Talatí de Dalt. 2022.

Continuing with my intention of revisiting all the T shaped monuments called 'Taula' on the island, this afternoon I went to Talatí de Dalt.

At the entrance to the ruins of Talatí de Dalt there is a talayot. The structure of the settlement is divided into the public area, with a sanctuary and central taula, and the private area, with houses and hypostyle chambers (storage rooms). This taula is unusual in that it is balanced against a column which must have fallen against it accidentally, but which is still in equilibrium today.

Taula Sanctuary

The finds located during the excavations shed light on the trype of diet people had by then. The study of the bones that were found gives us informations about what the inhabitants of this settlement had.

Storage chambers

Goats. For meat and milk.

Sheep. Their wool was posibly used to produce textiles.

Pigs. Their fat was very important since olive oil was not produced in Menorca yet in this period.

Oxen. Possibly used as draught animals for transportation and plowing.

Cows. For meat and milk to make cheese. 

Na Beltrana

 

Another of the prehistoric religious sites called Taulas. This one in Ferreries. In a farm called Na Beltrana

Sant Joan d'es Vergers.

According to the Menorcan Chronicle, King Alfonso III, after a bloody battle against the Muslims, let his army to rest in a place called Pla des Vergers, only a few miles from the Hotel, and ordered two masses to be sung: one in honor of the Virgin Mary as symbol of the new era begins for the island within the Christianity and the other one for the souls of the killed in battle. Over time, a chapel to San Juan Bautista would be built in this place. This was built in the 14th or 15th centuries, since the construction system corresponds to the Levantine Gothic. 

 

 In the middle of the 16th century there was a brotherhood of San Juan in Mahón that annually organized a parade to the chapel to celebrate the Baptist festival. This was held until well into the 19th century.

The little church has undergone many reforms throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. According to Archduke Lluís Salvador, the current church is the result of a restoration in 1712. It is a small building, with a single nave covered with a simple ribbed vault and divided into two sections by an ogival arch. It does not have side chapels and the vault discharges on two exterior buttresses. The interior decoration is very sober. The 19th century façade is a body added to the nave with a slightly pointed arch that gives access to a small portico covered with a pointed vault. This is topped with a belfry. On the access portal there is a small window with the openwork Maltese cross.

I hope this could also be the beginning of something new and the end of this pandemic that would be left behind.

The stone cross at Barranc d'Algendar

When Dr Camps wrote this story in 1910, he commented that it had already happened many years ago.

 
The fact is that in an undetermined time in the middle of 1800 there was a man in the town of Ferreries who was said to be able to talk to the birds and who use to make remedies with herbs that he collected from the wild fields that wade through the ravine.

 
On one occasion in the middle of a winter, he left town. Some said that to catch a nest of real hawks, others that to collect a plant called "Jew's beard", the fact is that he did not return to town that night, and it became a stormy night

 
The next morning he was found dead at the foot of the rock from which he had clearly fallen off.

 
And even when many stories circulated through the town as a result of the people superstition at that time, their parents ordered the erection of a stone cross that even today, almost 200 years later, appears among the almost insurmountable exuberant vegetation at the bottom of the ravine.

 

 

Wryneck

 Not a common bird in Menorca, but some of them can be seen every year in the migratory pass in September.

 

 

The Eurasian wryneck or northern wryneck (Jynx torquilla) is a species of wryneck in the woodpecker family. These birds get their English name from their ability to turn their heads through almost 180 degrees.

Sa Torre Vella - The Old Tower.

I have always liked the old country houses of Menorca.
 
Built hundreds of years ago using the poor resources offered by the agricultural environment on the island. Many times the main element of its architecture is limestone rudimentary extracted from the rock of the soil. They saw times of good harvest and many others of misery and suffering, as can be deduced from the defensive elements that can be seen in some of them.

Photographed "Sa Torre Vella" in Alayor in 1987. It was still active but a holding that housed the old tower had deteriorated so much over the years that could barely be intuited and during the years that followed fell, like so many other farms of Menorca in the abandonment
 
Today, the Fontanille Group has restored the old houses and turned them into a select hotel away from the mundane noise where the charm of the old rural architecture can still be appreciated. Hundreds of years later.

Starlings

Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are winter visitors in Menorca. We do not see any in the rest of the year, but since October til February or March there are thousands of them who reach the island covering the sky with forming flocks that become authentic clouds dancing capriciously especially late in the afternoon.

Picture taken by Barbara Salva near Son Bou.

Ses Aubertones

Ses Aubertones is the name of an old farmhouse which already appears named in some seventeen hundreds's maps.

Erodium reichardii is an endemism plant on the botanical family Geraniaceae that grows only in Mallorca and Menorca.

Nature claims its own

For many decades, in Algendar Canyon, a place of excessive beauty, there were some mills that took advantage of the flow of the small river to grind cereal.

People lived in that unusually fertile area and there were some inhabited houses and caves. Little remains of that time. Some properties have been rehabilitated as exclusive residential homes and some other areas have become orchards of fruit trees.

