group pic, the fence post used to rest the camera for the timer shot had an angle at the top!)



The ride back simply retraced our steps and the climb up from Alaro to Orient became a fabulous descent. The road was smooth and the switchbacks were few. We had a very good line of sight the whole way down.

We simply reversed our route to return to Alcudia with an aggressive 31km/hr (19mph) pace for the last 10km (6.2mi) back through the nature preserve which is to the east of the Alcudia resort area. Dinner was needed and well deserved!

Stats for today: 63 miles and 3067 feet of climbing!