Walking the GR221, Mallorca – Day 4
Sóller – l’Ofre (1093m) – Cúber
10 October
Stats: ascent 1080m; descent 230m; time taken 5h 50′
After two days without a mountain summit one was back on the agenda – Puig de l’Ofre, 1093m. To get there we would follow the GR221 along the old pilgrimage route from Sóller to the sanctuary at Lluc. The route predates the Sanctuary: it was built by the Arabs when they occupied Spain and the Balearic Islands and shows their engineering skills. It climbs at a steady gradient and at one stage winds cleverly through a steep narrow gorge in tight zig-zags. It’s a popular tourist route, though more people do it in the other direction after taking the bus or a taxi to the Cúber reservoir, some 800m higher than Sóller.
The cobbled track starts outside Biniaraix, 2km east of Sóller. Each taking our own pace we soon split into two groups, Jonathan, Nicky, Tony G and I in front; Clive, Gerry and Jaume behind. It was another warm, sunny day.
I’d walked this path before in 2001, leading a group for HF Holidays. It was too hot that day and I’d turned the group back after we reached a level stretch above the gorge. Although warm, today was better and our group was stronger!
By midday we’d done almost all of the climb on the old path and it was decision time. Who was going for the summit of L’Ofre and who would give it a miss? The summit party formed – Gerry, Tony G and I with Jaume. The others were given detailed instructions; in summary “follow the track and when you get to a road, stop at the car park”. Jaume suggested they wait at the highest point, a col a short walk away, and wave to us when we reached the summit at 1 o’clock.
We dived off onto a smaller path and followed a Jaume short cut uphill through the forest until we came to a broad track. On the opposite side a narrow cairned path continued uphill: we followed it steeply through scrub and coarse grass and over rocks and ledges until the vegetation abruptly gave way to bare rock and we were within 30m of the summit. A short walk over the limestone outcrop and we were there.
“Wait there! Don’t go to the edge!”, called Jaume. Bemused, we stopped. Jaume explained: it was 12:59 and he wanted us to show ourselves as a group on the skyline at precisely 1 o’clock “because the others will be looking for us”. Rather grudgingly we went along with this, and a few moments later we all stood on the summit looking down at the track in the valley below. And amazingly there was a group of three people, one unmistakeably wearing Nicky’s cream-coloured jacket. We waved. We couldn’t see if they waved back, though they told us later they could see us and they did.
Today was the day we changed our base from Estellencs to the Sanctuary at Lluc. One of Jaume’s friends had been given the job of collecting our bags from the hotel and driving them over to Lluc. Jaume called him as we got near the car park, only to find he’d been delayed by some traffic incident and we would be at Lluc about an hour before our bags. We explained the situation to the others who were waiting for us; no-one was too upset, especially as the bus Jaume had hired to take us to the Sanctuary was ready to go. Arriving after dropping the Germans off we checked into our rooms then headed for the nearer of the two cafés for beers while we waited for the bags.
For more information about the Sanctuary see the note in the postscript.