Visiting relatives can be very trying: especially if they are not your relatives and they have desirable houses!
Carmen has contacted some of her relatives who still live on the island of Mallorca and the first set we went to see had their summer home in the north. This was a four bedroom villa set on the coast with glorious views. They apologised for the near beach being overcrowded but, as they explained, it was the weekend. If that was overcrowded then they obviously haven’t been to the Costa del Sol, or the resort on the south where we are staying! The meal they gave us was delicious and when we finally set off the next set of relatives my eyes were a decided shade of green.
The light green became emerald when the next house turned out to be a traditional Catalan style ranch like house (with air conditioning) with a decent sized pool in the garden. After availing ourselves of the pool we had to get changed to meet the rest of the relatives which turned out to be a Grand Gathering of the Clans as more and more cousins and second cousins turned up. The evening meal here was eaten outside and I had to field one or two snide questions about what I would have been doing if I had still been in Cardiff. The answer, of course, would have been sheltering from the lashing storms, but let is pass, let it pass.
The next day we visited a place that I had heard of from my parents when, after one holiday, I was presented with an EP (extended play) 45 rpm record with a bizarre picture of rock formations on the front and a gaping space where the discrete spindle hole should have been. Before I could say anything, my mother pre-empted my bemused questions by saying, “I couldn’t think of anything else to buy you!”
The record had to be centred carefully on the turntable, judging by eye the exact placement. This was never exact so when the needle started its spiral course towards the Great Nothingness at the centre the music sounded, you might say, a little idiosyncratic. To this day I cannot hear Offenbach’s Barcarolle without putting in the Doppler-like effects that I was used to hearing on the EP. My mother’s horrified response to the travesty of music that came from the speaker was that, “It sounded very nice if you were there!”
The “there” was the Caves of Drac; a remarkable cave system discovered by a French speleologist in the nineteenth century and containing a fabulous wealth of every variety of stalagmite and stalactite you could wish to see. I must admit it made the Cheddar Caves seem a little parochial! But the high point in the visit comes at the end of the system, when the pathway through the limestone wonderland opens out into an amphitheatre which can accommodate a few hundred people. At the bottom of the amphitheatre is a lake and with the lights extinguished illuminated boats appear on which musicians play classical music and yes, they did finish their short programme with the Barcarolle and yes, it did sound very nice because I was there to hear it.
I resisted the temptation to buy a CD containing all the music played by the nocturnal musicians in their floating cavern: some things are best left to sketchy memory.
The beach we went to after our Cave experience was another confidently spectacular place: a narrow beach surrounded by wooded hills and just too pretty to bear!
Today we have been to the very north of the island and visited two beaches. The first was yet another attractive location, but swimming obstructed by stony swathes; the second was just about as far north in the island as you can get and combined all the characteristics of the place that make for wonderful photographs and a slightly unreal sense of being there. The crystal clear water lapped a narrow beach which was fringed with pine trees. The pine trees spread up the hills around the water and, in the distance you could see the fantastic formations of the bare rocky mountains.
If you, as I did, swim out and simply revolve in the water you have a panorama of beauty that is thoroughly and selfishly delightful. As I revolved I wondered how many people were going to be able to go on holiday this year and have such an experience of natural landscaped delight as I was – and that is anywhere in the world. Mallorca has a lopsided reputation based on the mass tourism that has made the island so much money and defaced so much of it, but there are areas and places which (although developed) still retain the dignity of their beauty.
And I hear that some parts of Britain have actually had one day without rain!
Such luck!
Carmen has contacted some of her relatives who still live on the island of Mallorca and the first set we went to see had their summer home in the north. This was a four bedroom villa set on the coast with glorious views. They apologised for the near beach being overcrowded but, as they explained, it was the weekend. If that was overcrowded then they obviously haven’t been to the Costa del Sol, or the resort on the south where we are staying! The meal they gave us was delicious and when we finally set off the next set of relatives my eyes were a decided shade of green.
The light green became emerald when the next house turned out to be a traditional Catalan style ranch like house (with air conditioning) with a decent sized pool in the garden. After availing ourselves of the pool we had to get changed to meet the rest of the relatives which turned out to be a Grand Gathering of the Clans as more and more cousins and second cousins turned up. The evening meal here was eaten outside and I had to field one or two snide questions about what I would have been doing if I had still been in Cardiff. The answer, of course, would have been sheltering from the lashing storms, but let is pass, let it pass.
The next day we visited a place that I had heard of from my parents when, after one holiday, I was presented with an EP (extended play) 45 rpm record with a bizarre picture of rock formations on the front and a gaping space where the discrete spindle hole should have been. Before I could say anything, my mother pre-empted my bemused questions by saying, “I couldn’t think of anything else to buy you!”
The record had to be centred carefully on the turntable, judging by eye the exact placement. This was never exact so when the needle started its spiral course towards the Great Nothingness at the centre the music sounded, you might say, a little idiosyncratic. To this day I cannot hear Offenbach’s Barcarolle without putting in the Doppler-like effects that I was used to hearing on the EP. My mother’s horrified response to the travesty of music that came from the speaker was that, “It sounded very nice if you were there!”
The “there” was the Caves of Drac; a remarkable cave system discovered by a French speleologist in the nineteenth century and containing a fabulous wealth of every variety of stalagmite and stalactite you could wish to see. I must admit it made the Cheddar Caves seem a little parochial! But the high point in the visit comes at the end of the system, when the pathway through the limestone wonderland opens out into an amphitheatre which can accommodate a few hundred people. At the bottom of the amphitheatre is a lake and with the lights extinguished illuminated boats appear on which musicians play classical music and yes, they did finish their short programme with the Barcarolle and yes, it did sound very nice because I was there to hear it.
I resisted the temptation to buy a CD containing all the music played by the nocturnal musicians in their floating cavern: some things are best left to sketchy memory.
The beach we went to after our Cave experience was another confidently spectacular place: a narrow beach surrounded by wooded hills and just too pretty to bear!
Today we have been to the very north of the island and visited two beaches. The first was yet another attractive location, but swimming obstructed by stony swathes; the second was just about as far north in the island as you can get and combined all the characteristics of the place that make for wonderful photographs and a slightly unreal sense of being there. The crystal clear water lapped a narrow beach which was fringed with pine trees. The pine trees spread up the hills around the water and, in the distance you could see the fantastic formations of the bare rocky mountains.
If you, as I did, swim out and simply revolve in the water you have a panorama of beauty that is thoroughly and selfishly delightful. As I revolved I wondered how many people were going to be able to go on holiday this year and have such an experience of natural landscaped delight as I was – and that is anywhere in the world. Mallorca has a lopsided reputation based on the mass tourism that has made the island so much money and defaced so much of it, but there are areas and places which (although developed) still retain the dignity of their beauty.
And I hear that some parts of Britain have actually had one day without rain!
Such luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment