The cost of staying in the various small hostels dotted around Mallorca is to rise. These are the refuges operated by IBANAT, the Balearics nature agency, and do not include the Tramuntana dry-stone route refuges. They include, for example, shelters in the Llevant mountains on the east side of the island, one in Coll Baix (Alcúdia) as well as in the Tramuntana. A night's stay will typically increase from four to six euros per day.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Showing posts with label Mountains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mountains. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Too Low: Mallorca's mountains
At the risk of offending some people, it should be admitted that God made one or two cock-ups when it came to divvying up geographical attributes. Who exactly was the engineer at God Inc. who managed to make Mallorca's mountains only as high as they are? I think that shareholders should be told, as they have been denied their dividends because of the lack of height for far too long. God should really be placed in front of a parliamentary enquiry and be grilled as to what on earth the thinking was behind mountain peaks which, at their highest, are at minimum 500 metres or, more like it, 1000 metres too low. Someone, God presumably, miscalculated. Had he not, a Mallorcan winter cup might otherwise be overflowing.
A further reason for giving God a hard time at a meeting of the committee for mountains in Mallorca is that had he had the foresight to make the mountains that much higher, we wouldn't be subject, every year, to idiots declaring incredulously: "Oh my God. It snows!? In Mallorca!?"
Yes, it does bloody well snow. A simple glance at Mallorca's latitude and the height of its admittedly not too high peaks would, for anyone with any sense or knowledge, tell those of an incredulous bent that, well, it isn't that surprising that it snows. Not that it snows that much. Usually. But it does snow. Quite frequently and quite frequently to a depth more than the equivalent to that of the height of a chick pea: in the mountains, such as they are. Had the mountains been higher, however, the incredulous idiots would not exist. They would look at some bloody great mountains and see some snow on top of them even in summer. Like in Corsica, for example.
Had God not cocked up, we would now, thanks to the first cold snap of the Mallorcan winter, be welcoming aircraft, tour operators, skiers with skis, ski-instructors, waiters, hotel workers, delivery drivers and all manner of other ancillary snow-tourism personnel. I say that we would be welcoming them, but Mallorca would, regardless of any natural intervention by God, have decided that it didn't want any of the foregoing. Such is the lack of foresight of Mallorcan winter tourism planning. But the winter tourism planners can breathe a sigh of relief that they don't actually have to bother, because God got it wrong - by at least 500 metres.
The Association for Ski and Mountain Tourism Resorts (ATUDEM) has signed an agreement with the Spanish tourism promotion agency Turespaña to develop the marketing of ski tourism this winter. This is of course ski tourism on the mainland. There isn't any ski tourism on Mallorca because the mountains aren't high enough; this was God's big mistake.
At similar latitudes on the mainland - it isn't totally necessary to go north to the Pyrenees or south to the Sierra Nevada - there are mountains that are higher than Mallorca's and which get more snow. These areas, for example not far from Valencia, can boast cosy log cabins and wintery scenes. Mallorca, on the other hand, can't. Its wintery scenes just look crap. Not enough snow, generally speaking, no skiing, no cosy log cabins and so therefore no tourism.
I blame God almost entirely. There he was, going around claiming that he had made some paradise island, but he was far too strict on mountain building regulations. "We can't make them too high," he presumably said. So, the mountains that there are, are only pretend mountains. Some would say they are no more than hills. And no one goes hill skiing.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
A further reason for giving God a hard time at a meeting of the committee for mountains in Mallorca is that had he had the foresight to make the mountains that much higher, we wouldn't be subject, every year, to idiots declaring incredulously: "Oh my God. It snows!? In Mallorca!?"
Yes, it does bloody well snow. A simple glance at Mallorca's latitude and the height of its admittedly not too high peaks would, for anyone with any sense or knowledge, tell those of an incredulous bent that, well, it isn't that surprising that it snows. Not that it snows that much. Usually. But it does snow. Quite frequently and quite frequently to a depth more than the equivalent to that of the height of a chick pea: in the mountains, such as they are. Had the mountains been higher, however, the incredulous idiots would not exist. They would look at some bloody great mountains and see some snow on top of them even in summer. Like in Corsica, for example.
