Sóller

Monday 17 October

The idea was for Jonathan and me to go for a walking holiday in October. Somewhere with a good chance of fine weather, comfortable accommodation, and with interesting but not too strenuous scenery. The hilly part of Mallorca seemed to tick the boxes. I’d been once, ten years before, so knew what it was like.

The Serra de Tramuntana is a range of hills running parallel to the north-west coast of the island. The range is mostly limestone, with several peaks and ridges topping the 1000m contour. Walking is getting to be a significant part of Mallorca’s tourism industry and waymarked trails are becoming more common. A long distance path, the GR221, is planned to run the whole length of the Tramuntana chain and is well waymarked over a large part of its length.

We decided to stay in Sóller and booked into the Hotel La Vila. We flew Easyjet from Gatwick to Palma, took the No. 1 bus from the airport to the new Intermodal station in Palma, and the No. 211 bus to Sóller. We had time in Palma to have a lunchtime bocadillo and a beer. The hardest part of the journey was finding our way from the bus stop in Sóller to the main square but after several false turns finally made it.

SollerSquare

Later we sat outside in the square in the early evening and had a glass of wine and the first tapas of our holiday. Even later we moved to a restaurant nearby, Sa Cova, for dinner. The evening temperature was about 22 degrees.