It’s 11 am, and I’m sipping fresh orange juice outside Café Sa Placa in S’Alqueria Blanca. The sun has just broken through on Mallorca’s south coast, burning off the last of a sluggish cloud. According to our waiter, Juan, autumn has been golden so far, and today is set to be another scorcher. To my left, a group of Mallorcan pre-schoolers are playing tag in the square. With the tourist traffic gone for the summer, their mothers are able to sit back and enjoy their coffees and Camels in peace. I have been coming to Mallorca for 12 years now, and the autumn is by far my favourite inflection. With the crowds thinning out and the pace slowing down, a different, Mallorca natural starts to re-emerge. And, with the accompanying dip in accommodation and travel prices, it’s the perfect weekend getaway. Our plan is to do two days and one night for under €500.
For such bountiful payoff, the hard labour comes with a 4am alarm call. But, having already checked in online and carrying overnight bags only, our 6.10am flight from Liverpool gets to Palma at 9.45am local time. This is where the joys of off-season kick in: no queues for passport control, or anything else. We’re straight through. In the manic red months of summer, you can swelter for hours in never-ending car-hire queues – hardly the ideal start to a holiday. But in October, at 10am on a Friday, there are more staff than customers. By 10.30am we’re purring along the road to Santanyí, on the southern tip of the island. Still too early to check in, we flop out in S’Alqueria Blanca’s village square (more a triangle, in truth) nibbling pimientos de Padrón in the shadow of St Jose’s church.
The food is one of Mallorca’s real joys and we don’t want to fill up first thing, so a little rocket salad with shavings of grimalt reserva cheese (made up the road in Llombards) and a spiky café solo complete an idyllic brunch. We hit the road and head for the hotel. The wild Tramuntana region I evoke in my book The Lemon Grove lies on Mallorca’s rugged north coast. With its mountainous jewels of Deia, Valldemossa and Soller, it is a spectacular, romantic – and pricey – region. The bucolic south with its windmills and haystacks and pine-fringed beaches is every bit as lovely and, at this time of year, its numerous hotels rurals can be had at a snip of their high-season rate.
The agrotourism revolution of the past two decades has seen remote farms and grand rural casas remodelled into small country hotels serving fine rustic food. Over the years we have come back to the same three properties time and again: Es Turo in Ses Salines (doubles from €75 room-only), and Hotel Rural Sa Galera (doubles from €146 B&B) and Son Terrassa (doubles from €165 B&B, closed Dec-Feb), both on the outskirts of Cas Concos. Once we’d been back a couple of times, the hotel owners advised us to bypass the big internet discounters and email them directly for their best rates.
This time we’re staying at Son Terrassa, where most rooms are small casitas facing the hotel’s magnificently cultivated gardens. Its elevated position looking out over miles of flat farmland makes it a heavenly spot for a swim, a doze and a lazy hour or two with your book. The towns and villages of Mallorca’s south are dominated by their churches – huge, majestic monuments, visible from miles around. Even for the non-religious, sitting on the terrace from which the hotel takes its name, cold Estrella in hand, gazing out at the bastion of La Immaculada is a spiritual moment.
It would be quite easy to while the whole weekend away by the poolside, but we have plans. In a token nod to Mallorca’s love affair with the bici, I’ve pre-hired bicycles. The idea of biking through endless, winding, country lanes has become such a fantasy of mine that it’s almost an obsession. Back home in Liverpool I can barely imagine a five-minute stretch without some angry driver rearing up behind, revving their engine. But in the lanes between Cas Concos and S’Alqueria Blanca, and onwards through the Mondragó parc natural, we barely encounter a vehicle. Taking it slowly, passing goats and pigs and tractors ploughing their fields post-harvest, we ride a farmer’s route that can’t have changed in centuries. While the south’s arable pastures lack the staggering, heart-in-mouth drama of the north, there’s a tradition and a permanence about this corner. Deia, Valldemossa, and even the newly boutique Fornalutx are all chic northern European enclaves these days. But as we pedal past olive groves and crumbling loose-stone walls, a sea-breeze mingling with notes of pine and grass, we’re experiencing a slow-burn Mallorca – and the essence of relaxation.
S’Amarador has to be one of the most beautiful beaches on the island. Enclosed by pines and ancient, crenellated rock, this is the quintessential “postcard” beach that tourists can never find. At this time of year, with the best part of six months’ sunshine warming its turquoise shallows, the sea is lukewarm – almost body temperature. We chain the bikes up at the picnic area and head across fine white sands to the rough diving platforms hewn into the cliff. There are few things to match the shocking liberation of that first plunge; it’s almost worth saving up your months of stress for such exquisite release.
From this side of the natural park, it’s a 20-minute swim around the headland to the more popular Cala Mondragó. We do it breaststroke, speculating as to whether this could ever lose its magic: if you dived and swam like this every day, would it still thrill you so? We haul ourselves out of the sea, heavy-legged, and dry off outside the beach bar under a mild, late sun. It must be 6pm by now, and we’ve already slowed right down – it feels like we’ve been here for days instead of hours. It would be easy to order a second carafe and watch the sun dip down into the ocean, but when the light falls here it falls fast and heavy. Bats begin to flit but, as quiet as it is now, it would be folly to negotiate those lanes in the dark.
The bike ride back is slightly uphill, slightly tipsy and we’re ravenous by Cas Concos. We stop off at La Oveja Negra, a bustling neighbourhood bar serving great affordable food. Across the road is Viena (vienamallorca.com), a restaurant whose reputation makes booking essential, even at this time of year. We’re more than happy with hot dogs, chips and a crisp Mallorquin salad topped with fat, purple olives. In spite of earnest promises of a moonlit swim, we get no further than sitting outside the casita with a brandy, staring up at the stars.
