29 Oct - 4 Nov: Pollenca, Mallorca.
Took advantage of Sheffield's half-term holiday being later than everyone else's to get cheap flights and accommodation for a week in Mallorca. Hired a villa with a pool and table tennis to keep the girls entertained while I spent the mornings riding a rented bike round the spectacular Mallorcan roads.
31st: Emily (doing a photography GCSE) had realised the nearby beach would be better for photos at sunrise than at sunset, so asked me to wake her up early. It turned out to be well worth it!
Photography session over, we returned for breakfast, then I nipped out for a couple of hours to ride to the end of the peninsula (Cap Fermentor)
Then we spent the afternoon driving over to Sa Calobra, for the girls to see the famous road I'd ridden up the day before.
Copying Emily's arty wave photo technique.
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Nov 1st: A fairly long ride today (128km, including Soller & Puig Major), followed by fun on the beach...
...and a drive to Cap Fermentor where we saw the sunset.
2nd: Katie decided she wanted some Daddy time and a turn at some sunrise photography.
Then we drove to have a look round the old walled town of Alcudia
We treated ourselves to tapas for lunch, and were quite adventurous - Katie liked the calamari.
3rd: The culmination of the holiday, and really of my whole cycling year, was a 2nd attempt on the road from Sa Calobra to Col del Reis. This is a spectacular road to a tiny village, which is used by many pro cyclists as a training test. It's nearly 10km of uphill at an average gradient of 7%. The first attempt earlier in the week had been reasonably quick, but I knew I could go quicker, and I needed to beat a time set last year by a friend from a rival club. This time I paced it perfectly and came away with a time of 31:11, just outside the top 1% of the nearly 49,000 riders to have registered a time.
And I still had enough energy for an afternoon stroll up the 400 steps of the Carrer del Calvari.
4th: With the return flight booked at teatime, we had some time to kill after packing up and leaving the villa. A roadside nature park with rocks for clambering and a short walking trail was the perfect spot.
As soon as we got on the plane, the heavens opened, and our take-off was delayed by an hour by a huge thunderstorm (or, as the captain put it, "rather a lot of weather").