Had God not cocked up, we would now, thanks to the first cold snap of the Mallorcan winter, be welcoming aircraft, tour operators, skiers with skis, ski-instructors, waiters, hotel workers, delivery drivers and all manner of other ancillary snow-tourism personnel. I say that we would be welcoming them, but Mallorca would, regardless of any natural intervention by God, have decided that it didn't want any of the foregoing. Such is the lack of foresight of Mallorcan winter tourism planning. But the winter tourism planners can breathe a sigh of relief that they don't actually have to bother, because God got it wrong - by at least 500 metres.
The Association for Ski and Mountain Tourism Resorts (ATUDEM) has signed an agreement with the Spanish tourism promotion agency Turespaña to develop the marketing of ski tourism this winter. This is of course ski tourism on the mainland. There isn't any ski tourism on Mallorca because the mountains aren't high enough; this was God's big mistake.
At similar latitudes on the mainland - it isn't totally necessary to go north to the Pyrenees or south to the Sierra Nevada - there are mountains that are higher than Mallorca's and which get more snow. These areas, for example not far from Valencia, can boast cosy log cabins and wintery scenes. Mallorca, on the other hand, can't. Its wintery scenes just look crap. Not enough snow, generally speaking, no skiing, no cosy log cabins and so therefore no tourism.
I blame God almost entirely. There he was, going around claiming that he had made some paradise island, but he was far too strict on mountain building regulations. "We can't make them too high," he presumably said. So, the mountains that there are, are only pretend mountains. Some would say they are no more than hills. And no one goes hill skiing.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, June 27, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Tramuntana mountains get world heritage status
The Sierra Tramuntana mountain range in Mallorca has today been confirmed as having been given world heritage status by the UNESCO committee which has been convening in Paris to adjudicate on new entrants to the heritage list.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Many Rivers To Cross?
BEING SPANISH - PART FIVE (LANDSCAPES)
As you fly into Mallorca and look down to the ground, what do you see? A regular flight path into Palma Airport takes you along the north coast, and you can see the blue of the Med, the white caps of waves and the twists of the length of beach that is that of Alcúdia Bay. The plane makes a right turn over Playa de Muro and tracks down the centre of the island and into Palma. You may just glimpse mountains and be aware of the windmills shortly before landing. Otherwise, a general view is one of brownness and yellowness, patches of green and of no great order. Welcome to Mallorca and welcome to its topography.
If you were a first-time visitor to the island, what might you expect in terms of landscape? Indeed, might you expect anything? But we're back in "being Spanish" territory, and coming from a green and pleasant land, the tourist is unlikely to expect the same aerial perspective of hedged fields, woodlands and the alterations through colour of crop rotation of coming into, say, Gatwick. He probably expects a deal of barrenness; it would accord with sun and more sun. And for the most part, that is what he gets, or at least it is also a fertile barrenness of the clay colours of potato and vegetable market gardening. If England is overwhelmingly green, then Mallorca is overwhelmingly a study through a variety of ochres.
Ask a tourist what, having landed, he might anticipate as some sort of emblematic statement of the local landscape, and he may well choose the palm tree, the arboreal go-to of the picture postcard, fronds artistically intruding as a foreground in a top corner of the frame with the shimmering azure of sky and sea and a whiteness of sand filling its background. And of course he will find the palm tree in abundance. Spanish, he will think. Which is true, but unfortunately isn't. Palms are neither natives of Mallorca nor of Spain, with one exception, the palmito. The anticipation of an exotica of sub-tropical arboriculture is misguided. The discovery is one of apparent northern European migration, for it is the pine tree that lords itself over the tree kingdom of Mallorca. If this is a disappointment, there is a consolation in the fact of the pine species - the aleppo. But even this is not unique to Spain or Mallorca; it is the Mediterranean wing of the pine party.
