Majorca, part seven - Lluc

LLUC MONASTERY.

Lluc, pronounced 'Yuk' is famous for its monastery. We'd looked at it on Google earth, but it only let you look through the gates, giving a tantalising view of the building. We HAD to see it. First job though, was to return to Alcudia and pick up the car.

As I've said, Alcudia is NOT our kind of place, but there is still some beauty, if you look past all the burger joints and arcades. This inland canal was one such spot.

Soon, we left the confines of Alcudia and were on our way. The open road is fabulous, and I took to the driving with ease. We twisted, turned, 'ooooed' and 'ahhhhed' for most of the way to Lluc. It was JUST what we wanted to see - sudden, BANG! views, all the way. A friend had loaned us a sat nav, so we were very grateful for that. Not that we'd have minded getting lost in THIS sort of country.

Before long, we recognised (from Google earth) the gates of Lluc monastery. We parked in the ample car park (not expensive) and started to explore.

The impressive frontage, these rooms can be rented, and I'm told they not not as austere as you would expect. Sue likes the seat by the fountain.

The archway to the inner courtyard.

Inside, another wonderful facade.

There sure is some work gone into that stone!

Not sure who this fellow was, probably some founding father.

Again, inside just blew you away The splendour, the opulence, the sheer majesty of the whole thing.

Look up - more incredible paintings and stained glass.

The sides of the chamber told of Christ's journey to the cross.

In the hallway, in stark contrast, a very simple bust.

Once back outdoors, we decided to take in the warm, sunny day and climb up to a cross we could see on the hillside above us. Once more, the stations of the cross were present. The carvings, though,  were on a MUCH grander scale than, say the ones at Old Pollenca. A lot of man hours and money had gone into these.

The path was wide and well made, much more substantial than seemed necessary.

Part of the hillside had been carved out to accomodate this huge one.

.

This almost looks like the centre of a volcanic crater. It must be verdant though, as there were farms and houses down there.

Some of the rock was in very strange shapes. A throwback to when it was liquid.

Once at the top, another tourist took our picture with this great backdrop.

This is a video of the view from the cross. 

This was as close to a perfect day as you can get.

We could also sea the sea - our next destination!

Amazingly, someone had taken the trouble to bring a chair all the way up here.

Here, you can see the damage the tornado did to the roof of the monastery. Now, I don't want to court argument, or give offense, but me not being religious has to ask, all this God worship that goes on in these places, and then a freak wind rips the roof off the place. An act of God? OH! The irony.

Picture taken from video display of damage.

They were appealing for donations to buy THOUSANDS of tiles to repair the roof. We were asked for, and gave, two euros.

We were allowed to write on the tile, so we did.

As did lots of other people.

Then they were stacked - ready to be fitted.

More shots of the damage.

The hotel we stayed at provided excellent food. We were half board, but the quality and amount they served meant we were never hungry! We DID, however, sometimes fancy something light at lunch, so a salad & olives was the order of the day, served on our own map of Majorca!

Fresh orange and coffee (we were driving) accompanied the lovely salad. We were quite surprised at just how nice it was, given that we were a 'captive audience', and in a tourist hot-spot. All credit to the little cafe outside the monastery.

A plateful of sunshine, if ever there was.

Then, it was Mariano Miranda on the stereo, air con up full, and off back into the mountains, but headed seawards to probably one of the most winding roads I've ever driven, to Sa Calobra.

You KNOW it's going to be 'fun' when the sat nav looks like this!

Here we go...........

NEXT PART, CLICK HERE

Majorca, part three, Cala Boquer

PART THREE

CALA BOQUER.

We woke to more glorious sunshine, in fact, the perfect morning. Earlier in the holiday, I'd bought a snorkel and goggles. I'd been amazed at the fish close to shore on Pollenca beach, and was keen to do more in different places. I didn't realise when we set off, but this place we were going to was very, VERY good for snorkeling. It was going to blow our minds!

The start of the path was only a couple of minutes from the hotel. As you can see, it's well-walked and good underfoot.

We had to cross a sort of col between two ridges, and as we gained height, of course, the views got better and better.

The prickly pear cacti was fairly ubiquitous on this island. I STILL haven't had the guts to try and pick one!

