Mallorca walking vacations

Follow the pilgrims up from Palma to Lluc Monastery and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a web of walking trails that go off into the Tramuntana Mountains. For beyond the glossy veneer of tourism brochures lies the real Mallorca, the one that walkers have known about for ages. The island isn’t just good for pilgrimage walks, but walking in general, as our Mallorca walking vacations show.

I’ve seen both sides of Mallorca – I spent a summer working on a motor yacht in its many busy south-western ports, not managing to penetrate further inland than the nearest portside supermarket. I returned years later to tackle the interior – and was struck by how empty and pretty it was in contrast. The same sea views – but seen from the top of the mountains.

Mallorca is great for walking. It contains one long distance trail (the European GR221) – a 140km, 10-stage walk which you can pick up across the Tramuntana Mountains. There are countless more local paths, as well as ‘Blue Paths’ – hiking routes that take you to Blue Flag Beaches. The island currently has four.

Unlike the Guell to Lluc pilgrimage, walks don’t stick to the tarmac, and they don’t start in the center of busy capital, Palma. Instead, they favour the pilgrimage’s end. Lluc Monastery is a great base for a walking trip. Your days might include heading along another pilgrimage route, one that has been recently restored. This takes you to Mallorca’s highest point: the stony outcrop at the top of a 1,180m mountain: Puig d'en Galileu.

Whilst not particularly high, the mountains are steep enough to have shed most settlements. You’ll walk among black pine, perhaps passing old dry stone buttresses and cultivation terraces, and wild olives. The oldest olive trees on the island have been here since before olives were farmed. There’s also garrigue – a mix of scrubland and forest, becoming fragrant as the heat rises through the afternoons.

As you walk, you’ll pass relics of how rural life was lived. There are mule tracks that once brought ice down from the mountains to the villages, or transported charcoal from the ancient holm oak forests. There are stone-lined snow pits – where snow was collected by nevaters for storage over the summer – and old pre-industrial lime kilns.

Many historic paths were made by laying down dry stone – the GR221 is also called the Ruta de Pedra en Sec, or the dry stone route, because of the prevalence of these paved paths.

“Be prepared to be challenged. The slopes are steep,” says Nicola Hubbard, who went on one of our walking vacations. Whilst some of the mountain terrain can be hard going, it’s extremely pretty. Keep your eyes peeled for the island’s resident feral goat population, who making going uphill look like a walk in the park.

It’s a world away from Magaluf. Walkers are welcome in Mallorca, because they head out of the far too busy streets of Palma and the island’s south-west, and often come earlier and later in the season, when the temperatures are pleasant at lower altitudes. And whilst even the smallest of villages gets a lot of visitors in summer (car hire is common, and no village more than 75 minutes’ drive from any other) the paths between them remain quiet.