Mallorca

There are two Mallorcas, and the resorts are the one nobody serious means. The other runs down the west coast along the Serra de Tramuntana, where the mountains drop into the sea and Deià sits in the folds of them, the village where writers and artists came to disappear and largely managed it. Palma keeps an old town and a cathedral that earn an afternoon; Cap de Formentor is the road to the end of the island; and in February the almond trees blossom across the whole of it. It is the same island as the package brochures, and nothing like them.

We fly here because the people who already knew: the sailing crowd, the German quiet-money set, were never the ones at the resorts. An island this close to London has no business still keeping a coast this unbothered, and the Tramuntana is the reason it does. The best-kept secrets hide behind the obvious, and Mallorca has been doing it for years.