Port de Soller, Mallorca, Spain - gentle walk

An evening walk revealed an additional fishing boat in the harbour. Usually there is just one red one and one blue one.

When Eve was here she was taking pictures of laundry. Her sister-in-law wanted pictures to hang in her laundry room. So now I find myself looking for "picturesque laundry."

The German lady that I met on the free Soller walk had said that she knew of some good walks that were not too steep, so we arranged to meet and take one together. The rain cleared up just in time for us to meet Pierre and have him drive us up to Can Bleda.

Can Bleda is a hotel, at the top of the pass, on the road to Daia, top left of the map. The walk took us down to the bottom right of the map, where we joined the road coming in to Soller from Palma.

We stopped at Can Bleda,

another beautifully restored hotel,

and had a cafe con leche while looking down at the Soller valley

and up at our first stop.

A short walk and we were looking down at Can Bleda

and another valley view. This walk took us along the ridge on the South side of Soller and we had constantly changing views of that valley.

We stepped into this huge finca,

The fire in the authentically restored kitchen was making the rooms a bit smoky

so we resisted the array of tarts and cakes and stepped out into the fresh air.

A passing walker identified this as an orchid

while crushing the leaves and smelling them told us this was a member of the garlic family.

The fincas up here were large and had a lot of land around,

most of which was terraced olive groves.

Occasionally citrus.

Always with the view.

It was nice to be walking with a companion for a change. We had similar careers, enjoyed talking about cultures, politics, and travel. She had been coming to Mallorca for 20 years and it was interesting to hear about the changes. We wondered about this man made "cave". She thought perhaps an ice house.

Occasionally we saw evidence of water management.

We passed a large finca undergoing renovation.

A flower container on its entrance gate.

This shy lamb tried to hide behind an olive tree.

The path went mostly, gradually down, on narrow roads, mud and gravel tracks

and occasionally rocky trails through the woods.

Eventually we came to a switchback road that led steeply down

into the valley with the road that comes through the tunnel from Palma.

It crossed the Soller-Palma railway track.

There were a number of side branches to this walk but my companion called them all "donkey trails" (steep and rocky) and then we found the donkeys.

By now we were resting more frequently

using the different views as an excuse and exclaiming over the steep terraces and tiny fincas way up high on them (must use the donkeys to get there).

The video above was the first I have taken with the new camera. I took it to get the sound of the sheep bells but it is a bit shaky so you may want to close your eyes while you listen to it.


Eventually we made our way down into the main square of Soller to a cafe. Cafe con leche for her, vino tinto for me. There we found the English couple that we had met on the walk. They were excited as they now had 2 possibilities for their Bed and Breakfast buy. One was a totally gutted building that would allow them to design exactly what they wanted and another was already completed and running as a hotel. Obviously radically different prices and issues.
We took the tram back to Port and exchanged info in case we wanted to walk together again.