For such bountiful payoff, the hard labour comes with a 4am alarm call. But, having already checked

Author Helen Walsh set her latest novel, The Lemon Grove, in the glamorous north of Mallorca, but it’s the bucolic south of the island that keeps drawing her back, and is especially how do i find the cheapest airline fares lovely at this time of year with the crowds gone
It’s 11 am, and I’m sipping fresh orange juice outside Caf Sa Placa in S’Alqueria Blanca. The sun has just broken through on Mallorca’s south coast, burning off the last of a sluggish cloud. According to our waiter, Juan, autumn has been golden so far, and today is set to be another scorcher. how do i find the cheapest airline fares To my left, a group of Mallorcan pre-schoolers are playing tag in the square. how do i find the cheapest airline fares With the tourist traffic gone for the summer, their mothers are able to sit back and enjoy their coffees and Camels in peace. I have been coming to Mallorca for 12 years now, and the autumn is by far my favourite inflection. With the crowds thinning out and the pace slowing how do i find the cheapest airline fares down, a different, how do i find the cheapest airline fares Mallorca natural starts to re-emerge. And, with the accompanying dip in accommodation and travel prices, it’s the perfect weekend getaway. Our plan is to do two days and one night for under €500.
For such bountiful payoff, the hard labour comes with a 4am alarm call. But, having already checked how do i find the cheapest airline fares in online and carrying overnight bags only, our 6.10am flight from Liverpool gets to Palma at 9.45am local time. This is where the joys of off-season kick in: no queues for passport control, or anything else. We’re straight through. In the manic red months of summer, you can swelter for hours in never-ending car-hire queues – hardly the ideal start to a holiday. But in October, at 10am on a Friday, there are more staff than customers. By 10.30am we’re purring along the road to Santany , on the southern tip of the island. Still too early to check in, we flop out in S’Alqueria Blanca’s village square (more a triangle, in truth) nibbling pimientos de Padr n in the shadow of St Jose’s church.
The food is one of Mallorca’s real joys and we don’t want to fill up first thing, so a little rocket salad with shavings how do i find the cheapest airline fares of grimalt reserva cheese (made up the road in Llombards) and a spiky caf solo complete an idyllic brunch. We hit the road and head for the hotel. The wild Tramuntana region I evoke in my book The Lemon Grove lies on Mallorca’s how do i find the cheapest airline fares rugged north coast. With its mountainous jewels of Deia, Valldemossa and Soller, it is a spectacular, romantic – and pricey – region. The bucolic south with its windmills and haystacks and pine-fringed beaches is every bit as lovely and, at this time of year, its numerous hotels rurals can be had at a snip of their high-season rate.
The agrotourism revolution of the past two decades has seen remote farms and grand rural casas remodelled into small country hotels serving fine rustic food. Over the years we have come back to the same three properties time and again: how do i find the cheapest airline fares Es Turo in Ses Salines (doubles from €75 room-only), and Hotel Rural Sa Galera (doubles from €146 B B) and Son Terrassa (doubles from €165 B B, closed Dec-Feb), both on the outskirts of Cas Concos. Once we’d been back a couple of times, the hotel owners advised us to bypass the big internet discounters and email them directly for their best rates.
This time we’re staying at Son Terrassa, where most rooms are small casitas facing the hotel’s magnificently cultivated gardens. Its elevated position looking out over miles of flat farmland makes it a heavenly spot for a swim, a doze and a lazy hour or two with your book. The towns and villages of Mallorca’s south are dominated by their churches – huge, majestic monuments, visible from miles around. Even for the non-religious, sitting on the terrace from which the hotel takes its name, cold Estrella in hand, gazing out at the bastion of La Immaculada is a spiritual moment.
It would be quite easy to while the whole weekend away by the poolside, but we have plans. In a token nod to Mallorca’s love affair with the bici , I’ve pre-hired bicycles. The idea of biking through endless, winding, country how do i find the cheapest airline fares lanes has become such a fantasy of mine that it’s almost an obsession. Back home in Liverpool I can barely imagine a five-minute stretch without some angry driver rearing up behind, revving their engine. But in the lanes between Cas Concos and S’Alqueria Blanca, and onwards through the Mondrag parc natural how do i find the cheapest airline fares , we barely encounter a vehicle. Taking it slowly, passing goats and pigs and tractors ploughing their fields post-harvest, we ride a farmer’s route that can’t have changed in centuries. While the south’s arable pastures lack the staggering, heart-in-mouth drama of the north, there’s a tradition and a permanence about this corner. Deia, Valldemossa, and even the newly boutique Fornalutx are all chic northern European enclaves these days. But as we pedal past olive groves and crumbling loose-stone walls, a sea-breeze mingling with notes of pine and grass, we’re experiencing a slow-burn Mallorca – and the essence of relaxation.
