Serra de Tramuntana, Oct 2011 – Day 2
First some explanation. The plans we had for scaling the 1000m heights and striding along the high ridges of the Serra de Tramuntana had had to be scaled down. Two weeks before we set off Jonathan phoned to say he’d badly pulled his back and could hardly walk. Three osteopath appointments and plenty of painkillers later it was a lot easier but still giving him problems. And then a week later my back went into spasm. So we were both cautious about tackling any of the more challenging routes. The plan now was to do an easy to moderate walk each day with either a picnic or café lunch, a drink with tapas in the early evening and a main meal later. We called this “making the best of a bad job”.
Our new régime started with a late start and breakfast at one of the Hotel’s tables in the square. We then set off to walk to Port de Sóller, about 4.5km and 40m of ascent, to see how we coped with our strained muscles. Taking it slowly the walk went well. We lunched on a restaurant terrace overlooking the marina and decided against the walk back, opting instead for the tram (ferrocarril) which runs between the Port and the town.
By the time we got back to the hotel Jonathan’s leg was reacting to the walking and the bumpy tram ride so he decided to stay put. I chose to go for a quick walk up to the village of Fornalutx and back via another village, Biniaraix. It was a fine late afternoon and I made good time. Fornalutx has a small square with a shop and a couple of cafés: steps lead up to the church.
Biniaraix is less attractive but the road leads from there directly back to Sóller. Twenty-foot high bullrushes grow in the stream alongside the road.
Tapas that evening were taken in the Café Sóller. This café is the home-from-home of the many German tourists in Sóller. (Like everywhere in Mallorca, Germans seem to outnumber all other visiting nationalities.) It seems to be German-run, but the service is friendly and the staff were happy to humour our hesitant Spanish, Jonathan’s much better German, or English. To order your plate of tapas variadas you take a post-it note, inspect the various individually-numbered dishes, write your five chosen numbers on the post-it and hand it to the waitress. It works. We stayed for dinner.