Cyclists, hikers and Easter processions of Mallorca

Jo and I are now two weeks into our stint in Mallorca. For those who don’t know, Mallorca is the largest of the Balearic Islands, is part of Spain and sits around 250km off the coast from Barcelona.

Rather than heading straight for the Capital, and largest city, Palma De Mallorca, we instead picked up a rental car and headed straight for the town of Soller – around 50 minutes from Palma airport. Nothing is very far on this island.

The “abcMallorca” website incongruously describes Soller as a modernist town. Well it appeared pretty ancient to me with winding cobbled streets, a bustling central square and beautiful old Church (Església de Sant Bartomeu) built at the end of the seventeenth century and looking anything but modernist . . .

Jo and I had booked ourselves into a 200-year old finca on the edge of town. It was simply beautiful set in almost an acre of garden with a pool, outdoor patio/dining areas and several orange trees groaning with fruit. The finca itself boasted two stories with a curious layout – a large kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor with two sets of staircases, one heading up to one of the bedrooms (and nowhere else) and the other leading up to the main living area plus second and third bedrooms.

Our favourite spot, and one which we made a beeline to at around 5:30 each evening, G&Ts in hand, was a wonderful enclosed veranda with drop-dead gorgeous views of the surrounding countryside and back-drop of towering mountains.

​Mallorca, with its mountainous terrain, is an absolute mecca for road cyclists particularly so with pro-cyclists getting some training in before heading off to compete in the various events in Europe. Everywhere you drive you encounter bikers of all shapes and sizes – predominantly men for some reason. It’s not uncommon to join a long queue of cars following some group pedalling its way up one of many twisting mountain routes. Nobody seems to mind, and I witnessed some good careful overtaking – I guess the value of cycle touring to the Mallorcan economy is well understood. Or maybe you get chucked in jail if you knock a cyclist off his or her bike. Yep . . . maybe it’s the latter.

​The other hugely popular tourist activity in Mallorca is hiking and so that’s what we did on our first day. We chose a route from the town of Soller to Port Soller which is about 4km as the crow flies but more like 10km on our route which meandered through some truly spectacular mountain scenery and picture-perfect tiny villages. We spotted a hotel at about the halfway mark and wandered up the drive to be greeted by smart looking waiters hovering round smart looking guests taking their elevenses in the gardens of what was obviously a smart upmarket resort. To their credit they didn’t seem to mind serving two sweaty trampers “dos espressos por favor”. Jo nicely capped things off by nicking a couple of lemons from the garden . . .

When we weren’t hiking or drinking G&Ts we generally hung out, wrote, read and ate. Jo suggested a game at one stage and so we decided on Trivial Pursuit, which on closer inspection turned out to be in German. No worries I said – we can use my Google Translate app. Well that was interesting. How’s this for a translated question . . . “How much kilo must be a weightlifter in superschwergewicht already on dead weight with it grapple” ? The answer, of course is 110.

Following our week in Soller we sort of stuck a pin in a map and ended up, for the next six nights, in a place called Sa Pobla in the north. I had to admit feeling a little deflated when we drove through the place searching for our Airbnb. Sa Pobla is very much a working town – functional but not outwardly pretty. It’s apparently famous for its potatoes. I mentally kicked myself for not properly thinking through the implications of a potential tourist destination touting its potato credentials . . . But wait, this story has a twist to come.

Jolanda had read there was to be an Easter procession on the evening of Maundy Thursday and so off we trotted to the central Church to be greeted by one of the most differently spectacular sights I have ever seen. Each church in the region seeks to outdo each other with costumes, trumpets, drums and a float, the latter being on wheels and pushed or carried by costumed men. We hung around the Church witnessing everyone getting ready for the off, marshalled by elderly gentlemen carrying electric candles. Somehow, out of apparent chaos, everyone seemed to have worked out their place and off they went at a slow march throughout the town. What a sight – just wow . . .

Next stop after Sa Pobla we head slightly east to the town of Porreres where we are to attend a week long yoga retreat combined with creative writing.