S’Amarador has to be one of the most beautiful how do i find the cheapest airline fares beaches on the island. Enclosed by pines and ancient, crenellated rock, this is the quintessential “postcard” beach that tourists how do i find the cheapest airline fares can never find. At this time of year, with the best part of six months’ sunshine warming its turquoise shallows, the sea is lukewarm – almost how do i find the cheapest airline fares body temperature. We chain the bikes up at the picnic area and head across fine white sands to the rough diving platforms hewn into the cliff. There are few things to match the shocking liberation of that first plunge; it’s almost worth saving up your months of stress for such exquisite release.
From this side of the natural park, it’s a 20-minute swim around the headland how do i find the cheapest airline fares to the more popular Cala Mondrag . We do it breaststroke, speculating how do i find the cheapest airline fares as to whether this could ever lose its magic: if you dived and swam like this every day, would it still thrill you so? We haul ourselves out of the sea, heavy-legged, and dry off outside the beach bar under a mild, late sun. It must be 6pm by now, and we’ve already slowed right down – it feels like we’ve been here for days instead of hours. It would be easy to order a second carafe and watch the sun dip down into the ocean, but when the light falls here it falls fast and heavy. Bats begin to flit but, as quiet as it is now, it would be folly to negotiate those lanes in the dark.
The bike ride back is slightly uphill, slightly tipsy and we’re ravenous by Cas Concos. We stop off at La Oveja Negra , a bustling neighbourhood bar serving great affordable food. Across the road is Viena (vienamallorca.com), how do i find the cheapest airline fares a restaurant whose reputation makes booking essential, even at this time of year. We’re more than happy with hot dogs, chips and a crisp Mallorquin salad topped with fat, purple olives. how do i find the cheapest airline fares In spite of earnest promises of a moonlit swim, we get no further than sitting outside the casita with a brandy, staring up at the stars.
Saturday is market day in Santany and it’s worth getting there early for the best of the local farmers’ how do i find the cheapest airline fares produce. Cheese, honey, tapenade, sausage and lemon curd are all specialities worthy of their own aisles, while the panader a (bread) and churro (Spanish doughnut) stalls do a roaring trade, their aromatic waft drawing in customers from afar. I browse the leather goods, the secondhand books and the vinyl stalls before settling on a special edition of George Sand’s A Winter in Mallorca for a princely €6. We cool down with a frozen yoghurt and a look around the cathedral’s gilded frescos before chugging back to the hotel to check out.
Our flight back is not until midnight and we have designs on a picnic, another good swim and dinner in Palma before handing our car keys back. I’ll say without reservation that Pomodoro in Santanyi is the best little pizzeria in the south. Its thin, crispy, wood-oven pizzas are fast, delicious and cheap – just the ticket when your plan is to devour your napoletana , still warm, on the plateau of a hilltop castle 15 minutes after paying for it.
Santuario San Salvador, sitting at 509 metres above the small town of Felanitx, offers a dizzying panorama across the plains and rocks and out to sea. I sit on the steps, watching an eagle soar and, once again, feel that elemental tug that only Mallorca seems to elicit.
The major beauty spots and beaches of the south – Es Trenc, Mondrag , Cala Llombards – can get crowded at the weekend. With half an eye on showering and changing later on, we head instead for a little beach on the quiet west side of Portopetro. how do i find the cheapest airline fares A stumble from an unprepossessing car park down a rubble path leads to a beach bar with recliners and its own salt-water pool. Beyond it, there’s a sandy cove and a glorious gully of deep, pellucid green divers’ sea. We’re straight in, swimming out towards the fishing how do i find the cheapest airline fares boats until the blue-green depths begin to darken and chill. We slump at the pool bar, dunking warm, cinnamon-sprinkled churros into sticky hot chocolate. It’s time to shower and change.
Palma, how do i find the cheapest airline fares a miniature Barcelona with its bustle and hum, deserves a long weekend to itself. Its hotels, its nightlife, its fish market, the warren of chic streets and restaurants around how do i find the cheapest airline fares the cathedral, its elegant shopping colonnades and, yes, its beaches, are those of a sophisticated international city. But, with only four hours until our flight and a car to return, we forgo dinner and head for a familiar favourite, Le Voyeur in the souk-like La Llotja-Born district. This tiny jazz bar, with its bursting how do i find the cheapest airline fares leather chairs, bookshelves and retro gramophone, serves terrific, old-school (as in free) tapas. Later on, when the bands start to play, you can stand there with a glass of pale sherry and an anchovy tostada and let the night begin. For us though, it was nearly the end. Freshened and invigorated from our 36 hours in Mallorca, it was time to start planning our next hit.
Don’t miss: Palma fish market More an entire village on Palma’s seafront, harvesting and selling the day’s catch, the fish market has sheds and warehouses how do i find the cheapest airline fares displaying freshly landed bass, bream, lobster, sardines and more - and a choice of market