You can drive the Serra de Tramuntana end to end in just over two hours. The mistake is doing exactly that. It is ninety kilometres of bends between sea and mountain, and the difference between a good day and a bad one is not how many places you see, but what time you reach each of them.
First thing: the villages, before the coaches
Start in Valldemossa. At nine in the morning it is a village of golden stone with the lanes to yourself; by midday it is another thing entirely. The old town is a restricted-traffic zone, so leave the car at the entrance and walk up: twenty minutes, and no hurry worth having.
Carry on to Deià, twelve kilometres of road hung above the sea. The village appears whole from the bend as you arrive, stepped against the Teix. If you want to go down to its cove, check the parking first: the council regulates access to the area and closes it in season.
Mid-morning: the Sóller valley
Sóller is the day’s breathing space: a valley of orange groves closed in by mountains, with a square, a café and shade. From there the 1913 tram runs down to Port de Sóller in twenty minutes — real public transport, not an attraction. If you came by car, leave it and get on: the valley looks different from the tram.
Five kilometres away, Fornalutx has not one level street. You climb stone staircases between houses with painted roof tiles. Twenty minutes, and you remember it for years.
Afternoon: the road everyone talks about
From Sóller to the Lluc Sanctuary is a long hour through the heart of the mountains, the Puig Major always in view. Lluc is a high valley of holm oaks, and by mid-afternoon it is quiet.
Then the descent to Sa Calobra: fourteen kilometres of bends, nine hundred metres of drop and a full 360-degree loop. If driving it doesn’t appeal, there is a better option: the boat from Port de Sóller, which also spares you the parking — regulated, with licence-plate control.
One piece of advice against the grain: if the day is busy, swap Sa Calobra for Cala Tuent, off the same turning. A hundred and eighty metres of unbuilt beach with the mountain overhead. It is what Sa Calobra was before it became famous.