I did stop to smell the wild thyme though.

A vast panorama over Alcudia bay and Puerto Pollenca.

The happy couple! This was what looked like an old farmhouse. It was big, very big, and looked like it was in the throes of being renovated. We were told later that someone was living there at weekends and doing the work very slowly.

 

The brush got thicker as we got higher, but the path was easy to follow and easy underfoot.

Obviously volcanic, you could see 'bubbles' in the rock face at various points.

Getting wilder now.

This wall marked what we thought was the edge of the farm, or boundary. It was really substantial, as you can see, and climbed the face of the ridge behind.

Mountains and clouds (sighhhhhhh)

The goats, according to the instructions on the map, were very inquisitive (especially if you had a picnic).

We were quite excited to see the cove revealing as we walked on.  It looked FABULOUS!!

Keen-eyes Sue spotted a party precariously making their way towards the ridge. It looked very slow going. As I've said, the terrain underfoot off the beaten track is pretty hard going. Click on the picture to expand it.

At last, the full beauty was coming into view, and WHAT a view.

Turquoise heaven - we couldn't wait to get down there and investigate.

Like a sheet of glass.

Come on Sue - HURRY UP!

Someone had built a makeshift 'shelter' out of driftwood, but I can't see it stopping either wind or rain (or sun, for that matter).
Looked nice, though. Quite 'arty'.

The view out to sea was just jaw-dropping.

And that water looked SOOOOOOO inviting - only one thing for it.......

You know what, it was quite warm too. No shuddering as I got in at all.

I know, I know - hardly James Bond, but I was a very happy bunny. The fish life here was fantastic. I'd seen at least ten species, and we saw even more each time we went in. One notable one was a small shoal of barracuda.

Sue was eager to get in. We really need two of the snorkels next time!

What have you found, Sue?

She decided to go out further. It was really safe here too. No currents at all, and no tide to speak of. We could hear birds of prey screaming above us, and spent quite a while watching through the binoculars at what looked like a pair of black vultures being seen off by a peregrine falcon. It was probably nesting in the cliffs above somewhere.

COME BACK - IT'S MY TURN........

After a super day of swimming, sunning and reading, we had a lovely picnic. So did some locals, but we were really disappointed to see them leave lots of 'rubbish' by way of banana skins etc. That was until the official 'picnic clean-up squad' arrived! The locals obviously know about these goats, and the goats didn't miss a tit-bit as they scraped the rocks back to find any morsels that had fallen between them.

Banana skin? That'll do nicely, thanks.

We also saw this rock building. It looks like some sort of look-out, but I couldn't find any further information on it.

Another sign of volcanic features - a hole in the rock above us.

We finally packed up and wended our way back to the hotel for dinner. This is a view of the  farmhouse that is being renovated.

Ominous clouds gathering. We were to see some spectacular results of this lot later on in the wee, small hours!

At around 2am, I was woken by what I thought, in my semi-conscious state, was Sue turning the light on and off in the bedroom. It was actually lightning. I got up (Sue was oblivious and fast asleep) and went on to the balcony. The rain was HAMMERING down, and I mean hard! The thunder rumbled loudly, and I took this picture as lightning struck to the right of the hotel.

Then, BANG! It struck right in front of me. I didn't get the fork on the picture, but I did get this shot of the sky lit up. I really would love to have been on the beach, but the rain was just too hard. I had to content myself with the show from the balcony.

I went back to bed, lulled back to sleep as the storm abated and the thunder grew softer and more distant. Later today, we intended to pick up a car - but, unbeknown to us, trouble was in store.
The morning was cooler, but lovely. We caught a bus into Alcudia to pick up our car. Alcudia is like Blackpool (if you don't know what this means - Google it. It's all 'kiss me quick', and burgers - a horrible place to the likes of us). The car was a fiasco, but less said the better. We walked along Alcudia beach to have a look. Much more 'organised' and commercialised than Puerto Pollenca.

You couldn't spoil those views, though.

Like big, straw mushrooms growing on the beach.

Am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Thanks to a good friend, we were now able to pick the car up tomorrow, so the exploration of the island could begin.

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