Balance On A Bike – The other side of cycling

Those of you of long blog experience will know that I am more than happy to quote feedback or comments that you send me. I don’t recall though ever having a sort of guest blogger for the day. So something of a first.

Occasionally, I do get pulled up. There was once an accusation of anti-Catalan sentiment, which was quite unjustified. The post in question may have suggested this, but there were and have been plenty of others that are anything but anti. Though I may now and then “go off on one”, I try and avoid one-eyedness. Blogs, comment pieces and so on are easy to exploit as a means of presenting one particular point of view or prejudice. God forbid I should ever sound like a Leapy Lee, and were I to, I trust someone would be good enough to shoot me. Balance in all things is important. So when someone suggests to me that I might not have been balanced, rather than dismissing this, I can accept the point and also happily seek to redress the balance. And so it was that, following a recent piece about cycling, I had an email from Marcus who questioned the balance. An exchange of emails has ensued, and Marcus has forwarded what is today’s guest blogger feature. Over to you, Marcus …

February is the time of year when you might start to notice groups of cyclists, in all sizes of groups, appearing on the roads around Alcúdia. From individual, mature loners who look like they have spent their whole life on a bike, to identically clad groups of Germans or Danes happily going about their daily holiday excursions. There are times when, as a driver, you may have been put out slightly by these pedallers in lycra, but let me offer some explanation of the type and why they happen to appear in the first place.

For the northern-European cycling enthusiast, Alcúdia holds a number of charms and I for one have been taking advantage of them for several years now. First there is the wide choice of good quality hotels, and those that open this early in the season seem well prepared to pander to the needs of cycling groups. They provide exactly the facilities in terms of comfortable rooms, keen prices, bike storage, relaxing pool areas and abundant nutritious food that we cyclists look for. Then there is the great Alcúdia beach to enjoy at the end of a long day in the saddle and finally there is the town’s perfect position on the island, just a day’s ride and back from all kinds of places like Soller, Porto Cristo and Sa Calobra. Even the monastery at San Salvador is a comfortable jaunt away.

We’ve been coming to Mallorca for so many years that it has been tempting to try other areas, but Arenal meant a dull ride through the lowlands of the south or the busy roads of Palma at the start of each day and Magaluf was just a bit cheesy unless you wanted a drink-fest every night, which was not our bag. Nor did it offer many escape routes other than the busier west coast road or a route straight uphill at the start of every day.

No, Alcúdia is almost perfect and what better way to finish off a day’s riding than an all-out burn-up along the coast from Pollensa. We all suppose that the smooth, well-maintained Mallorcan roads are a result of EU subsidises, but wherever the money came from they provide a welcome respite to the pot-hole littered lanes of Surrey. And there’s the considerate approach of motorists too, which also compares favourably with the hasty, “don’t make me late”, get out of my way driving skills of many in the UK.

Here I must reference Andrew’s previous post about some cycling bad habits like running red lights and not giving way where needed, none of which are to be condoned. As a rider I don’t intentionally ride to block the road for any driver, after all an angry driver is far more a threat to me than an happy one. But bear in mind that if you approach a group of riders, even after they have realised they are holding you up, it may take a moment or two for them to organise themselves into a narrower line so that you can pass safely. A short, friendly toot on the horn before and after the overtake is all it should take. Try it, the friendly thank-you wave from the front of the group may warm your heart for the rest of the day! And then there are the Mallorcan winds which can easily blow a rider a few feet off course without notice, so please leave a healthy gap as you pass.

Finally there’s the issue of lycra, which other writers on Mallorca, not just Andrew, seem to take slight offence to. Well from the horse’s mouth the reasons for the crazy garments are two-fold. Be seen and be comfortable. I’m sure we’d all look very smart in black Paul Smith tailored jackets, but the Mallorcan truck driver might just not see me in time and my poor wife and kids back home would be distraught if that jacket was returned damaged! And how sore would my more delicate areas be after 6 or 7 hours in the saddle unless I dressed carefully in appropriate gear? Don’t worry we do normally change into more suitable attire before frequenting the local bars and restaurants in the evening, so you may not even notice us unless you eaves-dropped the boring conversations about who rode fastest that day. In that case, come and say hello and give us something more interesting to talk about, please!

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Birdland – Cycling and bird-watching in Mallorca

Come on, ‘fess up. Cyclists behaving badly or even behaving well, and do you lose your rag, shout and scream? Does Matthew Parris’s piano wire cross your mind? What if maybe I just give a little nudge with the bumper? No, no, don’t do that. Whatever you do, don’t do that.

Me? I move from ultra polite to ultra pissed off. I will gladly observe the rules, gladly let a line of cyclists enter a roundabout, the only time you are meant to stop on a roundabout. I will even let a lone cyclist come onto a roundabout in front of me, so long as there isn’t a truck about to demolish my boot. I will happily give a wide berth, slow at the central islands where there isn’t sufficient space for car and two-abreast cyclists, even if they are meant to be in single file. I will do all these things. I don’t suffer from road territorialism. It isn’t that. What it is, is when the rules are broken, when the cyclists do what no car driver could get away with – running a red, coming out of an exit that they shouldn’t be, cutting up, or just going the wrong way. But why get so peed off? Does it really matter? Well actually it does, given that the car driver is invariably always at fault if there’s an accident.

