Mallorca GR221 long distance walk – Part 1 (77km)

 
The GR221 is a network of trails crossing the Sierra de Tramuntana mountain range in Mallorca, Spain. I fell in love with this Island 6 years ago when I was visiting a friend of mine who settled there. Back then I was mainly doing day walks. Then I discovered the GRs, which are long distance walks in France and Spain. This island has two – the GR221 and GR222.

I was invited over for her birthday last December, and it was finally time to try out the GR221,
my first long distance walk abroad, and I hope many others will follow.

My plan was to carry all my food and camp along the way, so I was quite loaded when I started.
I will work on reducing the weight of my pack, but carrying photo and video equipment along does not help. Being a photographer, I find it hard to do without my gear when I am walking through these beautiful places and breath taking vistas. I walked for 4 days, and could not finish it due to other commitments, but will be flying back to finish it next month.

I hope you enjoy this video/slideshow I put together of the photos I shot along the way.
I met people of all ages doing the walk and one was even running it :), so hope that maybe this inspires you to visit this beautiful Mediterranean island and try the walk yourselves.

Special Thanks go to my very good friend Magda who hosted me and drove me from Palma to Port d'Andratx in the early morning and Alvaro for lending me his backpack as I could not fit mine in the luggage. Thanks also to ‘Fairmaid’ on Wandermap.net for uploading a full GPS track of the trail! This was essential, as sometimes you tend to miss a marker and loose precious time following another trail without even noticing it. I would suggest combining this with Maps.me app on your phone. All the trails are clearly marked on their offline maps, so you can decide on an alternative route along the way. Link to the map

While putting together the video, I was curious to learn more about the round platforms, very common along the forest sections of the trail. I found this good blog post about the history of charcoal making on the island dating back to the Moors and possibly even the Romans: https://mallorcaphotoblog.com/2011/11/04/making-charcoal/