Travelling from Palma to the north of the island, the initial sense is of normalcy, granted by motorway, the blue and white of road signs, the familiarity of make of car and the reassurance of a McDonald's arch. But the name Al Campo smacks of a different commercial landscape, and then to the left one begins to become aware of a chain of mountains and a perhaps unexpected natural landscape. Mention Spain, mention Mallorca, and the novice holidaymaker would be unlikely to conjure up an image of a mountain range; mountains, hills don't belong in the same set of picture postcards alongside that of the blissful beach idyll. Yet arrive in Pollensa or Alcúdia, and it is mountains that enclose you. Some are startling, most dramatically the Puig María that appears as an isolated aberration of monstrousness looming over the old town of Pollensa, or the grey peaks above Puerto Pollensa which lend the resort a chill of mystery. But how might these qualify as "Spanish"?
As you move around the area, to Alcúdia, to Pollensa, to Manresa or to Cala San Vicente, there is one word that starts to form - rugged. This is not a word from the being Spanish lexicon, or at least many would presume it not to be. Being Spanish, in landscape terms, is meant to be vibrant and exotic; it is a type of anthropomorphism for the natural world, the imagined transposition of the flame colours of the flamenco dance onto the land itself. But here is rugged. It is scrub, dust, scraps of forest, hill and artisan, the latter most evident in demarcation by dry-stone walls both in towns and in the country. It is semi-moor or Peak District. How can this be Spanish?
Yet there are of course colours that comfort you. On that same journey from Palma at different times of the year are the oleander that adorn the central reservation or the blossoms of almond trees. And then there are the bougainvillaeas of streets and gardens and the omnipresence of the orange tree. None of them uniquely Spanish, but they conform to the perception of vista by vibrancy, to a four-colour separation of the mind's eye rather than the black-and-white print of hill and wasteland.
But there is one thing you might have expected to see. It's something lurking from the days of knowing smatterings of Spanish by Western. Wrong country admittedly, but still Spanish. Rio Grande. River. Take off from Palma and look once again at the island below. What you will not see are rivers. For in the limestone and porous fabric of the island, most of the water goes underground. It's not a comment on being Spanish, but it is on being Mallorcan - island with no rivers.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Beth Orton "Someone's Daughter" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIoC_Ya6WRo). Today's title - there was no question mark; it was covered by UB40 but who was it originally?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
As you fly into Mallorca and look down to the ground, what do you see? A regular flight path into Palma Airport takes you along the north coast, and you can see the blue of the Med, the white caps of waves and the twists of the length of beach that is that of Alcúdia Bay. The plane makes a right turn over Playa de Muro and tracks down the centre of the island and into Palma. You may just glimpse mountains and be aware of the windmills shortly before landing. Otherwise, a general view is one of brownness and yellowness, patches of green and of no great order. Welcome to Mallorca and welcome to its topography.
If you were a first-time visitor to the island, what might you expect in terms of landscape? Indeed, might you expect anything? But we're back in "being Spanish" territory, and coming from a green and pleasant land, the tourist is unlikely to expect the same aerial perspective of hedged fields, woodlands and the alterations through colour of crop rotation of coming into, say, Gatwick. He probably expects a deal of barrenness; it would accord with sun and more sun. And for the most part, that is what he gets, or at least it is also a fertile barrenness of the clay colours of potato and vegetable market gardening. If England is overwhelmingly green, then Mallorca is overwhelmingly a study through a variety of ochres.
