IT WASN'T far from my rural hotel, Es Torrent, to the long crescent of beach at Es Trenc. That much I could see from the map. Surely, I thought, I'd be wriggling my toes in the sand within three-quarters of an hour?

I had reckoned without the author of my self-guided cycling tour. Within a couple of hundred yards he or she was already leading me off on the first of several wild goose chases.

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"Ignore the signs, " it read, instead instructing me to turn left down a bumpy track past an ostrich farm. Grudgingly, I did and within seconds was cussing the whole idea as the handlebars started to judder.

Then there was an ostrich, right up close, cussing too. He was doing a serious feathery display at me from just the other side of a fence.

Initially I thought he must have been randy (I did look rather fetching in my cycle shorts) but then I noticed a couple of dowdy-looking ladies in the enclosure with him. Clearly, he thought I was after his birds. So I challenged him to a race along the fence but he gave up after a few yards, the big chicken.
A little further on and the road surface improved at a crossroads.

Surely now, I thought, it was time to head back in the direction of my destination. My planner was having none of it.

Straight across, it commanded, down a lane between ancient walls and old windmills, through a hamlet of manorial farmhouses with vegetable patches and past fields where rich red soil had been planted with bright yellow oil seed rape as if a particularly patriotic farmer had deliberately tried to create a giant homegrown Spanish flag for the benefit of disorientated passing airline pilots.

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I started to slow. The poppies were out, the lemon groves were heavy with fruit and the air was fragranced with horse dung. The sky was clear, the day was sunny but not too hot and the painted fans on the old windmills were opening their fingers to the breeze.

Suddenly I got the point because I had forgotten all about the need to get to my destination. The planner whose notes I was following was not being obtuse, merely showing me a part of Mallorca which I would never otherwise have seen, at a speed at which it could be properly appreciated. It was a question of savouring a landscape that was still surprisingly unspoiled, even on the Mediterranean's favourite holiday island.

9URING the shoulder seasons of spring and autumn, when it is not too hot and the roads are quiet, Mallorca is very cycle-friendly.
Its hinterland is webbed with lanes, some of which are designated cycle routes.

I was here to meander, to linger in cafés and peer over walls while completing a gentle journey that stitched together some delightful places to stay on Mallorca's central and mostly flat plain.

After Es Torrent, my delightful country house hotel, with its exposed stonework, beamed ceilings, seven rustic rooms and a pool in the landscaped gardens, and the beach at Es Trenc (yes, I did wiggle my toes in the sand) I slowly ambled northwards.

Here lay my second base, a family-run farmhouse hotel called Son Mercadal. The journey to get there was through the small agricultural town of Campos and then on into almond and cherry orchards full of invisible sheep (invisible because of the orchard's high grass).

You could tell they were there because some of them wore bells so it seemed, from a distance, as if the orchards were ringing.
As a purgation of my sins, I took a detour up Mount Sion, one of those hilly outgrowths which punctuate the Mallorcan plain, this one with a 14th-century monastery at its summit.

The final reward for that day's pedalling was Son Mercadal itself, a rambling property that seemed to have grown organically among walnut and carob, fig trees and firs.
Family owned and run, it had a long veranda lined with plants and antiques assembled over decades and a supremely comfortable swing-seat where cyclists could rest their saddle-sore rears before or after splashing into the pool.

Dinner was a leg of lamb, slow-cooked and delicious which, unlike that day's sheep, was far from invisible. Although it became more so as dinner wore on. . .

GETTING THERE:
Inntravel (01653 617 000/inntravel.co.uk) offers a four-night self-guided Unspoiled Central Mallorca cycling break from £598pp (two sharing), half-board. Price includes accommodation in two agroturismos, both with pools, cycle hire (with lights, map case, panniers, lock and puncture repair kit), cycling notes, transfers from Palma Airport and luggage transfers between the two hotels. Flights to Palma can be arranged by Inntravel on request.
Spanish National Tourist Office: 00800 1010 5050/spain.info