Enough with the composer puns, already! There’s been a whole Liszt! I’ve decided you can’t Handel any more.

Monday 30 September. Valldemossa’s claim to fame is that it started the tourist trend for Mallorca with the arrival of the famous composer Fryderyk  Chopin and his lover (the probably gender-fluid) George Sand.  Valldemossa makes much of this, with a Chopin museum, and a Chopin head sculpture

but we read that actually the villagers shunned the couple and the weather was appalling, thus rendering pointless the reason for his visit (recovering from TB). But apparently he wrote some of his finest music whilst here, and there’s no going Bach on that.

Anyhoo.  We drove to Valldemossa, thus having to go over the twisty bit around our way, which we managed without actually crashing. When we arrived, it was around 1pm, and – surprise! – parking was tricky. (One of the benefits of going with a coach party is that you don’t have to walk half a mile to get to the tourist action, I suppose.)  However, we found a spot and walked in to the town, whose outskirts were rather touristy

and whose streets, when we arrived, were rather crowded (again, I think our habit of having a late breakfast and then going to some attraction or other means we arrive at the same time as everyone else).  But the place calmed down a bit and is actually a very charming town.  I have lots of photos, obvs, but here are a few:

The roof of the Cartoixa – Carthusian Monastery – in whose gardens the Chopin head stands

Street photos

St Bartholomew’s Church

The church is very much connected with Santa Catalina Thomàs, whose presence can be felt through tiles by almost every doorway

and this presents something of a puzzle for Jane and me.  We visited Mallorca together some while ago, back in the mists of time; and we must have been to Valldemossa because we had, at home, exactly the tile above which we’d bought in Mallorca.  But neither of us can remember actually visiting Valldemossa, in the face of overwhelming evidence that we must have.

It was getting towards lunchtime (3pm by our Mallorca-adjusted body clocks) when we thought we should move on, so we decided that the reportedly picturesque village of Deià should be our next stop, based on the recommendation of a friend.  Mind you, it’s the same friend who recommended Cap Tormentor….but we headed off in that direction anyway.

En route, Google Maps pointed out that there was a mirador on offer to the left.  So we screeched to a halt as we found the sign for it and walked down (and I do mean down) to it.  It turns out I could have driven down…

The place, the Miramar Monastery, turned out to be rather a charming find, and delightfully uncrowded – we were practically the only visitors. There was one idiot taking selfies with a mini-tripod for her phone, but she soon buggered off out of my shots). Dating from 1276, it is, allegedly, the oldest house on Mallorca.  It’s not grand, but we felt it was worth the stop, despite it being between us and lunch.

It has an olive mill, similar in operation to the one that once saw action at our hotel

and many other points of interest around the house, as well as a decent view out the back

and some very ancient olive trees, which are still being harvested.

We carried on to Deià, and it was immediately apparent as we approached that it was (a) very picturesque and (b) crowded, which meant that (c) parking was going to be a challenge (we’re both beginning to think that Mallorca thirty years ago was a much nicer place for tourists).  Remarkably, we found a place in an official car park and even had a coin to pay for the parking (after several minutes trying to figure out the user interface of the parking machine).

Deià is indeed a delightful place.

Assuming I haven’t already done so, I could bore you to death with the photos I took, but there are a couple of things that stood out: unique bent wood gates;

a lovely stream through the lower reaches of the village;

and some wonderful corners like this set of steps back up to the main village.

By this stage, our relentless tourism had had us out from about 11am until after 5pm without a break, so a beer stop became an imperative before we headed off to our final planned destination, Port de Sóller (well, we would have spent some time in the town proper, but time was pressing and our lunch plans had by now turned to dinner plans).

Back in the mists of time, on our previous visit to Mallorca, we had visited the port (taking the rather idiosyncratic train to Sóller and then the equally idiosyncratic tram to the port), and we both had the idea that we could find a small, cosy restaurant for a meal.  How memory misleads!  It’s clear that Port de Sóller is a big seaside destination, rather along the lines of Port de Pollença, only it has a tram line.

We found the seafront having done the usual blundering about to find a car park, and had to toss a coin as to whether we turned left or right to find a meal, as the choice appeared to be quite catholic.

 

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Decisions, decisions. We arrive in Port de Soller with no restaurant plan. To the left? To the right? Anyway, here we are (final pic), being sold suspect fish and wine selections by a glib waiter. Let’s see how it goes from here…

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Jane’s instinct, to find restaurants slightly above the actual seafront, turned out to be spot on, and we ended up at a place called Vint – one of several restaurants crowding a street rising from the front.  The meal was very good – not cheap, but high quality; fresh fish and, remarkably, some vegetables.