Ask a tourist what, having landed, he might anticipate as some sort of emblematic statement of the local landscape, and he may well choose the palm tree, the arboreal go-to of the picture postcard, fronds artistically intruding as a foreground in a top corner of the frame with the shimmering azure of sky and sea and a whiteness of sand filling its background. And of course he will find the palm tree in abundance. Spanish, he will think. Which is true, but unfortunately isn't. Palms are neither natives of Mallorca nor of Spain, with one exception, the palmito. The anticipation of an exotica of sub-tropical arboriculture is misguided. The discovery is one of apparent northern European migration, for it is the pine tree that lords itself over the tree kingdom of Mallorca. If this is a disappointment, there is a consolation in the fact of the pine species - the aleppo. But even this is not unique to Spain or Mallorca; it is the Mediterranean wing of the pine party.
Travelling from Palma to the north of the island, the initial sense is of normalcy, granted by motorway, the blue and white of road signs, the familiarity of make of car and the reassurance of a McDonald's arch. But the name Al Campo smacks of a different commercial landscape, and then to the left one begins to become aware of a chain of mountains and a perhaps unexpected natural landscape. Mention Spain, mention Mallorca, and the novice holidaymaker would be unlikely to conjure up an image of a mountain range; mountains, hills don't belong in the same set of picture postcards alongside that of the blissful beach idyll. Yet arrive in Pollensa or Alcúdia, and it is mountains that enclose you. Some are startling, most dramatically the Puig María that appears as an isolated aberration of monstrousness looming over the old town of Pollensa, or the grey peaks above Puerto Pollensa which lend the resort a chill of mystery. But how might these qualify as "Spanish"?
As you move around the area, to Alcúdia, to Pollensa, to Manresa or to Cala San Vicente, there is one word that starts to form - rugged. This is not a word from the being Spanish lexicon, or at least many would presume it not to be. Being Spanish, in landscape terms, is meant to be vibrant and exotic; it is a type of anthropomorphism for the natural world, the imagined transposition of the flame colours of the flamenco dance onto the land itself. But here is rugged. It is scrub, dust, scraps of forest, hill and artisan, the latter most evident in demarcation by dry-stone walls both in towns and in the country. It is semi-moor or Peak District. How can this be Spanish?
Yet there are of course colours that comfort you. On that same journey from Palma at different times of the year are the oleander that adorn the central reservation or the blossoms of almond trees. And then there are the bougainvillaeas of streets and gardens and the omnipresence of the orange tree. None of them uniquely Spanish, but they conform to the perception of vista by vibrancy, to a four-colour separation of the mind's eye rather than the black-and-white print of hill and wasteland.
But there is one thing you might have expected to see. It's something lurking from the days of knowing smatterings of Spanish by Western. Wrong country admittedly, but still Spanish. Rio Grande. River. Take off from Palma and look once again at the island below. What you will not see are rivers. For in the limestone and porous fabric of the island, most of the water goes underground. It's not a comment on being Spanish, but it is on being Mallorcan - island with no rivers.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Beth Orton "Someone's Daughter" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIoC_Ya6WRo). Today's title - there was no question mark; it was covered by UB40 but who was it originally?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Sunday, September 21, 2008
I Have Climbed Highest Mountains
The news that three walkers have provided measurements which make Mynydd Graig Goch in Wales slightly higher than 2000 feet, thus designating it as a mountain, makes one wonder if perhaps they should get a life. However, it would seem that there are those for whom such classifications are important. And the Ordnance Survey is prepared to change its maps to reflect the discovery of two and a half feet that bring Mynydd GG into the mountain range, so to speak.
Until reading all this, I have to confess that height as a determinant of a mountain or not had never quite entered my consciousness. It is the sort of pointless thing that would fill a school geography lesson, along with oxbow lakes; perhaps it did, but I must have had a note from my mum that day. A mountain, I had always thought, was, well, a mountain; you just knew it was - somehow. Locally though, this is not a matter without some relevance. Mallorca has mountains, so we are told, but does it? It all depends, it would appear, on the height. Unfortunately, the local names don't help in the regard.
