Saturday 3rd October

Back inland to Felanitx to book into the Santuari de Sant Salvador for the night (yes, another monastery - they’re lovely and a generally cheap form of accommodation!) as the camping options on the island have been exhausted. SPOT


Why does Mallorca have no campsites? It’s really annoying, but perhaps good preparation for Iran, Pakistan, etc. We’re now perched atop the 509m Puig de Sent Salvador, and the setting is spectacular with views to the sea in one direction and across the central Mallorca plain Es Pla in the other.




Whilst somewhat more expensive than suggested by the Rough Guide, we cannot complain about the modern en-suite guest room, which I’m sure is slightly more salubrious that the original monk’s cell.


A tour through the central plain isn’t really top on the list of things to do in Mallorca, although there are a number of attractive villages, each of which has at least one rather impressive church, with Sineu standing out as a place to visit. In Sineu a rather small parking space proved a challenge, as did the narrow streets, but a walk up to the main square and the grand Nostra Senyora de Los Angeles parish church proved a worthwhile diversion, and the collection of cafes and restaurants looked inviting had we not blown our budget on our bed for the night.


After a wander around the place we came back to the Land Rover to find 3 teenage girls hanging off the roof rack having their photo taken, we let them go ahead as they weren’t doing any damage and they called the Camel “Beautiful!” - who can argue with that?

We also managed a stop at the Gordiola glassworks today, it's an odd place located just off a motorway in a 1960s fake castle type building. We were hoping to see glass blowers at work but there was just a man who made long, dangly pendant type things and was also a dab hand at making glass horses and crocodiles. After offering up a tip, Anne was presented with a horse which has, so far, not been broken. This saved us having to go through the acre of gift shop they have (don't let small children loose in there), and we went straight to their dusty and neglected museum instead which displays the most amazing collection. I'm not a particular fan of glass, but some of the stuff they had was incredible (and some was also hideous - glass monkey anyone?).




For your information, Anne has at least 107 insect bites and doesn’t hold out much hope for not contracting malaria in India as she is clearly very delicious.