Saturday is market day in Santanyí and it’s worth getting there early for the best of the local farmers’ produce. Cheese, honey, tapenade, sausage and lemon curd are all specialities worthy of their own aisles, while the panadería (bread) and churro (Spanish doughnut) stalls do a roaring trade, their aromatic waft drawing in customers from afar. I browse the leather goods, the secondhand books and the vinyl stalls before settling on a special edition of George Sand’s A Winter in Mallorca for a princely €6. We cool down with a frozen yoghurt and a look around the cathedral’s gilded frescos before chugging back to the hotel to check out.
Our flight back is not until midnight and we have designs on a picnic, another good swim and dinner in Palma before handing our car keys back. I’ll say without reservation that Pomodoro in Santanyi is the best little pizzeria in the south. Its thin, crispy, wood-oven pizzas are fast, delicious and cheap – just the ticket when your plan is to devour your napoletana, still warm, on the plateau of a hilltop castle 15 minutes after paying for it.
Santuario San Salvador, sitting at 509 metres above the small town of Felanitx, offers a dizzying panorama across the plains and rocks and out to sea. I sit on the steps, watching an eagle soar and, once again, feel that elemental tug that only Mallorca seems to elicit.
The major beauty spots and beaches of the south – Es Trenc, Mondragó, Cala Llombards – can get crowded at the weekend. With half an eye on showering and changing later on, we head instead for a little beach on the quiet west side of Portopetro. A stumble from an unprepossessing car park down a rubble path leads to a beach bar with recliners and its own salt-water pool. Beyond it, there’s a sandy cove and a glorious gully of deep, pellucid green divers’ sea. We’re straight in, swimming out towards the fishing boats until the blue-green depths begin to darken and chill. We slump at the pool bar, dunking warm, cinnamon-sprinkled churros into sticky hot chocolate. It’s time to shower and change.
Palma, a miniature Barcelona with its bustle and hum, deserves a long weekend to itself. Its hotels, its nightlife, its fish market, the warren of chic streets and restaurants around the cathedral, its elegant shopping colonnades and, yes, its beaches, are those of a sophisticated international city. But, with only four hours until our flight and a car to return, we forgo dinner and head for a familiar favourite, Le Voyeur in the souk-like La Llotja-Born district. This tiny jazz bar, with its bursting leather chairs, bookshelves and retro gramophone, serves terrific, old-school (as in free) tapas. Later on, when the bands start to play, you can stand there with a glass of pale sherry and an anchovy tostada and let the night begin. For us though, it was nearly the end. Freshened and invigorated from our 36 hours in Mallorca, it was time to start planning our next hit.
Don’t miss: Palma fish market
More an entire village on Palma’s seafront, harvesting and selling the day’s catch, the fish market has sheds and warehouses displaying freshly landed bass, bream, lobster, sardines and more - and a choice of market restaurants, from cheap and cheerful canteens to upmarkets establishments such as Ca n’Eduardo right on the wharf.
Hidden gem: Sa Farinera de S’Horta
Set in a century-old flour mill, this is a must for meat lovers. Quail, rabbit and veal are prepared on a wood fire in what was the first grill of Mallorca. It also does soups, salads, fish and rice dishes. Bring a jumper so you can dine alfresco: the view from the terrace is spectacular.
easyJet, Jet2, Thomson, Thomas Cook and Ryanair all fly to Palma from various UK airports
More autumn weekends on the Med
Menorca
October’s a lovely time to be in unspoilt Menorca (the whole island has been a Unesco biosphere reserve since 1993) before hotels and restaurants start to close for winter. Visit the two main towns, Mahón – built on a beautiful natural harbour – and Ciutadella, and spend days walking or cycling along coastal paths. The island’s largely flat so the terrain’s not too demanding. There are some lovely rural places to stay – try hotel rural Biniarroca (biniarroca.com, doubles from €120) outside Sant Lluis, south of Mahón.
Ibiza
The party island calms down as summer ends and the crowds leave, making it perfect for a chilled weekend and a taste of real life on the White Isle. In the now relaxed Old Town, many restaurants and bars are still open, and you’ll find some late-night action if you need it. (Super club Pacha stays open year-round at weekends.) For romantic setting and decor, try French-owned Les Terrasses (lesterrasses.net, doubles from €160) about 15 minutes from Ibiza town and open until the end of October.
Sicily
Average temperatures are in the low- to mid-20s in October, and the grape and olive harvests are beginning, along with truffle and pistachio season in the mountain towns, some of which hold festivals to mark the occasion. There’s a mushroom festival in Castelbuono, south of popular Cefalú, on 24-26 October. Stay at the town’s Relais Santa Anastasia (abbaziasantanastasia.com, doubles from €125)
Sardinia
Closer to North Africa than Italy, Sardinia’s summer stretches into October, and the sea’s still warm. The second-largest island in the Med has the glitzy Costa Smeralda in the north-west, and deserted beaches in the uncommercialised south. Autumn festival fever is particularly noticeable in the mountainous Barbàgia area. Stay in an agriturismo for an authentic slice of Sardinian life. Li Licci (lilicci.com, doubles from €80) in the northern Gallura area uses homegrown, organic produce and has immaculate, simple rooms.
Andalucía
Southern Spain is still warm, though the cooler air makes it perfect for an outdoorsy break. Head inland to the Sierra Nevada to hike in the mountains (it’s simply too hot in summer) and check out the sights in Granada without the crowds. La Almunia del Valle (laalmuniadelvalle.com, doubles from €129) is 15 minutes from Granada with spectacular mountain views.
Helen Walsh’s latest book is The Lemon Grove (Tinder Press, £7.99). To buy a copy for £5.99 including UK p&p, call 0330 333 6846 or visit bookshop.theguardian.com
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