Son Bou, Cala en Porter and Fort Marlborough

The wind was cold outside my window. I wondered whether to take along a cossie in case I found a beach with decent weather. I did, just in case.

The first stop was Talatí de Dalt, a prehistoric Menorcan site. It was not open despite the claimed hours. Nobody else was there. I guess they had called it a season. As I was leaving, a hopeful couple in a car arrived.

I drove to Son Bou where the road passes under a natural arch. It's a standard package holiday resort, though a bit more tasteful than previous ones. There were the usual rows of restaurants and shops selling tourist needs. I parked my car in the big lot near the dunes. A flock of ducks saw me and fearlessly advanced towards me.  I dodged. They pursued. Aieee! Now I know what these ducks eat. They eat foolish visitors unprepared with handouts. I could visualise the headline: Tourist quacked to death by ducks. I threw them bits of a chocolate coated palmier and escaped while they were occupied.

Around the corner, another posse of ducks ambushed me. They were in their home territory, a band of wetland behind the beach. At least I was being held up by better looking species of ducks and moorhens here. I gave them the rest of my palmier.

Son Bou's beach was the longest and best that I had seen in Menorca but was deserted due to the poor weather and end of season. There were some families there but for the exercise and the air, not to swim.

A family of feral chickens disappeared into the dunes before I could get more pictures of them.

The rain came down intermittently. I had to vary the wiper speed constantly.  By the time I got to Cala en Porter, it was starting up again so I ducked (sorry) into a shop for a café cortado and to use their toilet.  It started raining ducks and chickens, sorry I mean cats and dogs, and the owner had to poke the awnings with a broom every so often to drain the rainwater that had pooled on them.

When the weather cleared, I took some photos of the beach.  It was actually quite decent, but nobody wanted to be rained on.  So I never got to use my cossies in Menorca. Oh well, at least the weather forecast looked reasonable for the next week.

I drove to Fort Marlborough, to the south of Maó. The fort itself was closed for renovations but the sun was out for this charming little cove which could be mistaken for somewhere in Italy or Greece.

I decided to call it a day as it was late in the afternoon and the diesel was running low. I didn't want to have to fill up to make it to the airport.  When I first started driving in Maó, I wasted a lot of time on the one-way streets, especially near the hostal. After parking I walked around the corner and verified that to reach the short block the hostal was located on, I was forced to either ignore a no entry sign or a no right-turn sign, it was simply impossible to reach there otherwise. I think nobody in town planning realised the quandry they had created.