Oh, journey to Mallorca, shall we count the ways in which you can fuck right off? Trespassers on the line meant trains were severely delayed or just outright cancelled. Last time this happened we were trying to get from Brighton to London to see a comedy show and all trains just terminated at Gatwick. We ended up spunking £120 on a taxi to get us the rest of the way so we didn’t miss the show. Ironically I found and disposed of the tickets to that show that very morning during a tidy-up, I must have released the All Trains Are Bastards demon in the process. We ended up leaving the train at Stalybridge and getting an Uber the rest of the way. That’s okay though, these things happen and we got there in the end.

Our Jet2 flight was delayed by an hour, then two absolutely hammered women were denied boarding for glaringly obvious reasons and we had to wait whilst they got their bags from the belly of the plane. Maybe don’t repeatedly announce to the airport how drunk you are whilst unsubtly blowing your vape smoke into your handbag and hoping no one will notice? Just before we were about to leave a bloke decided that actually flying was probably the most terrifying thing in the world and disembarked. Turns out when this shit happens the cabin crew have to make sure everything in the overhead bins belongs to someone on the flight. I don’t know what cabin crew get paid but it’s not enough, I swear! But again, I can’t remember the last time we took a flight that wasn’t delayed. That’s just air travel in a late stage capitalist world, you have to plan delays into your trip.

Finally though, about 90 of your Earth minutes later than scheduled, we were tearing through the sky in a pressurised metal tube en route to sunny Mallorca where it was actually shitting down with rain. This is what happens when you opt for shoulder season, kids, and to be fair the weather doesn’t usually bother us too much. We were just happy to be away. It was around 1am local time by this point so we were looking forward to getting on the transfer coach that Jet2 had lovingly arranged for us, except their transfer company had decided they weren’t sending any more coaches. Well actually fuck you then. Fuck you with a pineapple. In fairness Jet2 did lead the hoard of angry, tired tourists to the taxi rank with instructions to give the receipt to the rep (because when you book a package holiday you get a rep) for a full refund.

We’ve never booked a package like this before, usually we just work it all out ourselves, we thought a package might just be way less stressful but so far my stress levels are probably higher than they were when we left the fucking house. Well it’s been a fun experiment but I’ll do all my own booking going forward, thankyouverymuch. At least I’ve only myself to silently and Britishly seethe at if it all goes tits up. None of this is Jet2’s fault in all fairness to them and at least the bonus of having the Jet2 staff on hand was that they solved the problem for us and we didn’t have to do any actual thinking at an hour when the most I’m usually capable of is drooling.

Sunday

Anyway. We knew we’d be tired Sunday even if everything had gone swimmingly so it’s not like our plans to jog the entire circumference of the island were scuppered or anything. In fact our rainy-day plan of “drink beer and eat food” was achievable even with minimal brain cell function so, after a quick excursion to Lidl to stock our cute little kitchen for the week because despite us dipping our toes into the world of package holidays we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to go all-inclusive and potentially miss out on all those local restaurants, we strolled along the seafront in the light rain.

Cheap but actually quite decent beers were consumed. Estrella Damm seems to be the go-to here and whilst it’s simply a generic lager it’s not hideous at all and I’m not devastated at the €2.50 price tag either. All attempts to wow people with our really quite awful Spanish were met with English (or, more commonly, German) responses because we were in that kind of place, where “Spanish” is just slow, loud English suffixed with a triumphant “por favor“. Not our Spanish of course, we’re both making a real effort to learn the language so our Spanish is actually Spanish. Whether it’s understood through our questionable accents though is entirely another thing.

We did end up at a restaurant called La Gramola on our meander where our butchery of the Spanish language was cheerfully tolerated by the busiest waiter I’ve ever seen. Poor bastard seemed to be running the floor in a full restaurant on his own. We were only going to have a drink but they had the cured leg of something dead on display and the waiter was periodically shaving bits off it for people to apply to their facehole. I’m a sucker for shit like this.

Turns out this is jamón ibérico which is from the Black Iberian pig, and if it’s not you can’t call it that. Go on then, señor, bring me wafer thin bits of pig corpse because it looks banging. We also had patatas bravas, which is just potatoes with some manner of spicy sauce, just to say we had a vaguely balanced meal. I have no idea what this salsa brava is but I imagine it is conjured from the blood of angels mixed with olive oil because, y’know, Mediterranean. It’s fucking gorgeous but I feel like any attempts to recreate it at home just wouldn’t be the same.

