Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Cami de Cavalls Day 2: Way Navigation

1. Hotel breakfasts in a pandemic world

We went downstairs to the hotel’s breakfast room, which was deserted except for one chap, sitting at a table. It was encouraging to note that he had breakfasty sort of things in front of him, because there was no other clue that we were in with a chance of sustenance – many tables and chairs, no evidence of food or drink. It eventually struck us that Covid precautions meant that laying out a buffet breakfast was, of course, Not The Done Thing These Days.

Trusting that something ought to happen, we sat down and sure enough a lady came from the kitchen with basically a breakfast menu for us to select our food. The service was obliging and the tea was Earl Grey (very important!) but the breakfast itself was rather sparse – a very small bowl of cereal, two small slices of toast for me; some fruit (very good, apparently) and small pots of granola and yoghurt for Jane. This serves us right for only asking for one portion of things, so tomorrow will be very different and may well result in the staff asking us if we’re having a laugh wanting that number of servings of toast; we shall see. However, alongside the Earl Grey we could be sure that there was some corner of a foreign restaurant that was forever England:

I remembered to pack the Marmite!

2. Shopping

This small but perfectly formed breakfast consumed, we headed out to buy supplies. The original idea was to get ourselves some gin (the local, Xoriguer, gin is is much to our taste), but we decided against this as the likelihood of finding ice when we needed it was going to be slight. From our previous visit, we knew there was a supermarket situated, non-intuitively, underneath the convent.

So we confined ourselves to buying some apples, for sustenance on our walking, and sunscreen.

The convent has some lovely cloisters, now home to market shops.

and outside it is a convenient square where one can take coffee. So we did.

3. Understanding how to navigate our way round the island

It seemed a good idea at this point to understand some of the details of navigating the Cami – finding the “start” (it’s a loop, so this is a notional notion) and working out at least the first few yards so we didn’t look like utter tourists tomorrow morning. It turned out that where we were taking coffee was exactly at the start, by a statue of three nags

(appropriate, I guess, for a route called the “horse trail”). Then, based on our meeting with the Cami360 folk the previous evening, we looked for the next waymark, and eventually spotted it on a signpost.

While reassuring, this wasn’t, in and of itself, a lot of use: the two bands set like that tells one that the trail lies straight ahead (as opposed to right or left), but since the bands were entire rings round the post, this didn’t help a lot in directing us further. However, eagle-eyed Jane spotted another marker which gave us a clue as to how to start; and it became clear that there were plenty of markers to help along the way.

So now we feel more confident about navigating in the town; and there are waymarks of differing sorts around the rest of the island; very reassuring. Almost as reassuring, in fact, as the interactive map we found which shows us not only the trail itself, but also useful nearby points, e,g, cafes.

3. Strolling the town and finding lunch

After dropping off the shopping at the hotel, we eventually set out for a stroll to find lunch, and, en route, to re-acquaint ourselves with Mahón, which is very photogenic.

and provides the odd occasional charming vignette, such as this relaxed approach to WFH.

We passed the fish market, which was open and displaying a variety of fish that would bewilder many English restaurant chefs.

We decided to head out once again along the harbour, as there was a restaurant there, Latitude 40 (warning – Facebook page only), that we remembered fondly from our previous visit. En route there we passed the local version of the Little Mermaid, called Sirena Mô.

You can read her story here.

The lunch was a delight. Jane had tuna steak with wasabi and white chocolate sauce which was wonderful (I was unadventurous and had a steak on the basis that this might be less easy to get hold of in the more remote parts of the island).

After such a thorough lunch experience, further walking was needed to settle things down, so we carried on out of the town beside the harbour.

A little further on, there’s an interesting staircase which provides a major dilemma for photographers, because it’s almost – almost – dead symmetrical. So, do you capture the symmetry of the stairs

but have the annoyingly off-centre screw at the top (no schoolboy giggling at the back!)? Or do you centre the screw

which screws up the rest of the symmetry? Oh, how I suffer for my art!

We carried on along the harbourside to the point where we could rejoin the Cami de Cavalls route as it ends, back in the town. This took us down my favourite street in Mahón, Camina Es Castell (so named from the village it leads to/from).

I love the trees that run down the middle – this makes the road completely unique in my experience and I think it’s wonderful. One can also note that the locals have the same relaxed attitude to supplies of mains electricity that so marked out many places we visited in South America.

Nice architectural flourish, dodgy wiring!

