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Cami de Cavalls Day 12 – Ravine Mad

Friday 24 September 2021 – We had an Apartment Morning! Nice Cup Of Tea First Thing!! Toast!!! Marmite!!!! (For Jane, Natural Yogurt! Fruit!!) With such small pleasures is a worthwhile life truly completed.

Then it was time to get going, so we packed our cases and prepared to move out. Jane heard the voice of Maria, one of the Cami360 drivers who had been taking us to and from places, and so we were able to hand over our cases to her so that they could be transported to our next accommodation, at Sant Tomàs, some (officially) 11.56km away. The accommodation was also to be an apartment, which gave us the very real prospect of a Nice Cup Of Tea when we arrived there. For old fogies such as us, this counts as an incentive, and since the trail contained the greatest ascent of the south island stages (241m), we needed all the help we could get.

If you want to see a video summary of the route and some of the photos, it is, as usual, available on Relive.

The trail today was basically through, along, up, down and across various ravines (barrancs, you’ll remember from yesterday, because you were paying attention, weren’t you?). This was clear right from the start as we went through Cala Galdana town.

We passed the town beach

and started up the side of the ravine by the town. This involved steps. Lots of steps.

Once we got to the top of these, we were at the formal end of Cami stage 13 and therefore at the start of, erm, 14. The track was even vaguely reminiscent of something you might find in the Surrey Hills. Generally, from here on in, the going underfoot was largely much nicer than the ceaseless rocky paths we’d had since Cala Morell, some 40 slipping, stumbling and swearing miles ago. Since the day was not scorching hot but very humid, this was welcome. We never actually saw the sun, but it was still sweltering and the easier going was a definite bonus.

We passed Mystery Object #1

and Cala Mitjana, which was actually much more remarkable than Cala Son Vell had been a couple of days ago. The surging waves really pounded in with a deep bass note (which, sadly, the microphone on my phone couldn’t to justice to, hence here’s a still).

On the far side of the cove you can see a Spanish Civil War-era bunker.

Ravine country continued

and we passed Mystery Object #2

which looked like it might have once been a charcoal pit.

The ravinous (!) nature of the scenery was quite spectacular in places.

We crossed the lower field in this picture as we came down one side of a ravine and before going up the side of the next one.

and wondered, as we passed, what exactly was the crop to be grown in this obviously prepared terrain? Stones?

Anyway, the views were great.

We moved from forest into open country for short while

before passing Mystery Object #3

(yes, I can see it’s a hut, but it’s little larger than a dog kennel, so what’s it for?) The views continued to be quite impressive across the ravines as we crossed them.

and then we came upon post number 187 on the route, which signalled a possible diversion. So we left the formal Cami trail and followed a “Variant for Hiking”.

The blue writing on the wall here says “Cova”, by the way. This took us along a track past various signs telling us about the flora to be seen. I was amused by one

as we live near Chobham Common where gorse has revealed its true colours as a (yellow) pernicious, invasive nuisance which takes ruthless culling to keep under any vestige of control. The locals here will learn this in due course, I predict.

The diversionary trail is through another ravine and past some more great views

but the real interest lies a little further along, where a right turn, again (and very badly) indicated “COVA”, takes you to the Cova des Coloms, the Pigeons’ Cave.

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Here are some stills, also.

As you can see, this is quite spectacular.

It’s a karst cave, formed as water dissolves limestone when it percolates through. It’s about 25m high and 110m deep. Research indicates that the prehistoric Talaiotic people on the island used it for burial rituals; you can understand how they might have found this an awe-inspiring place. Delightfully, as its name suggests, pigeons were flying, roosting and cooing all around us.

The diversion to the cave adds about 3.4km to the overall length of the route, but it’s very much a worthwhile digression.

We went back to the Cami track and completed the short distance into Sant Tomàs, passing a nearby beach

until we caught sight of the town itself.

