Serra de Tramuntana

The Serra de Tramuntana is a beautiful landscape with steep mountainsides and lots of greenery. Like the rest of Mallorca, it is quite tourist trappy - so expect no lost paradise. An easy way to get to know the area is to take bus 203 from Palma. This is the ‘slow’ bus, that reaches the coastal town of Port de Soller after 1h20 min. It passes through the mountain villages of Valldemossa and Deia, and crosses large parts of the Serra de Tramuntana. These are narrow mountain roads, where two buses cannot pass each other. The stone villages seem glued to the steep mountain walls, that are so characteristic of this area. Near the coast, you can see dramatic cliffs.

The Serra is popular for hiking, even attracting long-distance hikers for a long weekend trip from Northern Europe. Since there are many daily flights from anywhere in Europe to Palma de Mallorca it is very accessible; from Palma it takes only 45 minutes by direct bus and then you are in the middle of this mountainous region. Crossing the mountain range on foot from west to east via the GR221 “Dry Stone Route” takes about 8 days with mountain huts available to spend the night.

I stayed for 2 nights in Soller, the liveliest place I encountered during my short week in Mallorca and Menorca in November. On my first day, I hiked a loop between Soller and Fortnalutx. Smaller towns like Fornalutx and Deia are included in …

Even though Mallorca seems to be supercrowded at all times, especially when the cruiseships come in, the island came as a pleasant surprise to me. Palma is a very nice city (and the cathedral would probably be already a WH site if it were in any other country) and the mountains are exceptionally scenic, sometimes even spectacular. The Serra de Tramuntana range is the spine of the island (and protects the beaches from the northern winds) and reaches a height of over 1,400 metres. It includes several pretty towns and various monasteries, including the huge one at Lluc. Even though it is not really easy to find out where the core zone of the WHS starts and what is only in the buffer zone, you can be reasonably sure that any trip to the northern coast will make you traverse the core zone. The site is inscribed as a cultural landscape, and it is quite easy to make out various aspects of this as you make your way through the mountains, especially the historic stone walls separating the fields, some of which date back to Arab times. I did two trips to the mountains, both of them very much on the tourist trail and likely to be offered by various agencies - the half-day trip to Valldemossa to visit the Charterhouse (of Chopin and Sand fame) and the full-day trip to Sa Calobra (very winding roads and extraordinarily scenic), followed by a boat ride to Port de Sóller, a tram …

Mallorca’s “Sierra de Tramuntana” consists of a limestone range around 90kms long, 15kms wide and up to c1450m high, running along the north of the island. We found that it offers attractive scenery which, particularly along its coast, sometimes reaches the level of “spectacular”. Whilst some of its scenery is “wild” mountain and pine forest, much is also the result of human activity. However, its inscription as a WHS “Cultural Landscape”, seems to me to rate this latter aspect excessively highly and to illustrate a number of unfortunate directions which the “World Heritage” scheme has taken in recent years – A State Party determined to gain an inscription for every province and island. An Advisory Body (AB) which grinds very small on criticising detail but seems unwilling to stand up and be counted on the major calls as to whether a site really has “OUV”. And finally a WHC which operates on whim and politics and ignores its AB!

The Nomination File extends over 1300 pages. How much of this reflects the growing reaction by States Parties to being asked ever more detailed matters by the AB during the nomination process and how much is a symptom of a belief that the “thicker” the dossier is then the more “points” it must score, is not clear! But an immediate fact which strikes one is that large parts of it do not relate to the area proposed for inscription at all!! Much of it is about the very large areas allocated …

For a small island, Mallorca enjoys a variety of landscapes, and those of the rugged Serra de Tramuntana are quite spectacular. I visited the towns of Soller, Villahermosa and Polenca.

I reached Soller by various means. The antique wooden railway carriages of the old train were interesting, but much of the scenery was missed passingn through tunnels. Similarly with the direct bus, which traversed several tunnels. But the views from the bus via Villahermosa were amazing. And stopping off to walk the narrow streets of Villahermosa I was rewarded with other views of the Serra.

To reach Polenca I had to travel the full length of the Serra de Tramuntana. This town lies at the conluence of several mountain streams, all of them dry at the time.

Albeit inscribed as a cultural site, the Serra de Tramuntana is mostly worth a visit because of its stunning landscape. The mountain range can be visited on an easy daytrip from Palma de Mallorca. We took the highway from Palma to the north and started in Pollença. From there, the Ma10 runs right through the Serra de Tramuntana, direction Palma. You will see plenty of terraces, dry stone walls and beautiful olive tree plantations. The real highlights are the small bays along the coastline. Don’t miss Sa Calobra, a scenic bay, only reached by a winding road, about 12km off the main route. Sóller, a small mountain town, is also a pleasant stop. I can recommend visiting the island during off-season. Car rental is ridiculously cheap (about EUR 8 per day) and you get a bargain on hotel prices. Temperature was still a nice 20 degrees in late November.