Almost everyone arrives with the coves in mind and goes home talking about the walls. Menorca is divided into small fields by dry stone laid without mortar, wall against wall, and the total runs to something over ten thousand miles of it on a piece of ground thirty three miles from end to end. The gates set into them are made of wild olive, silvered by weather, and no two are hung the same way. In a week of walking you will pass more of those gates than you pass other walkers.
The second correction is about the coves in the photographs. Most of them lie on the south coast and most of them have no road. Cala Mitjana takes fifteen minutes in from a gravel parking area. Macarelleta takes forty on a footpath through pine. The white sand is real and the water is not exaggerated, but the arrival is on foot over rock, carrying what you want to have with you, and there is nothing to buy at the bottom of any of the good ones.
What makes a whole week work here rather than a long weekend is the path. An old bridle way follows the entire coastline, one hundred and sixteen miles of it, cut into twenty numbered stages, reopened as a public right of way in 2010. Almost every stage begins and ends within reach of a road. That single fact is what the week is built on: you can walk a piece of coast with no exit for four hours and still be met by a vehicle at the far end at half past one.
- What the week is
- Nine nights in two family run guesthouses, five in the eastern harbor town and four in the western one, moving once by road with your bags, and a driver meeting you at path crossings on six walking days.
- What sets it apart
- The airport sits three miles from the eastern harbor and the island is thirty three miles end to end, so nothing is more than an hour from the bed. The ground is the surprise: bare limestone slab on the south, loose red rock and wind on the north, dry stone wall on both. Beds are guesthouses of eight to fourteen rooms, tiled floors, no elevator. Doors open mid April and close in the first week of November. Nine nights from $2,610 per person.
- What the figure covers
- Nine nights in two guesthouses with breakfast; the road move between them with your bags carried; driver drop and collection on the six walking days; written stage notes naming every road access point with the distances measured rather than estimated; one guided morning among the prehistoric towers and burial chambers inland of the western town; the small boat crossing of the eastern harbor; entry to the fortress at the harbor mouth; and a local number for the walking days.
- What it leaves to you
- Flights, which run $780 to $1,340 round trip from the northeast depending on the month; the single room supplement of $290 for the nine nights; lunches and dinners, which run $18 to $45 a head; a rental car if you want one, about $34 a day in May and $71 in August; the overnight boat from the mainland if you route by sea, from $95 a berth; entry to the sites you visit on your own, $3 to $6 each; anything at all to do with travel insurance or entry documents, which this office does not arrange and does not advise on; and tips, which nobody here expects.
- Who this one is wrong for
- Do not book this if stairs are the problem rather than distance. Both guesthouses are upper floor walk ups, one of them twenty two steps with no elevator, and the old streets of the western town are cobble on a slope. The path stages run four to nine miles over bare rock with no shade for two hours at a stretch, and the south coast gorges drop and climb three hundred feet in under a mile. If someone in the party cannot manage an uneven surface without a hand, this week will hurt them.
The rock underfoot, and what a walking day takes out of you
The two coasts are not variations on each other. The south is pale limestone, flat on top, cut at intervals by gorges that run inland for miles with caves in their sides and a stream at the bottom in spring. The north is older and darker: slate, red clay, black rock, all of it worked over by the tramuntana, the north wind that has bent every tree on that side into the same lean. The sand at Pregonda is rust orange because the cliff standing behind it is. Two lighthouses sit out on that coast on ground that looks like a different island from the pictures people bring with them.
Underfoot it is stone for most of the day. Bare slab, loose cobble, and short stretches where the path is a shelf of rock tilted toward the sea. Trail shoes with a real sole matter more here than boots, and poles earn their weight on the gorge descents. Shade is the thing people misjudge worst: on some south coast stages you go two hours without any, and there is no water on the path at all. Two liters a person is the working figure in May and three in September.