It’s very much a tourist town (like most of the towns we’ve passed on the south coast of the island). We completed the stage

bumping into the lady pictured looking at the sign here. She was staying at the Alfons III in Ciutadella, and, like us, walked from Cala en Bosc to Cala Galdana yesterday, during which time we encountered her a few times. As we walked along today’s route at the start, we met her again, and discovered that she was due to walk a long section today. She shot off into the distance, and so it was rather a surprise to see her at Sant Tomàs, as she still had another 15km to go on the schedule she was walking to. But she’d taken a coastal trail which was flooded (we were warned about this, as was she) and so had to turn back. It was slightly strange to have met her so many times over the last few days. We hope she made it to Cala en Porter OK.

There was one slightly odd moment, soon after we arrived at our accommodation, the Hamilton Court apartments. We needed to buy some water (I don’t like doing this, but the tap water in the apartment really tasted poor) and I noticed that the apartment block has a mini shop. I went in, plonked my bottles of water on the counter and waved my phone at the lady behind the till. Unfortunately, I had come to the first place we’d come across that was cash only – very odd, as literally all other transactions we’ve done here have been contactless via the mobile phone.

The apartment we had? I can’t honestly say I was taken with it. It flattered to deceive. It was huge – larger than the apartment that I lived in for early three years in Sweden – with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and even its own little garden outside. But there were sufficient drawbacks to make the experience of staying here less than satisfactory: a spectacularly ill-designed main bathroom, large, but with nowhere to put stuff like wash bags; a complete absence of soap or detergent (we had soap with us but this doesn’t help much with the washing up); an uncomfortable bed; and uncomfortable chairs in the lounge. A shame, really; I was glad we had only the one night there.

The rest of the day fell into a familiar pattern:

Cup of tea
Nice Lunch
Siesta
Relax and plan tomorrow (Jane); write this blog (me).

Jane had identified a nearby restaurant, Es Pins, which seemed to offer the sort of lunch we were after and so we went there. It was a lively place – a nice atmosphere, if a bit clattery for my taste, and with an open terrace overlooking the sea. We had a good meal, but made a tactical error in our choice of both starter and main course. My main course was lamb done Menorcan style and it is only because of my religion that I’m not sharing a photo of it with you; it looked like a whole shoulder of lamb. With mangetout. And potatoes. It was delicious. But vast! Jane had sea bass done Menorcan style and that was a generous portion, too – but again delicious.

So we’re basically stuffed to the gills; at the moment, I’m not sure I’ll need feeding at all tomorrow.

Before I talk about tomorrow, let me give you some stats for the day:

According to Garmin, we walked 12.30 miles. Relive says 17km, which seems more in line with the official distance plus the diversion to the cave.
The amount of ascent today was 371m, again more than the official version, as we had to climb a little to get to the cave. Despite the climbing, the going as quite easy so it was a pleasant walk overall.
So we’ve now done 107 Garmin miles overall. I’ll do an analysis after we complete the walking to compare the various versions of the distances we’ve walked. Don’t worry, I’ll squirrel it away in a geeky corner of the blog; you don’t have to read it.

And so to tomorrow. We are due to cover two stages as we walk from here to Cala en Porter, a distance, as I say, of about 15km. Our destination is a hotel as opposed to an apartment, and I discover that it’s a medieval castle built in 1971, which doesn’t have its own website; on Google Maps it’s described as a one-star hotel; another website I found describes it as a 5-star hotel. It has a bar and air conditioning; those at least will be very welcoming, whatever the other surroundings are like. You’ll just have to come back and find out, won’t you?

Cami de Cavalls day 11 – Atatürk

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Thursday 23 September 2021 – Actually not Atatürk at all, but this was my mnemonic for Turqueta, which was the mid-point of today’s walk. This is all a bit confusing: the Cami360 team view a beach called Son Saura as the end of their section 12 which starts at ~~Asterix~~ Cap d’Artrutx; however, the formal Cami de Cavalls section 12 actually ends at Turqueta. Luckily in both versions section 13 ends in Cala Galdana, so that was our end point for the day.

Whatever, you can see the tl;dr Relive version of today here.

So, prompt at 0845, Maria turned up to take us to the start of today’s walking. She actually set us down a kilometre or so further along the trail than we left off yesterday; but since that would only have been paved walking, I think we can gloss over that minor detail without thinking we cheated in any way.

