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All roads lead to PalmaBy Beth Ede
Mallorca endeared itself to me first and foremost by its ‘manageable’ size. On an island on which every signpost references Palma, never stating the capital to be more than 70 kilometres away, you know you stand a good chance of exploring it reasonably thoroughly in the space of a week, and certainly over the course of a fortnight. Just like anyone else after just one week away, we boarded the plane home wishing we could have stayed longer but, all in all, we felt we had gained a pretty good feel for the island, and seen ninety per cent of what we had wanted to see.
Strangely, it was not the jagged limestone peaks or the way the mountains plunge steeply towards the north coast that impressed me most, but the immaculate terraces. Every accessible scrap of land (and even those that don’t seem particularly accessible) is terraced, with orange and lemon groves on the lower slopes giving way to olive groves, which in turn give way to pine trees at the point where farmers eventually decided to throw in the towel and let Nature have its way. I don’t think we saw a single crumbling terrace wall all week. All were in excellent condition, made from rounded, uniformly coloured stones, and the trees themselves were all neatly in line.
We offer two self-catering properties on Mallorca, both of which make excellent bases from which to explore the island: Apartamentos de Tramuntana and Apartamentos d’es Pla. Beth visited in April, but each season has its charms; we particularly like February, when the blossom of the almond trees on the central plain provides a spectacular display. |
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As I wrote on the postcard I sent to my parents, I had expected Mallorca to be beautiful, but I hadn’t been prepared for it to be quite as magnificent as it turned out to be. 
Over the course of the week we visited all four corners of the island – or so it seemed. We toured the central plain, where the sleepy villages are surrounded by orchards and market gardens, and tiny windmills stand out along the skyline; we took the old-fashioned narrow-gauge train through the mountains to Palma, and strolled through the streets, admiring the modernista (Art Nouveau) architecture and the huge cathedral; we unwittingly headed along the Bay of Alcudia, our only encounter with Mallorca’s high-rise hotels, and never ventured that way again; and we drove to the Capdepera headland in the far east of the island and gazed out across the stormy sea as the wind buffeted our hire car. That same windy day, with the unusually inclement weather enhancing the drama of it all, we also ventured along the winding and seemingly never-ending road to Cape Formentor, stopping at the many viewpoints along the way to marvel at the jagged limestone that rises from the sea so abruptly only to disappear back into it just as suddenly. 
The area we spent most time in, however, was the Tramuntana Sierra, the range of mountains in the north-west that hides picture-perfect villages such as Fornalutx, Deià and Valldemossa with their pretty squares and houses of honey-coloured stone. Its astonishingly engineered roads didn’t quite match that of the Cape Formentor in the hairpin count, though they came close at times. The Michelin map we had with us had deemed virtually all of them worthy of the green border which enigmatically denotes a ‘scenic route’ according to the key, and I must admit I was inclined to agree, though at times ‘scenic’ seemed too bland an adjective and a great understatement. 
We walked among some of these terraces on the days that we decided to explore on foot rather than by car. Mallorca in fact caters very well for walkers, with signposts pointing invitingly down tracks across the slopes, and the waymarking is on the whole very good. One path that we followed led through ancient olive groves and down through the impressive Biniaraix Gorge, while another walk explored some of the ancient cobbled trails that Mallorca’s great benefactor, Archduke Luis Salvador of Austria, had constructed, offering a glimpse of bygone times as it wound past old ice stores and charcoal-burning platforms. My favourite, however, was the walk across a hilly peninsula in the north-east. With only the bleats of wild goats frolicking across the herb-clad slopes to disturb us, Palma for once seemed a long way away as we gazed across the azure waters of the Mediterranean to the point where they melted into the horizon.