After the Palma de Mallorca Marathon: Valldemossa
The Route: Palma → Valldemossa → Palma Logistics: TIB bus 203 from the underground bus station at Plaça d'Espanya. A half-day out and back through the first ridge of the Serra de Tramuntana. Marathon Month: October Duration: Day trip
Palma Estació Intermodal ──(30-40 mins TIB 203)──> Valldemossa ──(30-40 mins TIB 203)──> Palma
The Palma Marathon ends on the seafront below the cathedral after two hot laps of the city, and the day after, the obvious move is uphill without doing the climbing yourself. Valldemossa sits about 400 metres above sea level in the Serra de Tramuntana, 17 km north of Palma, and the bus does all the work.
October in Valldemossa is the end of the busy season. The coach tours thin out, the air in the mountains is noticeably cooler than on the Palma seafront, and in most years the days are still dry and bright enough to sit outside, though an autumn storm can close in quickly. Bring a layer.
TIB line 203 leaves from the Estació Intermodal, the underground bus and rail station beneath Plaça d'Espanya, and reaches Valldemossa in about 30 to 40 minutes, continuing on to Deià. Buy the ticket on board or with a contactless card. Frequencies drop after the summer, so check the current timetable at tib.org before setting out and note the last return.
The Charterhouse and Chopin's Cell
The Real Cartuja, the Carthusian monastery, stands at the top of the village. Its former monks' cells were rented out after the monks left in the 1830s, and Frédéric Chopin and George Sand took one for the winter of 1838 to 1839. Sand wrote about it, badly for the villagers, in A Winter in Majorca.
Cell 4, the Celda de Chopin, is run separately from the rest of the monastery and keeps a piano, manuscripts and letters. It is open every day from 10:00 to 17:30 until the end of October (Monday to Saturday, 10:00 to 16:00, from November), and entry is €5 (about £4.30), paid at the door only. The main monastery has its own ticket, which includes the church, the pharmacy and the cloister garden. Inside, everything is on one level with smooth stone floors, and there are benches in the garden cloister.
The village
From the monastery the lanes run downhill, cobbled and stepped in places, lined with potted plants and small tiles of the local saint, Santa Catalina Thomàs, beside the doors. Treat the lower village as optional: every metre down is a metre back up. The flattest ground is the main street and the square in front of the monastery, where the cafés are.
Valldemossa's sweet speciality is the coca de patata, a light potato bun dusted with sugar, sold in the bakeries along the main street. It goes well with a hot chocolate at a table facing the mountains.
For a longer day, the same bus continues to Deià, a village on the slope above the sea where the poet Robert Graves lived. Deià is steeper than Valldemossa and better left until the legs have recovered.
Buses back to Palma leave from the stop on the main road below the monastery. Arrive a few minutes early; in October they can fill with walkers coming down from the hills.