So, off we went

bidding Cala en Bosc a fond farewell.

We passed a beach where only a couple of keen beans had stirred themselves to get to a sunlounger

along a path which showed evidence of the hard rain we’d had over the last days.

Largely speaking, the section to Turqueta consisted of grinding along the same rocky type of path that we’d had since Cala Morell; but because it hadn’t rained hugely, at least the mud was easy to avoid (most of the time).

We were a little concerned about the weather. The Met Office had forecast a 40% chance of light showers for much of the day and I had optimistically opted to wear running shoes rather than walking boots. But whilst the weather ahead of us looked OK

what was behind us looked considerably more ominous.

In the end, showers over took us, so we hastily put rain covers on the backpacks and scrambled into our shower-resistant jackets. Of course the weather gods toyed with us for a few kilometres; the rain stopped, so we took off the jackets because it was warm and sweaty with them on; so the rain started again and we put on our jackets. After a bit, we decided that it wasn’t going to rain at all hard and stayed jacketless; fortunately this was the right choice.

There wasn’t a huge variety of interesting views as we ground our way along the rocky path; just a few things to note as we went by:

Some steps down a tunnel to a cave in a cove;

the “remarkable” cove at Son Saura. Well, the Cami360 booklet called it that, but it’s just this cove, really;

some interesting rock formations jutting into the sea;

and some blockhouses, used to guard places where enemy forces could land – the holes are to enable aiming weapons at the enemy. Some of these blockhouses date from the 18th Century (France v. England) and others from the Spanish Civil War (1936-9). (This information courtesy of the excellent Sunflower Landscapes book on Menorca.)

We reached Son Saura, (the Cami360 version of the end of a stage; I hope you’re keeping up, here)

which has a beach with a lifeguard station (not manned today, hence, I suppose, the red flag).

It also – praise be! – has a longish section of boardwalk which relieves the tired Walker from the tedium of wading through sand.

It was quite colourful

as was another cove we passed on our way.

The next point of interest was ~~Atatürk~~ Cala Turqueta (the formal end of stage 12) which is a very popular beach.

From here, the terrain changes somewhat, from coastal rocks to scrub and pine forest.

The trail rises and falls as it leads through ravines (Barrancs)

and eventually arrives at another very popular beach, Cala Macarella.

An important distinguishing feature of this beach is that it features a refreshment stop.

We only had another 5km to go to get to Cala Galdana, so a major break in the walk wasn’t on the cards, but all the same I’m very proud that I restricted myself to an ice cream and didn’t insist on having a beer. We found an improvised seat for our ice creams

and, slightly cooler, set off on the final leg of the day’s walk. The way up from Macarella is quite steep and punters are offered a choice between the Old Way, which is the Cami track, and the New Way, which is steps.

We (of course) took the trail, but it doesn’t make much difference, as they come together at the top.

There follows a mostly gentle descent into Cala Galdana, which you first catch sight of from the path.

I’ve artfully tried to hide it behind trees, but on the left you can see an extraordinary excrescence, which is a fucking great Meliá hotel block. I don’t know how much they paid to get the planning permission through for this, but its existence is a sin against all that is good in this world.

Cala Galdana is another fairly substantial tourist area, but a bit less in yer face about it than Cala en Bosc, for example. As you approach, there’s a bridge which, it has to be said, has seen better days

but the town itself is not unattractive.

Our accommodation was an apartment in Alta Galdana Playa. We spotted a supermarket en route as we walked towards it, and so headed there to get essentials, but mainly milk for a Nice Cup Of Tea once we’d arrived (since tonight and tomorrow night are both in apartments, it made sense to buy supplies for two days). The Cami360 people had done a good job of putting our baggage in the apartment and telling us how to get the key, so we were inside the apartment quickly and outside a cup of tea even more quickly.

Stats for the day:

11.15 miles, according to Garmin
177 metres climbed, almost all in the last section from Turqueta

So our cumulative mileage is now up at 94.52 miles, which is 152km. The Garmin mileage is slightly inflated compared to Relive and OutdoorActive, though why this should be when they’re all using the same GPS engine (my phone) is a mystery to me.