And so we came back to the square where we started the day’s perambulations

and thence to our hotel, the Sant Roc. It takes its name from the street it’s on, which, in turn, takes its name from the city gate at the top.

and very much has hexagonal close packing as a design motif.

as well as a stunning 17th-century clock in its reception area.

4. Understanding the importance of The Season

When we visited two years ago, we came at the beginning of October, and it became clear to us that The Season ended in September. The bus service from Mahón to the rest of the island was drastically reduced from its summer levels; some restaurants were closed; and the evenings, whilst lovely and warm, were quiet. This time, whilst walking around, the evening atmosphere was utterly different.

Early evening sustenance was in the form of tostada con sobrasada, a Balearic speciality; spicy sausage meat, honey and cheese on toast (the “Talaolithic Sandwich” from last night!). This and beer in the cathedral square

was followed by a walk through the Tre Cavallis square, where a Mercat de Nit was in full swing

to a terrace overlooking the harbour, which was also very popular, for a G&T.

As the evening darkened, the buzz grew. Like all of these areas, the terrace remained popular,

the fish market was a happening place,

and the buzz on cathedral square gave a delightful evening atmosphere.

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It’s delightful to see that despite the pandemic the town is popular and busy. It will be interesting to see how this translates to the rest of the island as we start our walk tomorrow. Keep coming back for updates, and join us on our journey as we walk the Cami de Cavalls.

Cami de Cavalls – Day 1: understanding what we’ve let ourselves in for

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Monday September 13 2021. Well, what a day it’s been!

Re-acquainting ourselves with so many barely-remembered experiences: flying from Gatwick Airport; EasyJet flight being on time; the geography of Mahón, the capital; the glorious warmth of a Balearic city in late summer. And new experiences – finding out what we’ve let ourselves in for; and a Talaolitic sandwich inter alia.

So, to recap: my wife, Jane, and I are actually doing what we’d planned to do 12 months ago, having discovered the delights of Menorca, but which had been mullocated by the pandemic: to walk around the outside of the island – 185 kilometres on a trail called the Cami de Cavalls – the “horse trail”, recognising that one can ride around the island’s periphery. Apparently one can do this on a bicycle these days, though goodness knows why you might actually think this is a good idea.

The first part of such a holiday is, of course, the domestic fluttering about that attends being away for the better part of three weeks: running the food supplies down, figuring out milk orders to ensure we can have a cuppa before leaving and dealing with the uncertainty of going to The Foreign where we don’t necessarily understand the Covid rules. Spain (including the Balearics) is on the UK Amber List, and both Jane and I have had our full complement of injections so far, so the theory is that the pandemic admin for the travel bit of this will be no different actually from our recent trip to Iceland. There’s always the frisson of doubt that it might all go pear-shaped at the last minute in the mix of emotions that attends the complexities of international travel these days.

In the event, everything about the travel went perfectly, with only one exception. Anyone who knows us will clearly understand that a glass of champagne in the departure lounge is an important part of our departure on holiday. To my utter horror, I discovered that Gatwick’s North Terminal doesn’t feature a Caviar House & Prunier bar. The South Terminal would, if it were open, but it isn’t at the moment. So we simply scheduled a taxi to the airport to give us time for check in and security.

(Note to travellers: there are various maps online of Gatwick’s North Terminal; I can’t find one that reflects reality. As we were heading to our gate, we passed an establishment called “Juniper & co” which would appear to have been able to dispense bubbles had we but known about it; but it’s not shown on any map that I could find online.)

All of the above whinging is the reason that I was not able to share a photograph of fizz on the way out; I apologise to all my social media friends for letting them down. Anyway, we didn’t leave enough time. The queues in Gatwick were not oppressive, but they were a bit slow-moving, so by the time we’d dropped our bags, gone through security and bought sandwiches for the flight, it was time to head to the gate. The flight itself was, like almost all of them these days, crash-free; we arrived slightly before schedule and were being deposited outside our hotel (from a very posh Merc) some 30 minutes later, which is pretty good.

The hotel Sant Roc is a boutique hotel and has some lovely features, which I’ll show later; but the room is not a lot larger than the bed, which doesn’t encourage lazing around. So we headed out fairly pronto to meet the Cami 360 folks who are primarily responsible for directing us as we walk around the island. Their office is in a road called Cala Sant Esteve, which I find mildly amusing.

