Ride up a road that ties itself in a knot

The road to Sa Calobra comes down to the sea through the mountains of Mallorca's north coast in a long run of hairpins, and near the top it does something roads do not usually do. It turns through 270 degrees and passes under itself on a bridge. That loop is called the Nus de sa Corbata, the knot of the tie.

Going up from the cove, the road climbs in bends through gray rock with the sea dropping away behind. Every turn shows more of the coast than the one before, which was the idea.

At the knot the road swings round in its circle and crosses over the stretch it has just climbed, so for a moment the way ahead is directly above the way back.

The engineer Antonio Parietti laid it out and it opened in 1933, about thirteen kilometers of it. Before then Sa Calobra could be reached only by sea, on foot or by mule. Two magazine accounts describe it as engineered with tourists in mind, and Parietti went on to lay out the road along the Formentor peninsula as well.