(We have 7 more stages to do over 4 days – 61.77km/38.4 miles – before we can spend a couple of days relaxing back in Ciutadella. The weather is looking hot and not rainy, according to the weather forecast.)

Our apartment was fine – it had a kettle for making tea and a fridge for storing the milk; we didn’t feel the need for much else when we arrived – and also is a very short walk from a restaurant called Es Barranc (The Ravine). You can see why they chose the name.

So, after a couple of mugs of tea and a quick hose-down, we headed there for a Nice Lunch. It was very quiet, but this is late season and we were there late afternoon. It’s highly rated on tripadvisor if you regard that as being any guide, and we can certainly vouch that the food was very good and the service very pleasant.

We tottered back to the apartment and had a relaxing evening respectively blogging and catching up on the details of tomorrow’s walk. This runs for 11.5km/7 miles from Cala Galdana to Sant Tomas and is billed as having the most elevation gain of the southern half of the Cami de Cavalls – 241m. This, though short, is quite sharp, as we’re somewhat out of practice at this Going Uphill lark; and the Met Office forecast is for a hot sunny afternoon (28°C), so we may well get moving quite promptly in the morning. Tune in tomorrow to find out how we got on, why don’t you?

Cami de Cavalls day 10 – Asterix

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Wednesday 22 September 2021 – In my haste to share with you my angst about the weather yesterday, I forgot to mention something terrifically important about the start of the day, which was the breakfast in the hotel. The food on offer was perfectly good, delicious even; but the selection was extremely regimented: one juice or water; one sandwich to be selected from what was on offer; one pastry ditto; one piece of fruit or pot of yogurt; and tea or coffee. We are undecided as to whether this is a Covid precaution, or to stop cheapskate hikers taking enough to make picnic lunches… So, while we were able to construct the life-affirming pot of Earl Grey for the day, a vital piece was missing….

….toast!, for the Marmite I had carefully taken with me! I don’t wish to exaggerate the ghastly nature of this crisis, but, frankly, like the rest of the day, I manfully put up with it without whingeing. Well, not too much, anyway.

Now I’ve got that off my chest, I can continue to regale you with the story of today’s walk. If you want just to see the route and photos rather than read my chunterings, then they are, as usual, viewable on Relive.

Obvs, we were concerned about the forecast for the day. I studiously ignored the siren call of the local website which had so traduced me yesterday and referred to the good ol’ Met Office.

The day’s weather looked major peril-free (and so it proved, I’m glad to say) and so we geared ourselves up and started the Stage 11 walk from the hotel. The official end of the stage is at a place called Cap d’Artrutx, but we called it Asterix as a convenient shorthand, because we’re British and we can do what we like with Foreign Names. The walk was due to be quite short – 13km/8 miles – and with a lot of walking on paved roads and very little discernable ascent in it; our pickup at Asterix was due at 2pm, so we left the hotel at about 0830 knowing that we had plenty of time in hand for refreshment whilst awaiting transport back to the hotel.

Because we were out and about quite early, it was a nice opportunity to capture a couple of photos of Ciutadella whilst it was quiet.

We continued along the Cami track, going out of Ciutadella on the south side of its harbour, past various inlets

(this last one showing the fortification, which I now know is called Castell de Sant Nicolau, and the lighthouse in the reverse order from yesterday), past the ferry terminal where the boats from e.g. Mallorca arrive,

and past another fortification called the Torre Santandria

which had an eponymous Cala.

After this, we got to a path

which had a surface just like the one which we found so horrid yesterday. Today, there being no lashing rain or howling gales, it had sunk to being merely tedious and not very comfortable to walk on rather than actively unpleasant. With the exception of one surfacing past a neighbourhood called Cala Blanca

this path was to be our constant underfoot companion from this point until we reached Asterix. OK, Cap d’Artrutx. Sorry.

