M & M - Is that you?

2 weeks in the sunshine in Port Soller, Mallorca, Spain

The journey

We flew with Thomas Cook from Glasgow airport, about an hour's drive from here. Thomas Cook have the most "snug" seats of any airline we've used, and the flight over was full, so no respite. Luckily, on the way back there were some spare seats and the hosties took pity on Mal (with he knees round his ears) and offered us some seats behind the emergency exit. These normally cost €25 each.

The apartment

We stayed in an apartment in Port Soller that Morag found on the web. Turned out that the owner (Judy) was originally from Sydney, but had lived on Mallorca for a long time. The apartment was great, located perfectly near the harbour but in a quiet part of town (away from the busy road round the harbour). It was only a 5 minute walk to the nearby shop for bread and croissants each morning, which were usually eaten on the balcony (unless the morning sun was too bright for us who are used to darkness) while watching the boats go in and out of the harbour. Also, we had use of a dishwasher - which has spoiled us, and it was great having washing machine and etc., unlike holidays spent in hotels trying to hand-wash socks and jocks in the bathroom sink.

Food and drink

No M&M holiday report would be complete without stories of gourmandish delights. Basically we had two types of day - days out and about where we ate a picnic lunch and then had a restaurant dinner. Or days in (rest days) when we ate a "menu del dia" for lunch and had an evening meal in the apartment. There was a clutch of restaurants at the bottom of the wee hill where the apartment sat, and as far as eating out goes we found we had no cause to walk past them. Our favourite was "el Pirata" which did great chipirones (deep-fried baby squid) which Morag adores, as well as good fish dishes. The only bad experience was at another, Ca'n Ribes, where Mal ordered mussels and the chefs couldn't manage to get them all hot, or even lukewarm. Even a second dish contained some hot and some stone-cold. At that point I gave up on the mussels, but the other entree and main courses we had there were fine.

For eating in we had mostly cold pre-barbecued chicken with some salad. Wines were local wines, often Rosado, especially on the warmer days. Also a couple of bottles of sherry were dispatched over the 2 weeks.

The walking

There were quite a few good walks that could be done direct from Port Soller or from nearby Soller.

Circuit from Port Soller via some small hamlets - Ca'n Tamany, Ca'n Penya, and many olive, almond, orange and lemon plantations, with a refreshing stop on a hill overlooking Port Soller where a lady sells freshly squeezed orange juice in her garden.
From Soller to Fornalutx via the panorama at ses Barques. Fornalutx is a lovely little town, all old stone building with narrow cobbled streets and a perfect wee square, where we ate ice-creams in the sunshine, before returning to Soller on foot via the hamlet of Binibassi. Also watched the German (professional)cyclists down wine and beers with their lunch before heading off for another few hours training around the island!
A nice start and end to this walk was the journey between Port Soller and Soller on the old tram.
A walk from Port Soller to Deia on the "path of Castello", we planned to combine two walks in our book for this journey, but had to make it up as we went long for a while as our intended path was closed for maintenance. So it took a little longer than planned to get to Deia but was worth it as the views up and down hills covered with terraced olive groves was well worth it. And Deia is a spectacular town, built on two side of a steep hill and down to the valley between. High atop the hill is the church where buried is the author and poet Robert Graves (wrote "I, Claudius") who lived here for much of his life.
We planned to catch the bus back to Port Soller from Deia, and luckily on our path into Deia we came across a bus stop just before town, which we wemt back to and caught the bus there... riding it into town to see about 40 people hoping for a seat, with only about 10 seats available. And the next bus was not for 4 hours...
A circular walk from Soller, on the cobblestone paths of es Mont-reials and Rocafort, this was a fairly short work into the hills near Soller, affording great views over Soller. The descent back to Soller crosses the track of the Soller-Palma railway and we were lucky enough to get a good view of the old train as it came past (no, we're not train-spotters....). The train is unchanged since 1911, and in 1999 carried more than 1,100,000 passengers (while the Port Soller tram carried over 620,000).
The torre Picada and the path of s'Illeta, this walk is out-and-back from our apartment, up into the "burbs" of Port Soller on the hill behind the apartment (lots of new apartments and hotels going up), first we went to s'Illeta, along a path and then up into some terraced olive groves, with fantastic views of a high coastline, lots of cliffs.
We returned on the same path and then visited the old tower (building started in 1614) for more good views of the coastline and Port Soller.
Short walk to the lighthouse on the other side of the harbour from our apartment. Morag had already been energetic enought to run up here (twice), but the more leisurely walking pace allowed proper appreciation of the views of Port Soller and the harbour.

Other entertainment

We arrived on Sat 12th and the next day Scotland played Wales in the 6 nations rugby (union). So we sat and watched the tv in the apartment as Scotland got a pasting.

The following Saturday night Scotland played England in the final weekend of the series. So we sat and watched Scotland get another pasting.

About time they sacked that useless Aussie they've got coaching the national team!

Reading - yes, you'll be amazed to hear that we read some books. Malcolm started with "A Place called Freedom" by Ken Follett, not the greatest author in the world but the book contains what is apparantly a fair description of the way of life of coal-miners in 18th century Fife, so it was interesting to read from a family history point-of view (see Mal's family history). Following that were a couple of Bill Bryson books, "Notes from a Big Country" and "A Walk in the Woods". We both read R.L. Srevenson's "Travels with a Donkey", a tale of Robert's travels in the Cevennes with donkey "Modestine". Morag also had a go at "A Walk in the Woods".

Here is the multi-map for Port Soller.

Here are some photos from the weekend. Click on any photo to see the full-size version in our "photobox" on-line gallery. The gallery will open in a new window, there you will see all the thumbnails, click on any of them to see a bigger version or you can see a "slide-show" which works pretty well. Sorry about the advertisements, just ignore them (hey, free webspace is free webspace).