Tag Archives: Leisure

Cami de Cavalls day 15 – A Towering Achievement

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Monday September 27 2021 – Well, here we are – at the start of the final day of walking around Menorca on the Cami de Cavalls, the horses’ trail. The official distance we had to cover was 18km – the three final stages, 18-20 of the Cami de Cavalls – and for the first time for a while, we had a deadline – 5pm in the Cami360 office in Mahón. In the end, we left our studio in Binibequer Vell early, which gave us some time to wander round and take some photos of this amazing, if slightly shabby, place. Rather than bore you with all of them here, I’ve collected them into a Flickr album alongside some others I took a couple of years ago, in case you would like to take a look.

As ever, you can see the route and some photos in a summary video on Relive. I may try to merge the thirteen videos into a single, fascinating, overview. You never know your luck.

Having started out early, we realised that we were going to be on roads for much of the day. This can be a bit dull, but progress is faster; so we knew we had some slack in the schedule. This turned out to be A Good Thing.

Anyhoo, along the road towards the end of the first of today’s stages at Punta Prima, we saw some interesting houses

some interesting pedestrian crossing design

some interesting garden decoration

and some steps,

which, for once, we didn’t have to climb, thank goodness. We passed Cala Torret, which was a lovely jumble of buildings

and presaged its USP, which is a tower – watch tower, and one of several we visited during the day (hence the title).

We walked round the tower and. having spotted the entrance, decided to try the door. It was open, to the amazement not only of us, but of the lady who was inside. It turned out that this tower can be hired (for example as a youth hostel overnight place) and she was cleaning it. She actually let us go up the tower and have a look from the top, which was wonderful.

We had a great view of the Punta Prima lighthouse

and over Punta Prima to the next Tower on our route,

and down the spiral stairs! She was really delightful in giving us a lovely moment of serendipity on our final day.

We carried on around the coast towards the next town, bidding farewell to Punta Prima and its lighthouse

and its beautifully colourful coves

and, via a stop for coffee and extra breakfast which also marked the end of this short stage of the Cami

moved on to the next stage, stage 19. We actually left the road for a trail

which led past a Mystery Object

and what we think are the foundations of some military buildings once related to the tower

but, I’ll be honest, we’re guessing on that last bit. The path ran parallel to the road, across which were some buildings which looked to me like the sort of thing American architects would create as being their version of what a Spanish Villa should look like.

They looked more like something one would see in Florida rather than in Spain. Nice, but slightly out of place, somehow. The road led on, as these things often do, to the next town, and, in this case, the next tower.

This stands guard over the town of Alcalfar, which is stunningly photogenic.

We walked into and round it, past possibly the local version of Stamford Bridge.

The track beyond the town went past a magnificent bloomer

which Jane identified as Port St. John Creeper. Just thought you’d like to know. And we found another wild tortoise!

The track continued between drystone walls

past some handsome buildings

and finally led to my road

which was to lead to my cove. However, on the way there, we passed a couple of unusual things: a line of palm trees, unfortunately behind heavy gates so I couldn’t take a really satisfying picture of them (and neither, by the way, could any of group of 15 German tourists with whom we were by now entangled);

another watchtower, the Torre d’en Penjat,

which was still sufficiently fortified that, after ten minutes of unsuccessfully trying to get near it, we gave up and moved on (but the Germans didn’t; it looked like they’d found a way in, but our schedule was calling us on by this stage); and some great views of the fortifications which guard the entrance to Mahón’s extensive harbour.

So we walked down into my cove, the Cala St. Esteve, which is very pretty,

and which is the end of Stage 19, and hence the start of the final Stage of the Cami, no. 20.

This stage starts with a little bit of track, but it soon turns into road for the rest of the trail into Mahón. There are only four posts marking this first part of the stage, which means that post no. 4

is….wait for it….The Last Post. Thank you. Thank you for reading my joke.

The Cami from this point simply follows the main road into Mahón, which is a bit dull, even if you get an interesting view back to the palm trees,

but we had a small diversion planned, which was to end up by the water in a cove called Cales Fonts, which is achingly pretty

but which also – and this is important – features a place to stop for lunch called Dinkums; we knew about it because it had rescued a hot and sweaty walk two years previously. So we treated ourselves to lunch there, and it turned out our timing was spot on. As we were ready to leave, the group of 15 Germans turned up and sat themselves down – great for business, but something of a strain on the bandwidth of the waiting staff and probably the chef, too.

The reason we needed to leave was another piece of serendipity, as we had to get to Mahón, and specifically the finish of the Cami, to meet someone we’d never met before – a chap called Ian Burley, whose acquaintance I’d made online when he started following this blog and my Instagram posts about the Cami, because he was about to undertake the trail himself. You can see his Instagram posts about the Cami and other stuff here.

He started the circuit from Ciutadella a day after we’d passed through, but, being younger, fitter and much more experienced at hiking than us, was doing the whole thing in ten days, as opposed to the wimpy thirteen we’ve been taking. It turned out that he’d overtaken us in Binibequer Vell and had already reached Mahón. So, the miracle of technology and the internet meant that we could arrange to actually meet in person, rather than simply exchanging likes on social media.

So we hit the road, passing through Es Castell and its military buildings

and ignored the main road into Mahón, which was the formal Cami trail, in favour of the old road, which kept us away from the boring old traffic for a while.

