Beatrix pottering: Two go on an Adventure

The Bay of Palma is huge. And today Kevin and I walked half of it (ish...).

We started with a drive to the nearby beach we'd discovered during our June recce (Cala Contesa in Illetes). It was empty, which strangely made it look smaller, but still pretty. The day was cold but sunny - out of the wind you could have happily sat and basked for a while. But today we were walking - so we set off, across the beach, and onwards.

It started innocently enough: a pathway across the hillside on the other side of the beach. And then we just kept going along the sea edge. In between the tiny beaches, the coastline here is lined with hotels and apartments buildings; but we discovered you could work your way between them and the water - sometimes with a bit of a rocky scramble, or timing our crossing between the waves. I'm still not sure how permitted some of our routes were: we never went through a "prohibido" sign, or a shut gate; but we were, at times, walking through the deserted grounds of various hotels. But it felt like a real adventure. We kept going for a good few kilometres, before finally being stymied by a properly flooded path. So instead, we wandered through the rather nice hotel whose grounds we were in, "hola"-ing as we went, and out into the road at the front.

The walk continued, however, this time through the towns with the hotels between us and the sea. We stopped for a café cortado by a little marina (fortuitously timing it with a brief hail shower, which had our nice German waitress in a complete panic - clearly not that common round here); and then continued on: an amble across another deserted beach; a brief interlude into Los Jardines de Marivent, a beautiful botanical garden full of Miró sculptures; and then finally right into Palma, and alongside the humungous marina on one of those wonderful promenades they have in Spain. It is by far the biggest marina I've ever seen. There must be one boat per Palma-n person.

After the walk, we felt we'd earned our lunch. Kevin found a fantastic-sounding place, so we headed there; to find it is so fantastic that it was fully booked. We will return! Instead, after a few false starts, we found a good Japanese restaurant - great food, but a rather bossy Spanish waiter who told us off for not eating the tofu in our miso soup; frowned at Kevin for leaving the skin of his salmon; and insisted on mixing my tartare for me (even though I'd already said no to the other waiter). By this point, I was fading (have I mentioned I'm still got a cold...?), so Kevin got us a taxi, we collected the car, and then I retired to bed while Kevin went to collect Jemima. 14 kilometres along the Bay of Palma, according to my watch. We can truthfully say we are exploring Mallorca. And it is beautiful.

Cala Contesa