A walking day has a fixed shape. Breakfast at the guesthouse, out by half past eight, a vehicle drop at the head of a stage fifteen to forty minutes away, then four to nine miles of coast at whatever speed you actually walk. There is no navigation to do: the way marking is continuous and the notes name every junction that is not obvious. Collection at the far end at a time you set that morning, changed by a phone call if you are slower than you thought. Back in town by two, which leaves the afternoon for the harbor, the Tuesday market, or lying flat.
The three people this week was drawn for
The first is somebody whose free weeks fall in the wrong months. Menorca has a genuinely long shoulder, which is rarer around this sea than it sounds. Doors open in the middle of April and close in the first week of November, and both ends of that are better for walking than the middle of it. In late October the coves are empty on a weekday and the water is still 72F.
The second has never assembled a trip like this and does not want to be the one holding the map in front of everybody else. The stages are chosen before you go and sent in writing, with the distances, the climb in feet, and the drop and collection points named. If you want a different stage on the morning, you say so at breakfast and it changes.
The third is travelling alone. Both guesthouses keep real single rooms rather than doubles sold with a penalty attached, and the supplement across the nine nights is $290. It is printed here because it is the number you want before you write, not after.
Six cells, one for each obstacle, filled where this trip answers. Read the words below rather than the strip; the strip is a shorthand.
- Somebody will not fly, or not far
- does not. Menorca is an island, and the only arrival that fits inside nine nights is a flight of roughly eight hours to the mainland and another fifty minutes over the water; the boat instead of the second leg runs overnight and takes two of your nine days. What does
- The party moves at two speeds
- does not. Both guesthouses are walk ups with no elevator, the western town is cobbled and steep, and the walking surface is rock, so a party split between a strong walker and someone who cannot do stairs gets split at the front door rather than only on the path. What does
- Nobody has done this before
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- The free weeks are out of season
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- One person travelling
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
The year, stretch by stretch
The figure moves with the month and so does the walking, so here is the whole year with nothing left out of it.
- Mid April to mid May
- Fields still green, flowers along the wall tops, afternoons near 68F and sea at 61F. Roughly half the coastal kitchens are open. Wind is the risk here, not heat. Nine nights at $2,610.
- Mid May to late June
- The stretch this week was drawn for. Afternoons around 75F, sea past 68F, the south coast coves reachable and close to empty on a weekday. Nine nights at $2,890.
- July and August
- Afternoons of 84F to 90F on bare rock with no shade, and forty minutes of waiting for a parking space at the coves. We will place it if you ask and will say plainly that we would not walk it. $3,340.
- Early to mid September
- Sea at its warmest of the year, 78F, air back under 82F, families gone after the second week. Walking is comfortable from the third week and pleasant by the end. $3,050.
- Late September to late October
- The long shoulder, and the reason people who can only travel outside the season come to this island at all. Afternoons 72F, sea 72F, almost everything still open. $2,780.
- Early November
- Doors close in the first week. The light goes low and gold, walking is fine at 66F, and perhaps a third of the kitchens have already shut for winter. $2,610.
- December to March
- The island is not shut but this week is. The guesthouses close, the north wind runs for three and four days at a stretch, and there is no version of it we would place.
The two things that go wrong here
The first is expectation about the path. Six walking days inside nine nights covers six of the twenty-two stages, somewhere between thirty and forty miles of the one hundred and sixteen. People read the figure for the whole circuit, book this, and assume without checking that the two are the same thing. They are not, and the ones who assumed it spend an otherwise good week mildly let down. Walking the entire coastline is a separate proposition of ten to twelve days on foot with a different body under it. If that is what you actually want, write it in the request and we will price that instead of this.
The second is weather and money arriving in the same conversation. The north wind can close the north coast stages for a day, and when it does the answer is a south coast stage instead, not money back. Beyond that: this office takes no payment from you at any point and holds no card number. The reservation sits with the companies that run the trip, on their cancellation terms, and those terms are not identical between the two guesthouses and the driver. All of them go in front of you in writing before you commit to anything, because once you have committed they are simply the terms you have.
The request form below runs 24/7 and never closes. Whatever arrives is read by a person before the end of that working day, and a written figure priced against your particular dates takes two to four working days after that.