The recreational cyclist is not the issue. He or she usually pedals at a sedate speed. He or she can stop easily. It is the pros, the semi-pros, the pretend-pros who get the driver’s goat. The ones who act as they own the roads. Ah yes, own. It’s that territorialism again. And it’s also the provocation, the one that comes from the attire, the dress-code, the lycra. They dress deliberately to antagonise.

But it’s not just on the roads of Alcúdia, Pollensa or Muro that the great cyclist-driver divide occurs. In Dublin, according to a piece in yesterday’s “Sunday Times”, “cyclists are facing a backlash from motorists and pedestrians who claim they are a menace”. The paper reveals police figures for transgressions – 1,847 motorists done for going through a red, 28 cyclists for doing the same. Strangely enough, given the lunatic nature of the Mallorcan driver, I have rarely actually witnessed a driver running a red. I couldn’t tell you how many cyclists I’ve seen doing the same. What I can tell you is how often I’ve seen Trafico dealing with an errant cyclist. Once. A girl went through a red right in front of the patrol vehicle. They could hardly not stop her. But whereas a driver can be easily identified, a cyclist cannot be. They all look the same, all stretched into blue outfits. There may be sponsors’ logos, different colour helmets and so on, but you can’t really pick a cyclist out. And that’s it, the cyclist knows damn well that he or she can get away with it. It’s this that hacks the drivers off.

Bird-watching in Mallorca
“The Bulletin” ran a piece yesterday about a book that has been published, in English, which highlights the rich bird life to be found on the island. It is called the “Birding Tourist’s Guide to Majorca”. Three lucky readers may well have emailed the paper to win a copy in response to the question “which red-breasted bird from northern Europe is starting to breed in Mallorca?” Hmm, let me think, bird, red breast. Is it a blackbird?

The robin is just one bird that is now laying down roots in Mallorca. So also is the little egret and the hoopoe. The Albufera nature park is home to them, as it is to many other birds, migrant or relatively full-time. Bird-watching is something of a growth tourism market and a not unlucrative one. As one of the book’s authors points out, bird-watchers spend a fair amount of dosh on twitching kit and they are “relatively big spenders”, like other tourists who splash out on specialist equipment and clothing, such as golfers or –  dare one say it – cyclists.

The book is all part of an initiative to grow this tourism market further. It’s a good idea. Now all that’s needed is a tourism minister and someone in charge of tourism promotion.

Walk Is Cheap

Capdepera is the municipality on the north-eastern tip of Mallorca. Its coastal resort is Cala Ratjada. It is mainly a German destination, the resort itself a peculiar stretch between two sea fronts, the main beach small and crowded, one to which one can see hordes of lilo carriers heading in summer, taking a long-ish walk from the centre of Cala Ratjada. The town has announced some “initiatives” designed to attract more tourism. And these are? Cycling, audio guides for the mediaeval castle and a Nordic walking track. These, together with promotional materials, will cost somewhat less than a hundred thousand euros.

Fine, you might think, but just look at that list again and at the budget. Cycling. Nordic walking. Me-too tourism facilities in other words. Take Nordic walking. Alcúdia has a route, Can Picafort has a route and now Capdepera is to have one. Nordic walking falls into the category of “alternative” tourism, an alternative aimed at extending the tourism offer and season.

Given the German dominance of Cala Ratjada, a Nordic walking offer makes some sense, but, as with the other resorts in the north, it is an addition to the tourism mix that will make only minimal impact. More than that, it is cheap. And it is this – the lack of cost – that is the most germane point in seeking more German tourists. For a relatively small spend, the town hall and the tourism ministry can announce that “something is being done”, can be seen to be taking some action. It is, therefore, largely a PR exercise, not one aimed at more tourism but one aimed at trying to convince that effort is being put into extending the season.

Tourism minister Ferrer, in presenting these initiatives, spoke of the need to “create new attractions” to “re-invent” the island as a tourism destination and to “extract the value” that exists on the island in terms of its natural landscape and heritage. Well he would say that, as his predecessors and other tourism authority spokespeople will have done. It is spin, a formulaic pronouncement lifted from the brief manual that is phrases to use when talking about things other than sun and beach tourism.

The worry is not that there is to be a Nordic walking track, not that there is to be more cycling in Capdepera, not that there are to be audio guides to the castle which is promoted as having a “fascinating history”, one bound up in battles against pirates. The worry is the spend and the me-too nature of the offers. If less than a hundred grand could be converted into half a million more tourists per year, then you would take your hat off to the brilliance of the thinking. But it won’t. Nowhere, moreover, is any evidence offered as to how many new tourists might be created or how many existing tourists might be willing to not trade in Mallorca for another destination. It’s not surprising, because the tourism authorities don’t know. What they do know is that Nordic walking and the rest is something alternative on the cheap. This is one of the failures of Mallorca’s so-called alternative tourism. There is not much by way of investment. Not much directed at grander schemes that might mean serious numbers of tourists. Not much, in fact nothing, by way of some out-of-the box thinking for creating genuine alternatives or even additions to the main summer tourism. One of the failures? No, the failure.