All we were good for after that was falling asleep on the beach because the sun had made an appearance so that’s exactly what we did because if you don’t slightly burn on the first day of your sunny holiday are you even British? Yeah okay, I could probably get used to this “actually going on holiday” thing rather than just, y’know, packing my whole life in a 40 litre backpack to trawl around the cheapest countries I can find for extended periods of time.

Monday

If diving is available at any given destination I’m probably going to willingly part with significant sums of dolla dolla bills in order to spend an hour or two at 18 metres under water, breathing bubbles all over marine life even if I know all I’m going to see is a couple of fish and some rocks. I’d booked with Albatros Diving, they duly picked me up from our hotel in the morning, kitted me up in their finest neoprene, then we were bundled onto a boat to go to the first dive site.

I do not like boats. No, wait, my beef is not with the actual boat, it’s with the fucking waves underneath the bloody thing rocking it all over the place, convincing my ridiculous brain that it’s being poisoned. I’ll take a tablet for longer trips but travel sickness tablets do have a way of melting the sections of your brain responsible for basic motor functions and I can usually tolerate up to twenty minutes on a boat. It was only about ten minutes later when we dropped anchor, kitted ourselves up and yeah, I really needed to not be on this moving floor right now.

I was alright once I was in, once I’m not bobbing around the urge to make everyone in the vicinity very aware of what I had for breakfast in the grossest possible way does tend to subside. We descended and pointed our faces at the sparse marine life. I examined the rocks for nudis and eels, the site was called Moray Eel Bank so I was hoping to catch sight of at least one of the toothy little fuckers, but alas, aside from a couple of seastars I didn’t see much life.

Still a good dive though, at least until the end when I started feeling sick again which wasn’t fucking fair given I wasn’t anywhere near the damn boat. By the time I surfaced I was feeling pretty rotten. I glared at the source of my misery as it happily lurched around. Yeah nah, I can’t get back on that thing. The guys were really nice about it to be fair, they let me take my gear off in the water and threw me a life ring attached to the boat and I just hung out in the water until I had to get back on board to move. It was only around the corner, I managed to retain my stomach contents if not my dignity, and me and the life ring got reacquainted for the rest of the surface interval.

They let me kit up in the water which was a lot harder than I remember it being, but then I think the last time I did this was as part of a course and I was probably thinner and fitter, and most definitely younger. I probably got to about six metres when I decided to abort the dive. I’ve never puked into a regulator though I’ve seen it done, and whilst I’m sure every fish within a ten metre radius would flock to my face it’s really not something I want to try. I was escorted to the surface, my gear was removed and handed to the boat captain and I swam to a little stony beach they told me about to feel very sorry for myself. Well that was shit. I napped for a bit, I really did feel terrible, then swam back to the boat to cling onto my life ring.

I met Tarrant back in Cala Bona where the dive shop is based and we strolled back to the hotel where I promptly lay on the sofa and drooled unceremoniously into that for a bit. Sorry about your lovely sofa, Mar Blau. I definitely wasn’t well, whether it was just seasickness or something else I’ve no idea but the rest of the day was a write off for me. Usually, when I get seasick, I’m pretty much okay once I’m not on the boat any more but this had followed me to sweet, sweet dry land so maybe I was actually a bit poorly. Tarrant made us some dinner and we got an early night to ready ourselves for the serious business of being absolute tourists.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Cala Millor, Sant Llorenç des Cardassar // Cala Bona, Son Severa, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

Stayed at: HM Mar Blau, Sa Coma

Useful shit to know…

• We booked everything with Jet2 including our insurance. There were cheaper options but we wanted a nicer hotel and a flight home that landed at a saner hour so we paid a bit more.
• I absolutely recommend Albatros Diving in Cala Bona. They’ll pick you up from your hotel and they’re a friendly, professional outfit. Despite the fact aborting the second dive was my choice, they didn’t charge me for it.
• Tarrant caught the bus from Sa Coma to Cala Bona. Both the 424 and the 425 ply the route between Sa Coma and Cala Bona, you can use Google Maps to get the times and locations of the bus stops.
• The easiest way to pay on the bus is to use your contactless card to tap on and off the bus. You can use one bank card for us to five people and it gets cheaper the more people you tap on/off for. If you tap on for three people you must tap off three times too. You can also pay cash and this is slightly more expensive.
• It cost €1.80 to get from Sa Coma to Cala Bona by bus, one way.
• English and German are widely spoken here. Germans are very well catered for. Sports bars show the Bundesliga, and it’s easy to find German language newspapers.
• You can rent sunbeds, parasols and lockers along the beaches from Sa Coma to Cala Bona. The prices pictured below are correct as of September 2024. We never actually hired them in the end so I don’t know if card is accepted or if it’s cash only.