But then we had to finish the route on the main road, passing the end of the harbour

and arriving into the town.

The Cami route passes along my favourite road in Mahón, the Calle Es Castell, with the trees along its centre (see the post at the start of this series), and we ended up having coffee and beer with Ian near the Tre Cavalli (Three Horses) statue where our trek had started, 13 days ago.

It was a pleasure to meet Ian – actually meeting him IRL is a great example of the good things the internet can do. He’s a very keen traveller, kayaker and hiker and you can read about his peregrinations on his blog.

For us, though, all that was left for the day was to get to the Cami360 office to pick up our baggage and our congratulatory tee shirts, and to say “thank you” to the Cami360 guys and girls who had done such a good job of keeping everything together for us – and the other several dozen groups they are supporting. Their last act of kindness was to organise a cab to take us to Ciutadella. As I type this, I am sitting in the dusk outside the lovely and superbly luxurious Can Faustino hotel, where we can relax for the next couple of days, enjoying the delights of the city – and getting ourselves Covid tested so that we’ll (hopefully) be allowed back into the UK on Thursday.

According to Garmin, we covered 15 miles today, so our total mileage for the trail has been 145 in 13 days. I suspect this is somewhat overblown; I’ll do some more detailed analysis in due course and report back.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these pages as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. I will post a couple more updates over the next couple of days about our time in the city and the experience of getting Covid tested and getting (I hope) back into the UK, and I’ll include those detailed stats about our fortnight’s walking; but for the moment, this marks the end of the long trek round Menorca, the Cami de Cavalls. We’ve had a blast!

Day 4 – To the woods! To the woods!!

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18th September – The tour buses came for us at 0830 and transported us to the start point of today’s walk. I was, as ever, grateful that they did the work to give us some altitude, as this meant I didn’t have to. As Željko had explained the day before, there would be a down side later, in the form of much walking down, but his view was that walking up 800 metres from Bol and then simply turning round and walking back down again was less interesting, particularly since that would be in full sunshine (and 30° heat) all the way. So instead we were dropped at somewhere in the middle of nowhere notionally called Gažul, which left us just a couple of hundred metres to climb before we had to make our way back down to our hotel in Bol.

Gažul was a slightly spooky place, practically a ghost village – a handful of derelict-looking buildings miles from anywhere. There were signs of returning population: the local rain-collecting cistern had been repaired and one or two buildings were showing signs of being brought back to a liveable state. Željko explained that the inhabitants would basically have abandoned the village and migrated to the coast to support the booming tourist industry. Now there was the possibility to repair the buildings, but most likely to rent to visitors rather than to live in.

The uphill part of the walk led, unusually, through woodland – and therefore shade!

Željko had described it as “basically flat”, and, after a little bit of climbing, it led gently up to Vidova Gora, the highest point on the island. A helpful sign set our expectations as to how long it would take to get there

and the route was, like all of the tracks we had followed in Croatia, very well-marked with waymarks in the trees and on the rocks.

Accordingly, after about an hour and twenty minutes, we arrived at the top. There used to be a restaurant here

but it was now closed (no beer for me, then!) and, in any case, Željko explained, despite it selling good, if simple, fare, the proprietor had been an eccentric veteran soldier with a short fuse and a shotgun. Probably best to press on to the penk itself, then:

where the view back towards Bol was spectacular, if somewhat hazy.

On the right-hand side of the photo, you can see the “famous” Zlatni Rat beach of Bol, with its little tip which sometimes points one way, sometimes the other. Vidova Gora has a sharp and steep drop over the edge – suitable for parasailing; we saw one chap turn up with a parachute and the sort of expression on his face that said he was going to use it – and various wags had decorated the preciptious edge with little rock cairns.

These serve no purpose other than to encourage other people to erect their own, apparently.

After a short break for lunch in the shade of a couple of trees it was time to head down to Bol – a long and rocky path which zigzagged its way down the side of the slope.

It was a long, hot and sweaty descent, tough, as the day before’s had been, on knees, ankles and feet (incredibly there was someone trying to negotiate this downslope on a bicycle!). But there were a couple of diverting moments on the way down, as the more eagle-eyed in our group spotted things worth stopping to look at, such as this praying mantis

and even a chance to see a cicada, which is a pretty rare thing (unlike hearing them, which is unavoidable).

When we finally got down to Bol, a process which took a couple of hours, Željjo pointed out a superb example of a 1960s Croation car called a Zastava, which had a back-end very similar to an old Fiat 500

although the front was different.

The company that made these was eventually taken over and made cars under the name Yugo, which people of my generation will recall as being alongside the old Škoda and Lada makers in terms of quality and reputation.

After the luxury of a well-earned shower, Jane and I set out on a mission to find pizza, which we found at an agreeable place called Skalinada. After that we went for a walk around Bol, which is small but beautifully formed.

and which has a small market

some strange mural work

and at least one unintentionally hilarious shop name.

There is a delightful promenade leading from the town to Zlatni Rat beach, pleasant and shady. We walked a little way along it until my need to get back to the hotel for a lie down imposed its imperative. A certain amount of drinking of gin and updating of blogs concluded the day’s activities, and we had to get to bed early because of a really early start the next day. You’ll have to read on to find out about that. My goodness, how the excitement mounts!