Replete and happy after what was by this time a good dinner, we headed back to the hotel.  The route took us through the rising main street of Bunyola, the scene (have I mentioned this before?) of an epically unusual Christmas Eve lunch some thirty-plus years ago, so I thought it might be interesting to see if I could identify the place where we’d had such an unusual mealtime.  Needless to say, I couldn’t – the town has grown and changed hugely since  the early 1980s and my powers of memory have faded in equal measure – but there was the faintest recollection of the rising high street leading to the very basic strip-light-and-formica place of that holiday.

By this stage it had got dark for the last part of the journey – the twisty roads back through Orient to the hotel, but we made it without actual incident and with the memories of a pleasant day to consign to these electronic pages. It was a long day, and so this has been a long read for you, poor thing.

Thank you for making it this far; and please come back tomorrow for a description of our further adventures.  Currently we plan to walk up to a restaurant in the hills which serves an epic lamb meal, according to my brother’s description,  and local reputation backs that up.  See you then?

Sunday 29 September. Being of dispositions unwilling to head into the complete unknown if such can be avoided, my wife and I decided to drive to Port d’Alcúdia to find out exactly where it was that we needed to return our hire car come Friday, given that a special arrangement is in place to open the office an hour early for us and that this leaves us with under an hour to get to the embarcation point for our ferry to Menorca.  The first step in this exercise was to try to get the car’s somewhat benighted satnav to admit the existence of not only the address of the office but even the town it was in.  This was achieved with a certain amount of swearing, and so we set off, in the first instance in the opposite direction to the nice satnav lady’s recommendation, on account of not wanting to deal with the twisty roads and Bunyola on a Sunday.

Some 40 minutes later, we were outside the office and so reasonably content that we could find it again.  The challenge of getting a taxi to the embarcation point can await solution another day.  The idea of a coffee stop formed itself in both our minds simultaneously (as far as these things can be established) and Jane suggested we look at Port de Pollença, just along the coast, as it might be a nice little fishing port with a nice little cafe or two on the seafront.  Stark reality hit as we approached – it was a big, seasidey sort of place, and today being a Sunday meant that it was very crowded, i.e. difficult to find somewhere relevant to park.

We decided to give it a miss in favour of having a peek at Cap de Formentor.  A friend had recommended that the hotel there is a lovely place and we thought perhaps we could get a coffee there. Had Tony Hancock been there, he would have said, “have you gone stark raving mad?” or some such; but he wasn’t and so we set off.  The even starker reality of the inadvisability of this excursion started to hit as we joined a very, very slow and increasingly long cortege of cars full of people with exactly the same idea.  The road to the cape is very narrow, quite twisty and absolutely overrun with cyclists. It being uphill for much of the way, the cyclists were not going very fast at all; and, with traffic being heavy in both directions, overtaking cyclists was a waiting game. We got to a point where we were offered either the beach or the lighthouse (in high season, this is where visitors are obliged to park and take a bus to the cape, as my brother found out; but driving to the cape was permitted today) and we thought it was unlikely that the hotel would be a hospitable venue, so we ploughed on.

Another ineffable truth was soon borne in on us: even if we wanted to turn round and go back (and before too long we certainly did) it was going to be nigh-on impossible – no stopping places (that weren’t already full of dodgily parked cars). So, to tailor a quote from Gerard Hoffnung, “we decided to carry on”.  There actually was a stopping place and mirador (viewpoint) about half way along, but it was full of buses and cars and more dodgy parking and there was no chance of us getting in.  So the peristaltic field of the traffic bore us along slowly and inexorably until we caught sight of the lighthouse at the cape – and the dozens and possibly hundreds of cars that formed the queue to get anywhere near it.

(Photo © the distaff side, as I was busy trying to avoid barriers and oncoming traffic).   Reaching the back of the queue to go further was actually a good opportunity to turn round, so we did.  On the way back, Jane managed to capture a couple of pictures of another view

and very handsome it was, too.  Amazingly, when we got back to the official mirador, although it was busy, as seen in the background here,

there was a space so we piled in and walked up to where everyone was taking the usual selfies.  From there the view was almost worth the walk.

Back at the car park, a vehicular scrum formed around the space we vacated and we carried on our way back towards Port de Pollença – on practically empty roads!  We had obviously chosen (similar to the first attempt at the Drach caves) the absolute peak time to go there and the way back was largely unmarked by traffic, either cars or cyclists.

