Cala Morlanda

Cala Morlanda is a rocky cove on the Manacor coast, between Porto Cristo and s'Illot. There is no sand: you get into the water off the rock, and the row of low houses reaches the very edge of the cliff.

It is tiny. The outline recorded in OpenStreetMap measures barely ninety metres from end to end —seventy-seven east to west, sixty north to south— and it is wedged between two arms of low ochre rock. The bottom is pale and the water looks turquoise from above. It is not a sandy beach: OpenStreetMap classes it as a gravel beach, and that is what you see — flat rock and natural steps that people jump in from. Above, right at the cliff edge, a handful of one- and two-storey houses; not a single block.

It is less than a kilometre from s'Illot and less than two from the beach at sa Coma, the two large beaches on this stretch. The difference is one of scale: there, a wide strand and a line of hotels; here, a ninety-metre cove with low houses. For anyone looking for coast in Manacor without the volume of the resort centres, that contrast ten minutes away is the argument.