Both Alcúdia and Pollensa have imposing singular elevations - the Puig Sant Martí at the back of Bellevue in Alcúdia and the Puig María that rises above Pollensa town. Both are commonly referred to as mountains. But the names belie that status. A "puig" is a hill, not a mountain. It had occurred to me that "puig" might have some association with the English "peak", but there is another Catalan word that is more similar - "pic", which does indeed mean peak. So puig is hill, as also is "turó", which sounds vaguely like the word "tor". Whatever, the high rises above the towns are not mountains, as such.
This might seem all clear enough until one gets to the question of the Sierra de Tramuntana. The sierra, taking its name of course from the Ford Motor Company, which bequeathed other names to geography - Granada and Capri, for example - means mountain range. And yes, one does refer to the Tramuntana mountains. However, the highest elevation in the Tramuntana, and therefore Mallorca, is the Puig Major, which stands at 1445 metres, or 4740 feet, well above the classification that the Welsh, at least, insist upon, and also the Scots who reckon a mountain is something higher than 3000 feet. So there should be little debate. The Puig Major is a mountain, but it isn't because it's a hill - a puig. The Catalan for mountain is "muntanya". Nowhere does it say Muntanya Major.
Despite the apparent contradictions in terminology, there is one thing that makes for a mountain; it's sheer imposing nature. Puig Sant Martí is 235 metres (770 feet), Puig María is higher at 330 metres (1082 feet). Neither would be a mountain, under the Welsh scheme of things. However, both so dominate the landscape that it is hard not to conceive of them as being mountains, even if they aren't actually that high. There is also the not insignificant propaganda of the brochures and gushing websites. These will typically wax lyrically about the "mountainous" terrain of the island, which is true - by height classification - in certain instances; but not all. "Hilly" doesn't have quite the same resonance or romance. So mountains they are by means of marketing.
Whatever the real designation, there is one question that remains - how on Earth do you pronounce "puig"? I've never known and tended to believe that my way, which makes the word sound like a public schoolboy who wubbles his r's - "you dashed pwig" (as in prig) - is almost certainly wrong. Tell you what - stick to mountain.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Pink, "So What" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZDsJ8UU64). Today's title - first line of one of their finest.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Until reading all this, I have to confess that height as a determinant of a mountain or not had never quite entered my consciousness. It is the sort of pointless thing that would fill a school geography lesson, along with oxbow lakes; perhaps it did, but I must have had a note from my mum that day. A mountain, I had always thought, was, well, a mountain; you just knew it was - somehow. Locally though, this is not a matter without some relevance. Mallorca has mountains, so we are told, but does it? It all depends, it would appear, on the height. Unfortunately, the local names don't help in the regard.
Both Alcúdia and Pollensa have imposing singular elevations - the Puig Sant Martí at the back of Bellevue in Alcúdia and the Puig María that rises above Pollensa town. Both are commonly referred to as mountains. But the names belie that status. A "puig" is a hill, not a mountain. It had occurred to me that "puig" might have some association with the English "peak", but there is another Catalan word that is more similar - "pic", which does indeed mean peak. So puig is hill, as also is "turó", which sounds vaguely like the word "tor". Whatever, the high rises above the towns are not mountains, as such.
This might seem all clear enough until one gets to the question of the Sierra de Tramuntana. The sierra, taking its name of course from the Ford Motor Company, which bequeathed other names to geography - Granada and Capri, for example - means mountain range. And yes, one does refer to the Tramuntana mountains. However, the highest elevation in the Tramuntana, and therefore Mallorca, is the Puig Major, which stands at 1445 metres, or 4740 feet, well above the classification that the Welsh, at least, insist upon, and also the Scots who reckon a mountain is something higher than 3000 feet. So there should be little debate. The Puig Major is a mountain, but it isn't because it's a hill - a puig. The Catalan for mountain is "muntanya". Nowhere does it say Muntanya Major.