There’s not a lot of variety of scenery on this part of the track. The odd occasional stone hut

or juniper bush

is about it (is this raw material for the local Xoriguer gin, we wonder?). However, unvarying as it was, there were quite a few groups of people walking the track

which made it a popular pathtime.* In the distance, you might be able to make out the lighthouse at ~~Asterix~~ Cap d’Artrutx which was to be our first objective. Eventually, the neighbourhood around the lighthouse came into view, too

and shortly thereafter finished the official stage 11 of the Cami. However, our objective lay a little further on, in Cala en Bosc, where we were to be picked up, so we soldiered on in what had now become quite a hot sunny day.

Cap d’Artrutx has some posh houses

and, of course, the lighthouse itself. The road carries on towards Cala en Bosc

which welcomes one with quite a dramatic arch bridge

after which we found the car park that marked the formal end of the day’s walking. We had just over an hour to wait for our pickup so we retired to the tourist paradise that lies just behind this welcoming bridge.

On our way there, we’d had a bit of a dialogue with Diego in the Cami360 team, from which we started to realise just how impactful yesterday’s weather had been; several groups had been unable to complete their stages because paths had been washed away or submerged. Diego sent us an aerial shot of Binimel-là (you’ll remember – the start point of the Brutal Day, Stage 6), which showed the amount of mud being washed out into the bay there and along the coast.

Basically, roughly 20% of the expected yearly rainfall had fallen in that one day; so the poor guys in the Cami360 team were frantically trying to work out logistics to keep things under control and moving on. We learned that now there were actually some 50 groups that were walking or biking the trail and so one can imagine the difficulty of trying to make sure that people were retrieved from/deposited in the right places. In the end, we were lucky and our original pickup schedule was OK, but at one stage there was talk of us trying to find a taxi back to Ciutadella (I was buggered if I was going to walk back, and that’s a certainty).

Anyhoo, we were able to settle ourselves in a classy (!) establishment called Chaplins Bar, and had a couple of drinks and some very good salads until it was time to be returned to Ciutadella.

And that’s the day so far. Some tapas beckons as a late afternoon meal before we have to pack up and say good-bye to Ciutadella tomorrow. But We’ll Be Back, after either we’ve finished the Cami or it’s finished us.

Epilogue – added late this evening

At around 7.15pm, we headed out into Ciutadella in search of tapas, and discovered various things:

1. Moli des Comte

This is a “gastrobar” set in a farmhouse which features a windmill, and which now does multiple duty as a cocktail bar, a tapas bar and full restaurant, and, it would apear, a main thoroughfare between a car park and the town centre. It is delightful inside.

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but wasn’t due to serve food until 8pm, so we contented ourselves with a G&T whilst we took in its surroundings.

2. Evenings start at 8pm in Ciutadella

We walked past Es Pou and its companion restaurants in Plaça Nova, and headed for a set of umbrellas we’d noticed the day before. It turned out to belong to a tapas restaurant called Maramao. it looked inviting; but it turned out that it, too, didn’t open until 8pm. However, by this time it was nearly that time, and they offered us a drink, so we had a cocktail whilst awaiting service. So it was that we were the first to take a seat in the little alleyway outside; and no sooner had we done that then all its outdoor tables seemed to be taken. They should have offered us a discount for bringing the punters in. The tapas there is delicious, so we had slightly too much before heading back to our hotel.

3. There’s a lovely evening buzz in Ciutadella as well

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This Insta post covers both this lovely atmosphere in the Plaça Nova and the alleyway outside Maramao.

Tomorrow et seq.

From here on in, our walks take us from place to place with no pickups, so our schedule is ours after tomorrow’s 0845 start, when we are returned to Cala en Bosc to pick up where we left off today and do two further stages of the Cami, nos. 12 and 13. That’s a total of about 17.5km, so quite a long day beckons, although not too much up and down is stated to be involved.

Before I leave you, here are some stats for today:

10.44 miles/16.8km
Just 77m ascent

So we’re still on track to average 10 miles a day, having completed now over 82 miles in 8 days. Come back tomorrow and find out how our journey progresses – it’ll be nice to have your company.

* This joke is provided for no extra charge by the distaff side