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Cap Tormentor and my first crash*

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? 😊

Orienteering

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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?

Cave at Emptor

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Friday 27 September. After yesterday’s sloth, we had resolved to be up betimes and hasten ourselves off to the bottom right bit of Mallorca in order to visit a major tourist attraction – the Caves of Drach – and its younger brother – the Caves of Hams. I suppose we were early in the sense that we hit the hotel breakfast buffet just before the halfway mark in its open window. We departed the hotel at about 1015, with the car’s satnav being a little equivocal about which way we should turn out of the (really very dangerous) hotel exit. After a certain amount of swearing and U-turning, we set off, only to find that the satnav lady was taking us the pretty way (referred to in the hotel guide booklet as being good for an excursion, but not as a regular route). It soon became a very tortuous road, as it became clear that we weren’t going through the middle of the two great slabs of mountain that stand out from the scenery, but over the top of one of them.

Fortunately, the road was quiet, with the main traffic being cyclists hurtling down the hill. We found that they bounced off the bonnet reasonably unobtrusively and hardly damaged the car at all.

No, of course we didn’t, really. We made it to Bunyola, the nearest large town (and scene of a remarkable pre-Christmas lunch over 30 years ago – catch me when I’ve had a few and I’ll tell you all about it – since when the village of Bunyola has become the town of Bunyola and has developed something of a traffic problem). Eventually the road became a perfectly normal road and an hour or so later we were at Porto Cristo, the home of both sets of caves, just in time for the 1200 entry to Cuevas del Drach.

Sadly, every other tourist on the island had had the same idea, and so the 1200 visit was full. We decided to go for a 1500 tour and then departed for the other caves, the Cuevas dels Hams, which was much quieter. OK, deserted.

We bought tickets and the very helpful lady at the desk told us that the coffee was better in the coffee bar inside – inside the cave, that is. So off we went, and had coffee whilst waiting for the tour to start, serenaded by Mozart. I think every piece of music they played (see later) was by Mozart, so either they had a big thing for Wolfgang Amadeus or they assumed that the punters would at least not be offended by it. Actually, it was rather nice hearing Mozart’s 38th Symphony in a cavern whilst drinking coffee.

After we went in on the tour, the first thing that was promised was “The Blue Cave”. And it really was very, very blue.

but that was because they’d used blue light to illuminate it. We trooped into a small theatre and were shown a short (but not really short enough) film, entitled “Genesis”, which went through all sorts of pretentious preliminaries before telling us about the discovery of the caves. Then we trooped through the caves themselves which were very colourful

but the colours were because of the artful placing of coloured lights, not really because of the formations themselves, even when the overhead commentary covered the topic.

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The name of the caves themselves came from some mysterious formations, where stalactites went round corners and bent back upwards, like fishhooks – and “hams” is the Mallorcan for fish hooks.

The final showpiece was a “concert”, in a cavern where the caves met the water at sea level (30 metres underground). More Mozart, you’ll notice, as an illuminated boat slowly swished around against a backdrop of projected video.

After an hour or so we emerged, blinking, back into the daylight, thinking that it was colourful enough, but that the overall presentation was a bit cheesy. A coffee break passed the time agreeably until we should go back to the Drach caves, which were somewhat more popular.

Drach is an altogether better experience – bigger, less cheesy and more impressive even though less colourful. Jane and I had been here before whenever it was that we last visited Mallorca, a date lost in the mists of time. I don’t have any photos of the Drach caves from that visit and we bought a calendar at the obligatory retail opportunity back then, which makes me believe that they didn’t permit photography in the caves then. Today is, unsurprisingly, very different, and photography is allowed, without flash (although there were many instances of people using flash, presumably because either they didn’t know how to turn the flash off, or, more likely, hadn’t spotted that their flash was operating). And I’m glad it is, because it’s very beautiful and very impressive – the Drach organisers let the formations speak for themselves much more than the Hams people do.

One processes through a predetermined route, with lots of photo opportunities. There’s one point where the path widens sufficiently that people can – phew! what a relief for them! take photos of themselves in front of the formations

and the end point is (also) a concert in a, erm, cavernous arena, where there’s a lake big enough to support a boat with a quartet of musicians on board – two violins, ‘cello and harmonium. One is not permitted to photograph or video this and I was astounded that not one person attempted to use their phone or camera during the 10 minutes of the concert (except me, and that was a misunderstanding of whether it had ended). The music was pure cheese – Pachelbel’s Canon, Elgar’s Salut D’Amour, that kind of thing – ending, perhaps inevitably, with the Barcarole from Cavalleria Rusticana.

Cheese aside, there is merit in both of these tourist places – Drach is more impressive and better organised, but it’s possibly worth booking your time slot in advance, if you can be that well organised, just like we weren’t. Anyway, I’m glad we did both, and it was a nice opportunity to walk down into Porto Cristo afterwards to see what opportunities there were for “lunch” (it being 4pm by this stage). It looked, it has to be said, promising.

We settled on a restaurant called Cap D’Es Toi, and had a very satisfactory meal there. Now, look: I don’t approve of posting photos of food, but I have to make an exception for the “Filet of St. Peter Fish with Fried Onions”. There really was fish under there, honest!

and I manfully stepped up to the challenge of finishing and probably irredeemably damaging my health. But It was delicious! (I should add that I felt a bit queasy during the night, but serve me right, I suppose)

After that, there was nothing for it but to walk back up to the car and head back to the hotel, via, it has to be said, a less torturously twisty route. Having arrived here, all that was needed was to process several hundred photos and write this blog post, which I hope you’ve enjoyed reading.

Tomorrow might see us going for a hike around the local hills. But you’ll have to read on to find out if that happened, won’t you?