I suppose it’s bleeding obvious if you think about it in any detail, but given that this outfit are co-ordinating multiple groups on their various journeys along a 185km trail, there’s quite a lot of complicated planning that has to be undertaken. We knew in advance that they would take our main baggage from overnight stop to stop for us and that we would stay in various hostelries around the island; but, of course, there’s a lot of picking people up and dropping them off involved. They explained this to us, and for planning purposes we had to make some guesses about how long each section would take us so they knew when we would arrive at pickup points. And that’s when a small dose of reality hit: we are going out in hot weather to walk a long distance and we need people to help us, when we haven’t really got much of a clue as to the details of what’s involved. Happily, the Cami360 folks are used to dealing with this and provided detailed maps, booklets and a WhatsApp group so that we could (a) have a clearer idea of what’s involved from day to day and (b) call for help if all of a sudden our plans changed. It seems a pretty impressive organisation so far: we have some 13 days to find out how good their execution is in the face of bumblers like me.

After this, we headed out for some evening sustenance, and found ourselves seated outside a very buzzy joint which did very basic burgers and such;

and on the menu was a “Talaolitic Sandwich” (you’ll have to read back on our previous blog to understand the significance of this). Actually it was just a toasted sandwich with spicy sausage, cheese and honey and it was delicious. Not quite sure why it could be associated with the stone age, though.

After such a meal, it was only right that we wander round the town to settle things down a bit, so we walked out along the harbour – one of the largest natural harbours in the world, you’ll remember – and then up to the cliff above to take in the view back, which is quite something.

Our hotel is just by the cathedral, and the square outside features several restaurants which gave the place a happy, warm mediterranean buzz.

We have a day of leisure in Mahón tomorrow (shopping for essentials such as gin and tonic) before we start the walk proper on Wednesday. Do keep in touch with the blog and you can see how things unfold.

So, Iceland, eh? Final thoughts

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Thursday 15th July 2021. We’ve been home a couple of days now and are gradually easing ourselves back into all the home-based routines that had dominated, well, the last 18 months, really. The number and intensity of the seriously unfamiliar sights we’ve been treated to for two weeks have overlaid the mundanity of our return to domestic routine with a patina of unreality. Before this fades, I thought it would be an idea to pull together some thoughts into a sort of valediction whilst things are still reasonably fresh in our minds. All of the following should be read in the context that we had an excellent holiday experience which it would be difficult to improve upon.