Despite the apparent contradictions in terminology, there is one thing that makes for a mountain; it's sheer imposing nature. Puig Sant Martí is 235 metres (770 feet), Puig María is higher at 330 metres (1082 feet). Neither would be a mountain, under the Welsh scheme of things. However, both so dominate the landscape that it is hard not to conceive of them as being mountains, even if they aren't actually that high. There is also the not insignificant propaganda of the brochures and gushing websites. These will typically wax lyrically about the "mountainous" terrain of the island, which is true - by height classification - in certain instances; but not all. "Hilly" doesn't have quite the same resonance or romance. So mountains they are by means of marketing.
Whatever the real designation, there is one question that remains - how on Earth do you pronounce "puig"? I've never known and tended to believe that my way, which makes the word sound like a public schoolboy who wubbles his r's - "you dashed pwig" (as in prig) - is almost certainly wrong. Tell you what - stick to mountain.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Pink, "So What" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZDsJ8UU64). Today's title - first line of one of their finest.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, November 19, 2007
Show Me Round Your Snow Peaked Mountains
Snow. The recent snowfalls were, for Mallorca and for November, relatively heavy; they even inspired the BBC to announce that people were ski-ing on the island. Well yes, but don’t get any thoughts about Mallorca becoming a ski destination.
The surprise is perhaps that people express surprise that there is snow here. Among those who have never visited Mallorca, that is understandable but for those who have it is far less so. What after all are those bloody great big mounds forming a spine along the west of the island? The highest of the mountains - the Puig Mayor - is 1,445 metres.
It rarely snows that much and some winters hardly at all - last winter for instance. But it is far from uncommon to see whiteness on the tops of the Tramuntana range. Typically it does not snow below around 500 metres, but it can and does, though at sea level it is pretty freakish.
That surprise might be expressed does, I fancy, put the position of Mallorca’s mountains into perspective. Though summer visitors do indeed take trips into the mountains, were one to ask a selection of them to place the following in order of what they associate with Mallorca, see where mountains and mountain scenery would come - sun, sea, beaches, bars, mountains. I don’t think fifth would be far from inaccurate.
This all links back to what I have been saying about winter tourism and especially the marketing of the common perception of Mallorca as part of that winter tourism (or indeed marketing that seeks to alter that perception). The mountains do not form a part of that common perception, in my opinion. To try and market them as an aspect of winter tourism could probably only be as a supplementary item. The Tramuntana range is no Sierra Nevada. I have a brochure for the local equivalent of Air Miles. Among the offers in Spain, being marketed to a Spanish audience, are some mountain destinations - spas and hotels in Cantabria and above Valencia. Mallorca?
QUIZ
Yesterday - Dire Straits. Today’s title - a line from? Very famous group.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The surprise is perhaps that people express surprise that there is snow here. Among those who have never visited Mallorca, that is understandable but for those who have it is far less so. What after all are those bloody great big mounds forming a spine along the west of the island? The highest of the mountains - the Puig Mayor - is 1,445 metres.
It rarely snows that much and some winters hardly at all - last winter for instance. But it is far from uncommon to see whiteness on the tops of the Tramuntana range. Typically it does not snow below around 500 metres, but it can and does, though at sea level it is pretty freakish.
That surprise might be expressed does, I fancy, put the position of Mallorca’s mountains into perspective. Though summer visitors do indeed take trips into the mountains, were one to ask a selection of them to place the following in order of what they associate with Mallorca, see where mountains and mountain scenery would come - sun, sea, beaches, bars, mountains. I don’t think fifth would be far from inaccurate.
This all links back to what I have been saying about winter tourism and especially the marketing of the common perception of Mallorca as part of that winter tourism (or indeed marketing that seeks to alter that perception). The mountains do not form a part of that common perception, in my opinion. To try and market them as an aspect of winter tourism could probably only be as a supplementary item. The Tramuntana range is no Sierra Nevada. I have a brochure for the local equivalent of Air Miles. Among the offers in Spain, being marketed to a Spanish audience, are some mountain destinations - spas and hotels in Cantabria and above Valencia. Mallorca?
QUIZ
Yesterday - Dire Straits. Today’s title - a line from? Very famous group.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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