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Mallorca tourists to get access to Bicipalma “Boris bikes”

Dead cheap bike hire on Spanish holiday island

From 2014, visitors to the Spanish tourist Mecca of Mallorca will be abe to use the island’s Boris bike-style hire bike system.

The Bicipalma bikes have up to now only been available to locals as proof of residency is needed to become a member of the scheme. But from next year that’s set to change as Mallorca recognises the role of rental bikes in allowing tourists to explore the island.

After the London cycle rental scheme was opened to casual use it was estimated that more tourists than locals were using the bikes.

Gabrial Vallejo from the local Innovation Institute said “Foreign tourists are used to using bikes to tour cities. It will be hard to reach the numbers shown for example in northern Europe but the growth of this type of transport is unstoppable.”

Three days’ rental of a Bicipalma bike will cost a very reasonable €9 and €12 will get you a whole week.

According to SeeMallorca.com, the system is used by just over 2000 Palma residents but the council expects the bikes to be used by 3000 tourists next year.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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5 comments

Avatar
TeamCC | 10 years ago
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I love bicycling in other cities, going by taxi, bus, tube, always keeps me lost in the city. Feels like being transported from spot to spot without really taking in the culture.

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a_to_the_j | 10 years ago
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a recent trip, i was amazed at how cheap it was compared to the UK.

an excellent barista made coffee served to my table on a stainless steel tray in a perfect cup with 2 biscuits for 1.50EURO compared to getting a polystyrene nescafe one for similar price recently in the uk....

also Lactose free milk was 25p cheaper on the island than my local Tesco mainland....

Avatar
phazon | 10 years ago
0 likes

Going down it could be even worse...

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merckxissimo | 10 years ago
0 likes

I'll buy a beer for the first person to ride one up Sa Calobra...

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NeilXDavis | 10 years ago
0 likes

Blimey $12 a week is v good value..

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