The Mallorca Edit

Mallorca's coast doesn't just do one thing well. It does several, depending on what you're after. For open water and space to swim properly, Es Trenc remains the obvious start: a long, pale stretch in the south that earns its comparisons to the Caribbean without ever feeling crowded if you arrive early enough. For something more enclosed and dramatic, Cala Mondragó, a protected natural park, offers pine-backed cliffs stepping down into water so clear you can watch the sand shift beneath you.

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Further along the southeast coast, Cala Llombards is smaller, quieter, and easy to miss unless you know to look for it, which is exactly why it's worth the detour. And on this most recent trip, the team found themselves back at Cala S'Almunia, a modest cove near Santanyí with a scattering of old fishing huts and a short scramble down from the car park that keeps the crowds thin. It's become something of a standing recommendation now, passed from one visit to the next.

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Some of the island's best eating has been happening for decades, quietly, in the same rooms. In Santanyí, Restaurant Manique has quietly become one of the island's most talked-about tables, its octopus and steak drawing people well beyond the town, all served in a warm, unhurried dining room that never feels like it's trying too hard.  Over in Sóller, Ca'n Boqueta occupies a beautifully restored townhouse and has built its reputation slowly, on the same handful of dishes done properly. And in Alcúdia, just 20 minutes from Pollença, Restaurante Ca'n Costa has been feeding locals for generations, the kind of place where the waiters know the regulars by name and the menu rarely strays from what it does best.

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Markets tell the same story of continuity. Fornalutx's Sunday market is one of the island's most charming, tucked into the village's stone-paved square in the shadow of the Tramuntana, with stalls of sobrasada, almonds, olives and honey laid out much as they always have been. Santanyí's Saturday equivalent trades in the season's produce and Pollença's Sunday market rounds things out in the north, smaller but no less worth an unhurried morning.

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None of it needs dressing up. The island's food has always earned its reputation through repetition, the same recipes, made well, for a very long time.

Mallorca rewards those willing to work for the view. The Serra de Tramuntana, a UNESCO World Heritage mountain range running along the island's northwest, offers some of the Mediterranean's finest hiking, and the GR221, the "Dry Stone Route," is its signature trail: a multi-day path linking valleys, monasteries and mountain villages, with the option to walk it in shorter, single-day sections if a week isn't on the cards.

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For cyclists, the island has long since earned its status as a serious training destination. Professional teams have wintered here for years, and it isn't hard to see why. Sa Calobra, a switchback climb down (and, more punishingly, back up) to the sea, is the island's best-known test piece: roughly 10km of hairpins with the kind of views that almost make up for the gradient. Those after something gentler will find the coastal route around the Bay of Alcúdia flat, well-surfaced and considerably kinder to the legs.

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Golf, too, has its place here. Son Vida and Golf Alcanada are both well-regarded, with the latter offering a course laid out along the coast, sea on one side for much of the round.

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Active mornings, long lunches, an evening swim before dinner. It's a rhythm that repeats itself easily, which is part of why the team keeps coming back with more to recommend, not less.