Sunday 6 October. One hears a lot about Menorca – it’s nicer than Mallorca, it’s quieter than Mallorca, it’s more old fashioned, etc. etc. All of these are certainly true, but one thing I hadn’t known about until we arrived here a couple of days ago is that Menorca has a significant Megalithic history, or perhaps pre-history is more accurate. All over the island are dotted some 1,500 megalithic sites, also called Talaolitic sites.

Conveniently, one such, called Trepucó, is just a couple of kilometres outside Mahon, so it seemed a perfectly sensible idea to include that as part of a day’s exploration to see how my foot is standing up (sorry) after yesterday’s Incident. So we set off, passing a wonderful piece of defensive graffiti.

(Attack is clearly the best form of defence!)

The sites are well-signposted.

and so we walked south of Mahon, past a rather bizarrely-located boatyard

(I suppose if you’ve got to move big boats 20 metres from the water, a couple of kilometres isn’t too much more trouble).

We spent a happy hour or so pottering around the site, which is well-documented via noticeboards explaining what you’re looking at (and also confessing that there are many unknowns about the constructions, such as what they were actually for). There are central mounds called Talaioti

(some filled, some hollow, all made with some pretty sizeable lumps of stone, hefted about several hundred years BC and causing later inhabitants to believe that they must have been made by giants; hence one might find the name “Cyclops” included in some of the descriptions),

Taula (“tables”),

standing stones with a horizontal stone across the top – this one was hugely reminiscent of “2001, a Space Odyssey”, except it wasn’t black, but the dimensions felt right – and other indications of civilisation, such as excavated areas which could have been rooms

arches in walls

and so forth. Trepucó’s location, overlooking Mahon, made it an ideal defensive location and in fact the site was used as such during a siege in the 18th century when the Duke of Crillon augmented the site with more modern defensive walls. I hope to go back with a drone to get my own photo, but for now, here’s one they prepared earlier, in which you can clearly see the formation of the more modern walls.

There’s a huge amount more to see on the island, megalithically speaking, and maybe we will – who knows what the rest of our week here will contain?

Trepucó features in a walk described in the Landscapes of Menorca book, so we used that route to carry on back towards and then around Mahon – and A Nice Lunch – past an equestrian centre, where they had some dramatic training going on (which might be a local speciality, going by the main building there)

a cave (with goat),

an example of wild capers growing on a rock face,

and some allotment-type areas

(one of which included an aviary featuring some very loud tweeting).

and a lovely carpet of morning glory.

The walk took us down to the waterside in Mahon, with a good view across the water of Golden Farm, once the home of Admiral Lord Collingwood, C-in-C of the British fleet (and rumoured to have been the site of a liaison between Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton in 1799).

and then we carried on back to the town and rambled around looking at some sights we’d seen before (see Friday’s entry) and some we hadn’t such as Cami d’Es Castell, a charming, but narrow, street with a lovely line of trees down the middle.

and some unusual arrangements to help with sorting out the wiring!

Lunch was a fine affair, at a posh-looking and old-fashioned-feeling restaurant by the waterside called Jàgaro, where Jane finally got her scorpion fish, although it was somewhat bizarrely accompanied by a fried egg on the chips.

And then it was time to stumble back to the hotel so I could process some photos and describe the day for your delectation. My foot seems to be OK, if severely bruised, and so, given that today’s peregrinations covered 8 miles, we might well go for a walk along some of the Cami de Cavalls, the track that goes right around the outside of the island. There’s a good candidate section on the south side which looks promising. Let’s see how we go….

* idea for the title is © the distaff side

Saturday 5 October. Today’s plan was to visit Ciutadella, the original capital of the island of Menorca and take a walk around its old town. As you might guess from its name, the old town was originally a citadel; today its walls have largely been demolished to make way for the wider roads demanded in modern times, but there are a couple of plces where the walls are still intact.

The route of our walk, incidentally, is described in an excellent book of walks and car tours that is published by Sunflower Books as part of their “Landscapes” series. We can recommend all of these books, and have before used them as a way of deciding where would be a good place to go on holiday. So, the route we took was a bit convoluted:

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And I took lots and lots of photos because it’s a very charming old town district. I’ll try to keep things short and show the best bits – the rest will appear in due course on my Flickr page, I expect.

Actually, the first thing we saw (beyond the bus station, as we took the bus over from Mahon) wasn’t all that photogenic; it was a reminder that graffiti is a menace everywhere you go.

However, there were many other places where a more artistic approach had been taken.

Almost every corner you turn presents you with a charming street

or a handsome square or courtyard.

Although sometimes a bit of creative composition is required. Here are some lovely buildings in the Born square….

and here is the reality of what it looked like!

There are many fine churches and other religious buildings. The cathedral, for example, is quite impressive.

and is elaborate inside, with some lovely stained glass.

There are a couple of convents; for one of them, Sant Agusti, your ticket into the cathedral also pays for entry – a worthwhile visit. It has an attractive cloistered courtyard, which shows off its distinctive towers,

an impressive organ…I’ve told you before to stop sniggering…

and some lovely trompe l’oeuil work

although it has to be said that the place is falling apart, sadly; in the photo of the organ, you can just see some green netting which appears to be in place across the expanse of the ceiling, presumably to stop bits of it falling on people (perhaps when the organ is throbbing?).

A windmill has been converted to what we’re told is a popular bar,

There’s an attractive market (not open when we visited, and apparently suffering at the hands of modern supermarkets)

and balconies are very much a thing all over the old town.

and it has, of course, a port (that being where we arrived on the ferry, just yesterday), although the commercial bit is further out than this picture covers.

This was where we had our lunch break (at around 4pm!), at a splendid restaurant called S’Amarador, just by the water.

I suppose I should ‘fess up to one piece of foolhardiness, when I tried to take a photo, right at the start of our wandering around. Here is the scene:

I thought that I would get a better vantage point if I stood on one of those very heavy-looking flower stands in the foreground, so I tried that. Sadly, I was heavier than it, so it tipped up, tipped over and landed on my toe. This hurt quite a lot, and so I basically had to limp around the rest of our walk and I hope to God that I haven’t broken anything. I now have to go off and remove shoe and bloody sock and hope that the damage doesn’t stop us from enjoying the rest of the week here. I’ll report back on my pain and misery in subsequent posts….

One thing of note – as we walked back to our hotel from the bus station in Mahon, we passed a square where the trees were full of small birds chattering away as they argued about roosting places for the night. The sound was quite amazing…

Our agenda tomorrow is a little imponderable. We won’t be hiking anywhere, but may take a stroll round Mahon, according to another suggested walk in the Landscapes book, if my foot will stand up to it. Otherwise, medicinal alcohol might have to be the regimen. Stay tuned to find out what happens, if you can bear the suspense.