Is Iceland expensive, as is reputed? It’s certainly not cheap. For lunch, dinner and a couple of drinks daily, the total cost for fifteen days ran out at over £2,000 for the two of us. A large gin & tonic could be around £12, for example, and a glass of wine with dinner around £10. This may seem steep, but then again I don’t know how these compare with, say, London prices. However, this was a holiday, and the exchange rate made it difficult to do the necessary mental arithmetic to establish how much things translated to in English money, so we firmly turned our face against worrying about it.
The gin. There is a good variety of Icelandic gins. We found that the flavour of many brands, such as Himbrimi, while tasting perfectly gin-like neat, seemed to disappear when tonic was added. An exception to this is Icelandic Angelica gin, which we only really discovered on the flight home, but which was very nice in a G&T.
The diet. As we travelled around in Iceland, it seemed that every restaurant menu featured the same items – cod and/or arctic char, lamb, beef, occasionally chicken. Of course Iceland is an island and has more sheep than natives so the presence of fish and lamb is not a surprise. Generally, menus seemed to prioritise fish/meat and potatoes over vegetables; and the fruit typically available at breakfast tended (rather counter-intuitively) to be melon, watermelon and pineapple. But then the island’s climate isn’t really a fruit-growing one and its ecology isn’t particularly vegetable-friendly. So, Friðheimar apart, many things have to be imported; Dagur told us that a large proportion of this is centrally-managed, hence the uniformity of produce across our travels.
It’s very easy to pay in Iceland. Everywhere, absolutely everywhere, enabled contactless payment and we used our phones for this. Terrifically convenient and well-organised. You don’t even need to be connected for Google Pay to work.
Talking of which, Iceland’s connectivity is generally excellent. There were a couple of remote places where the mobile signal didn’t reach, but I could almost always get online if I needed to; and – at the moment. at least – calls and data go against my UK quota, so I could do the utterly critical tasks, like Instagram, at any time. Such a relief, you can’t even guess.
Iceland is a large island, certainly larger than we had realised. To see what we saw round the island took 13 days of relentless tourism. Even then, we really only skimmed the surface; the country would repay a deeper. slower visit; or, of course, several shorter ones. In our case, having a knowledgeable guide like Dagur was a key ingredient to the success of the holiday.
And, of course, it’s vastly different between summer and winter. We have only experienced the former, and certainly want to go back during the winter time to experience the difference. While we spent a fortnight exploring the whole coastline during the summer, our guide reckoned that one can experience most of what Iceland has to offer in the winter (ice caves, geothermal hot pools, northern lights) in just a few days whilst staying within striking distance of Reykjavik and thus avoiding having to travel in what might well be rather problematical road conditions.
The light. We travelled near midsummer, which meant that although the sun officially set (we were just below the arctic circle), it never got really dark. A photo example can be found in an earlier post. For me the practical upshot was that I tended to lose track of time whilst writing the blog every evening since I didn’t have the cue of it going dark; so I sometimes looked up to find that it was after midnight. All the hotels had blackout curtains, but all let in a certain amount of light. My advice to travellers that find it difficult to sleep in the light is to bring a sleep mask if your time there is in summer. (Of course, at midwinter, it barely gets light, particularly in gloomy weather.)
The weather. Ah, the weather! As far as we could determine, the only predictable thing about the weather is that it will be windy (Chris Foster, Jane’s friend in Reykjavik, commented that Iceland is the fourth windiest place in the world – and no-one lives in the other three). Anything else can change very rapidly. We packed for cold and rain but were lucky, by and large, to get cloudy or sunny weather. We should have packed sunscreen, but didn’t.
The lupins. This is a contentious issue among Icelandic people; some appreciate their environmental benefits and some hate their invasiveness. But one thing is certain: during their brief flowering period, around mid-June to mid-July, they are a colourful addition to the countryside. For the rest of the year, they’re just green, apparently.
The scenery. It’s anything from attractively scenic to jaw-dropping. In a way, it’s a shame that so much good scenery is concentrated in a single island. Pretty much every mile brings a fresh sight that, anywhere else, would have you stopping the car to take a photo; but in Iceland it’s commonplace and after a while, I wonder if one gets a bit inured to the passing landscape unless it’s a massive waterfall, a geothermal hotspot or a panorama over a fjord.
The birdsong. It was a practically ubiquitous and continuous soundtrack to our holiday, with the drumming of snipe and calls of curlew, kittiwake and other birds ever-present. Jane said that it reminded her of her childhood in darkest Somerset, with a level of birdsong you rarely if ever hear today. The same idea applies to insects; Dagur had to clean the Land Rover’s windscreen of splatted invertebrates on several occasions, an activity that is no longer so common in England.
The roads. The major roads are very well tarmacked; less major roads are hard and (largely) level, without a tarmac surface but easily navigable in a normal car; and below that are large numbers of very bumpy tracks which may be found on a map but which really require a serious 4×4, such as the Land Rover Defender that we were in, to be sure of getting along without problems; and the highland mass in the middle, with bridgeless river crossings and rough tracks, should be avoided unless you have serious overland capability, local knowledge and at least one backup car.
Whilst on the topic of roads, the wildlife. Or, more accurately, the sheep. They’re not strictly wild, but are free to roam wherever they want, which is quite often on the road. The sensible ones know to get off the road as a car approaches, but they’re not always sensible, and ceaseless vigilance behind the wheel is necessary.
The language. It’s a bastard. It has several of its own characters, plus a lot of diacritical marks so even the letters you recognise aren’t necessarily pronounced the way you might think. Both Jane and I really struggled with understanding and pronouncing place names. I have a favourite sight, the canyon at Fjaðrárgljúfur, but I’m buggered if I can retain the name in my head for more than a few seconds at a time.
The people. All the Icelanders we met were very smiley, happy-looking, friendly people. This may, of course, be a side effect of the long days of summer, and the reverse may be the case during the winter, but we left with a positive view of the natives. Given that the population is about 350,000 and the tourist industry in a good year brings in two million visitors, it’s unsurprising to find other nationalities at work in the hospitality industry as well. Generally, we got excellent service wherever we went. In these post-Covid times, though, one has to be a little careful when out in the wilds of the Icelandic countryside to establish what’s open and what isn’t.

Should you visit? Unless you want a fly-and-flop, sunshine-and-beach holiday, the answer is yes. It’s an astonishing, remarkable, unique place. We feel very lucky that we have been able to visit and look forward to going again.