| Magic Roundabout |
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The island of Ibiza has an abundance of tranquil corners for the visitor to explore – if you know where to look. Bob Morrison shares his secret route through the hidden valleys of the Central Sierras. When visiting the island for short trips, early and late in the season, I use the northeast resort of Es Canar as my base and hire a car to get around. However, on cooler days, I often go for a long countryside hike, or hire a mountain bike for the day to off the beaten track and explore the real Eivissa. ?One of my favourite trips is a circular journey up into the Central Sierras, through a hidden valley that even many beachside residents don’t know exists, and back to the northwest coast, finishing at my favourite tapas bar in the village of Sant Carles (I will use Ibicencan place names throughout, as those are what you will see on rural road signs). The starting point is the ferry jetty opposite the resort bakery beneath the Las Arenas hotel. Run by the Colomar family for over fifty years, Las Arenas is a homely place with a popular open-air restaurant and has qualified it as my choice for short break stays for many years. ?Keeping Es Canar beach on the right, head north on the main road for just under a kilometre, until the road bends left towards Santa Eularia. Here a right fork takes you on the old road towards Sant Carles. For the next two kilometres the road runs mostly through fertile agricultural land, where vegetables are being grown on the right and olives and carob on the left. ?The rising ground on the left is Puig de s’Argentera, which, as the names suggests, was once home to the island’s famous silver mine. On reaching the roundabout on the Santa Eularia to Sant Carles road, pass straight over. Deep in the trees on the left is La Morna College, a very popular English curriculum school. The route now crosses the broad, flat Morna valley, which locals call the fruit basket of Eivissa. Less than two kilometres from the roundabout, and only five from the start point, the Sa Plana citrus grove blocks the way, on the other side of the bar of a T-junction. A left turn here, following the grove for a couple of hundred metres, brings you to an orange seller’s hut, where a right turn reveals a camino (rough track) heading northwest towards the Sierras. For another kilometre, this camino takes you straight, through abundant olive, walnut and carob trees with sheep grazing beneath until suddenly it starts to rise, following a watercourse up into the hills. The ground on either side climbs steeply and pine trees start to block out the sun, as the track meanders up to the first of two hairpins, with terracing that supposedly goes back to Venetian times still visible either side. This stretch is the only steep climb on the route, and all but the fittest cyclist may decide to push their bikes instead, but when the top is reached, one steps into a world that seems a hundred kilometres away from the tourist resorts rather than just seven. By my reckoning, the track is about 265 metres (870 feet) above sea level, with wonderful views back to Es Canar. The paths now diverge around a large, green, circular, corrugated steel firefighter’s water tank. Take the left fork, which drops under the dense forest canopy as it descends into the hidden valley. From this point, as long as high ground is on the left and the valley floor on right, the traveller really can’t go wrong. ?Sometimes the camino runs deep into the forest, but it frequently breaks out into the open, assaulting the eyes with superb vistas. Most of the time, nothing can be heard except the wind and the birds, and, if you are lucky, one of the rare Eleonora falcons can be spotted wheeling in the blue skies above. But every so often the burble of a generator reminds the walker that the patches of white on the hillside are smallholdings and farms. As the crow flies, the route through the hidden valley is only about a kilometre and a half long, though as it is twisty, one actually travels almost half as much again before reaching the next waypoint. ?Just before a property called Can Botigues, the track splits, with one leg doubling back to the left in a tight hairpin, leading to the main road and then Sant Joan de Labritja. My route heads in the opposite direction, towards Sant Vicent. From Can Botigues, where the track passes over another saddle of high ground and then bears left, the route leads to the main road (PM-811), which is only two or three hundred metres to the north at this point. Following the most prominent tyre tracks, made by those little white Seat vans that just about every Spanish farmer seems to use to take his crops to market and the family to church on Sunday, takes you there. Once out on the road, it pays to be a little wary of the traffic as the carriageway is not particularly wide, though out of the high season traffic flow is fairly minimal. The road now drops for a little over three kilometres down to the tiny resort of Cala de Sant Vicent, which incidentally has some good restaurants along the short seafront. But before this the parish church, on a little hill on the left, is well worth a visit. Sometimes I break my journey in the resort for lunch, but more usually I take the road back to Sant Carles, where the traditional tapas and cold beer at Bar Aneta is a strong magnet. ?From Sant Vicent to Sant Carles, the circular trip follows the main road, if you can call any roads in the north of the island main. For the first couple of kilometres the sea is off to the left, sometimes visible and sometimes not, before the road heads inland again through agricultural land for another three kilometres. Shortly after turning right at the T-junction, the road crosses a saddle of high ground, bears left and drops into Sant Carles. In the second half of the sixties, when the sons of wealthy American families were sent to Spain to dodge the Vietnam draft, Sant Carles became the centre of Eivissa’s hippy community and a little bit of it lingers on to this day. Aneta used to own the cafe bar in the village centre, opposite the church, which also doubles as the mail sorting office. Today, brothers Tony and Vincent run the establishment, from about seven thirty in the morning until the early hours. It is still where the local agricultural workers go for their morning hit of muddy coffee and glass of hierbas, the famed Ibicencan liqueur that some claim is the elixir of life. Post for the surrounding area is also delivered here, making the bar the community focal point. The kitchen also has a reputation for traditional cooking that is second to none on the island. After recharging the batteries, a visit to the local museum of country life, housed in a traditional finca (farmhouse) just a couple of hundred metres south of the village centre, is an absolute must before heading back to Es Canar. The final lap follows the road to Santa Eularia for 1,500 metres, until the roundabout crossed earlier, where a left turn leads back to the resort. ?This journey covers less than 25 kilometres (15 miles), but I guarantee that those who follow it will see parts of the island and its way of life that 99 per cent of holidaymakers don’t even realise exists. |
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