Or it was, “Up to a point, Lord Copper”.  There were occasional bursts of oncoming traffic whose patience with the situation, judging by their lane discipline, was exhausted.  One red car was so far over on a particular bend that in trying to avoid hitting it I put the front wheel in a ditch.  Cue grating noises and lots of swearing.  I was able to back out and all the wheels appeared to be still attached and pointing in the right direction, so we carried on.  I don’t think there’s any visible damage; we’ll find out at 0800 on Friday 4th October.

Outside the above mishap, the road back to Port de Pollença was amazingly empty of traffic; we decided that it should be possible to get back to the hotel just in time for a late lunch. This part of the mission was accomplished successfully and the rest of the day was a masterclass in slothfulness, which, after all, is what holidaying is all about.

Tomorrow – who knows?  Possibly Valldemossa and that Chopin trip.  Stay tuned to find out!

*   OK, so “crash” is overstating it a bit – but it got your attention, didn’t it? 😊

Saturday 28 September. Yesterday’s antics in caves smacked a little uncomfortably of being tourism, so today is reserved for holidaymaking, although we decided we had to earn the privilege by going for a short walk after breakfast, i.e at about 11.30.  Accordingly, we girded our loins, or clad them in Rohan, which is emotionally the same thing, and set out along the road, clutching the hotel’s booklet about local hikes – particularly a short one which led to a lovely viewpoint over the valley – and Jane’s phone with Google Maps active. The latter turned out to be not quite a mistake, but something of a misdirector.

As we walked along the road to the point where our track turned off, it became ever more apparent how popular Mallorca is with cyclists; and furthermore, since we’re in the lumpy bit on the left of the island, cyclists of a particular grim, determined fitness. It wasn’t quite a stream of lycra-clad, piston-legged obsession passing us, but it could quite legitimately claim to have been a rivulet.  All the bikes seemed to emit that particular “I have a carbon-fibre frame, an SRAM chainset and an aerodynamic wheelset as well as an overpaid rider” noise as they whizzed past us.  On certain sections of this road, there’s a 40kph speed limit, which I think is intended for cyclists to observe; I bet half of them don’t. I’m impressed by their fitness, but wish they could look as if they were enjoying themselves more.

Anyhoo.  We reached the point on the road where we turned off on our track and soon started ascending to the point where we got a nice view of the village nearest to our hotel, Leyton Orient (my brother stayed at a hotel there on his recent holiday in these parts and said it was fab).

There were a few meanderings as we tried to make the description in the book match the reality as presented by Google Maps, but these rarely led to bad-tempered exchanges.  After a bit more ascending, we passed an ivy tree which was flowering and providing the bees with ever such a nice collection of pollen and any passers-by with a lovely buzz.

we had an interesting stile to climb over

and walked along in delightful dappled sunlight.

passing circles, some made of stones

and some grassed over

which we eventually realised must have once been pits where charcoal was created, called “Sitjas” locally.  We fairly soon reached a point with a lovely view back over the village and the valley.

At this point, the Google Maps Bugger Factor kicked in.  Jane had read the booklet, consulted Google Maps and decided that our viewpoint was reached by carrying on, which involved crossing another interesting stile

and then, much to my alarm, heading downhill (because this would inevitably lead to having to come back uphill on the return journey, and I’m not good at uphill).  On we carried, and you can see from this graph what happened next – we were at around 45 minutes so far:

Yep – down we went, in relentless search for this benighted viewpoint that Jane sought using her phone. After a while, we reached somewhere where you could sort of see a view across the valley a bit if you used your imagination. We could hear voices in the (downhill) distance and Jane said that the viewpoint on Maps was probably over there and it was by a waterfall but only if it had rained recently. I therefore called a halt to the descent on the basis that (a) I wasn’t sure that the Maps place was what was described in the hotel booklet and, more to the point, (b) I was buggered if I was going to walk any more uphill than I had to.  So we respectively walked (Jane) and shuffled (me) back up to the second stile – with a small but pointless detour in search of the elusive viewpoint, and it was when we got back to the stile that we realised that this was the view mentioned in the booklet.

After a rest for half a banana each, we pottered back down the way we came up and got back to the hotel just in time for a Nice Lunch.  And now it’s 6pm, which means it’s time for a Nice Gin over which we can plan the morrow – possibly a visit to Valldemossa, as we both fancy a Chopin trip, and it’s not too far from there to Puerto Anthrax Andratx, where there are some more opportunities for another Nice Lunch.  Tune in tomorrow to find out what happened, eh?