I’ve come to Mallorca on holiday with my brother. It’s with some reluctance I admit this: The place has always been a byword for package holidays of the kind up with which I will not put. Back in the days of socialist Sweden this was where people escaped the state monopoly on booze and sunshine to pig out on an abundance of both – but there is more to the island than its bad reputation would have you believe.

For me, this marks my second visit to Spain in as many months. It’s a country I hadn’t hitherto considered as very interesting, but I’m very pleased to admit I was wrong.

I know of course that I should tread carefully here, in every sense of the word; only non-Spanish people talk of Spain as a unified country – to a Catalan their homeland is Catalonia, and a Basque or a Mallorquin are equally fiercely proud of their respective regions. Without commenting on the respective merits of various other separatist movements, I think it’s fair to say that the Mallorquins’ case has more merit than most; like all islanders, their history is the result of all manner of foreign influences. Long before the British invasion of binge-drinkers or the colonies of German nudists, indeed long before Spain was an entity, the Balears were part of the Califate. The name of the isle itself is a bastardisation of Al Malorq, which in turn is an approximation of the Latin Isola Major (the big island), and before the Romans there were the Phoenicians, and so on. But I digress.

We’ve come to hike the Tremontana region that spans the entire northwest coast of the island. We did a hiking holiday together a year and a half ago in Slovenia, and we’ve been looking to find something that could match that experience. This certainly fits the bill: the Tremontana is home to the GR221, Ruta de Pedra en sec, or drystone route, all 161km of it, and it traverses some of the most impressive landscapes I’ve seen in Europe.

It’s still a work in progress tho, with some landowners contesting the right of the hoi polloi to cross their lands, so I’ve reluctantly decided against using the refugios, for fear of having the itinerary thrown into disarray by some trigger-happy estancia-owner with a hatred of hikers*. Instead we found an agretourisme, Finca d’Olivar, near Estellencs, which became our base. Formerly the home of a hermit, it’s a cluster of little stone houses built into the cliff side, nestled above orange groves, hidden away from sight but still offering wide-reaching views; small wonder stray cats like it!

Our finca is nothing out of the ordinary, however. The whole coast is littered with beautiful honey-coloured villages, houses huddled together on cliffs and outcrops like swallows’ nests, built one on top of another in a jumble with not a right angle in sight**. The dramatic road serpentines its way between them like a never ending snake, never straight, never horizontal, imbued with a steady stream of bikers swooping down the slopes or sweating their way up the mountain side.

The GR221 is a different proposition altogether: just as vertiginous, but almost completely devoid of people, we stroll for hours without meeting a single hiker. The first day sees us scale the heights of the nearest mountain, which we have all to ourselves with the exception of some wild goats, and from whence we can see the entire island. The second day we set out along the coast, and hike for seven hours straight through fishing villages and almond groves, past vineyards and poppy fields and watchtower ruins, before taking the bus back from Bayalbufar, a very bijoux bayou. The third day, we drive high into the mountains north of Sóller for a final excursion in the remotest part of the Tremontana. Everywhere we go the landscape is stunning, the sky and sea deepest azure blue, the air so crisp that individual leaves on trees hundreds of metres away are clearly visible, and the stillness such that the slightest sound carries for kilometres. Flowers are in bloom everywhere, birdsong and fluttering butterflies fill the air. It really is paradisiacal.

In fact, the term paradise is particularly apt here, since pairi daiza in Persian originally meant “walled garden”, and the most distinguishing feature of the island is the abundance of terraced walls. They are literally everywhere, even in the remotest areas, and I am reminded of a comment by a forester friend (who said apropos the Blue forest): “If you think the woods are beautiful, thank the foresters.” This is brought home to us again and again: all this is cultivated land, used for millennia. Olives were a source of wealth to the islanders even before Carthage lost it to the Romans, and the trees are still there today, their centuries-old trunks contorted like souls tormented in a Dante-esque inferno, impossibly alive in spite of looking like they should have died a dozen deaths. Intricate systems for water collection – aljab cisterns – help funnel the winter rains down to the fertile soil down in the valleys, often using canals built into roads and walls to get to the staircase gardens below. Even higher up, where nothing but pine and holly grow, there’s still evidence of charcoal burning sites, and as you reach the crest of a mountain, more often than not you will find a drystone wall, erected to avoid flocks of goats escaping.

It really is a walk through a pastoral idyll, and it’s easy to imagine fauns and nymphs cavorting in the valleys, where rosemary and sage grow wild in the dappled shade. In reality, any attempt at cavorting would result in sprained ankles or worse, as the ground is extremely unforgiving – think rock, rock, rock around the clock – but we manage to make it unscathed, which is more than can probably be said for the passengers of the helicopter wreck we come upon the last hour of our last day. There’s no telling how long it’s been there, but discovering it changes our mood. Even the skies begin to darken, and it seems right to end our adventures here.

I spend one more day in Mallorca, getting lost in the labyrinth of Palma’s old town, dodging raindrops and dodgy tourist traps, meeting interesting people and finding hidden gems. The island still has more to offer though. There’s canyoning, rock climbing, diving, even biking – if I can overcome my dislike for spandex. I leave thinking I should come back for more – and what better way is there?
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*At one refugio we find ourselves seated next to a Swedish woman and her ten-year-old daughter, who have elected to do a through-hike of the kind I originally envisaged, – as a birthday gift for the girl. Food for thought, that.

**The result of hundreds of generations of husbands succumbing to their wives’ pleas for “just one more room”, perhaps?