The mills, like the one in this picture have been lost in disuse and the land they one occupied has been slowly colonized again by Nature.

 

April

Bike riding through derelicted farms

The countryside in Menorca has languished for many years. Since agriculture stopped being a profitable business and many of the farms opted for extensive livestock. Cows, which produce milk with which a quality cheese is manufactured that is consumed on the island and exported to many places both in our country and abroad.

Many of these farms seem to be abandoned for the simple reason that no one lives in them and soon they become ruined buildings, away from the bustle of when they were inhabited by families of farmers.

Bellver Nou

 Biniparratxet

El Rio de la Plata

In the 1800s and early 1900s, some properties on the island were acquired by "Indianos": emigrants  from Menorca who, after making their fortune in distant places, returned to the island to live from their savings. On many occasions, as in this one, they put names on their properties that evoked those places to which they had emigrated.

Rio de la Plata is the estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay and Paraná Rivers on the Southeastern coastline of South America.

Mahon town again lost under the fog

There it is, fog, atmospheric moisture still uncertain in destination, not quite weather and not altogether mood, yet partaking of both.

 Accurate words of Hal Borland.

 Beautiful picture by Sandra Pons.

Camí de Cavalls. Binigaus, Cala Escorxada.

In a splendid morning of January we have completed the stage of the coastal path that goes from Santo Tomás to Cala Escorxada.

The route always passes near the sea, through pine groves, rocky trails and cliffs. It is not difficult and in just over an hour and a half we have reached our goal that was Cala Escorxada -very lonely at this time of year- and found a paleontological site of what I had read, but I had never seen before.

 Cala Escorxada

Binigaus

 Gastropod fossil on the rocks near Escorxada.

What is this I found on the beach? is it a mermaid's purse?

The enchantingly named structures are the egg cases of skates and some sharks. This is why they are also known as skate cases.

While some sharks bear live young, some sharks (and all skates) release their embryos in leathery egg cases that have horns and sometimes long tendrils at each corner.

The tendrils allow them to anchor to seaweeds or other substrates. Each egg case contains one embryo. The case is made up of a material that is a combination of collagen and keratin, so a dried egg case feels similar to a fingernail.

Barranc d'Algendar and the story of "Es Capitanet"

Barranc d'Algendar, in Ferreries.

 One of the nicest walking routes in Menorca.

Es Barranc d'Algendar is a wonderful place in the area of the south of Menorca. There are few legends and stories that are hidden among the majestic vegetation and cliffs. Stories of distant times, lost pirates, looting, mysterious animals, lovely ladies ... There are many topics and stories, but there is one that arouses a special interest: the story of Jaume Soler Adrover, popularly known as "Es Capitanet".

"Es capitanet" which is a diminutive of captain that was applied as a consequence of his short stature was a very peculiar person. Is is believed that he was born in Ibiza and in Majorca is where his military career started, he bravely fought in the Carlist Wars in Catalonia and after having made a small fortune he came to Menorca where he married a woman from Ciutadella and bought the farm called S'Aranjassa in Es Barranc d'Algendar.

 An old picture of S'aranjassa. Might be taken while "Es Capitanet" was still alive.

Those who knew him, say that over the years, he lost his mind and saw enemies where there was nobody, and so, sometimes he was seen fighting with his sword in the middle of a path against .. .no one.

This situation got worse with the years and even more after his wife passed away. Then, his extreme religiosity was added his undoubted belief in reencarnation and also in the witches that he claimed were watching him.

When he felt close to dying he did not want to make a will in favor of his distant relatives -the couple never had children-, nor did he want to give his belongings to the Church in case he returned from his grave, so he finally wrote a document in which he agreed the Bishopric of Menorca could use in the following 400 years his estates S'Aranjassa and Es Canalo, (which, incidentally, was another farm that he had won to another farmer playing cards in a stormy night), but the two farms had to remain under his name, so he could recover them in case he came back.

Es Canalo.

Jaume Soler "Es Capitanet" passed away in 1922, so the Bishopric of Menorca can use the farms but not sell them. Not in the next 304 years as he might come back to claim for them. Today, both properties are carrying out enviromental education activities for children and teenagers.

Tot-Lluc

Tot-Lluc is one of the oldest farms in Menorca. It probably dates from the 11th century, when Menorca was part of the Ummayad Caliphate, because when the island was conquered by King Jaime there was already an estate here with a variant of that name.

The facade has two unequal arches and a curious system of inverted tiles to collect rainwater and channel it to a cistern.

On the grounds of this farm there is a cave with prehistoric petroglyphs representing boats.
I have only seen them in photography, never in person, but if this magnificent time is maintained next week, I will try to dedicate a day to find that cave.

Purple Swamphen

Purple Swamphen, Porphyrio porphyrio, also known as Sultana Bird, is a rare bird breading in Menorca in the last years with its large feet, bright plumage and red bill and frontal shield is easily recognisable in its native range.

 Photographer: Barbara Salva.

Romans kept purple swamphens as decorative birds at large villas and expensive houses. They were regarded as noble birds and were among the few birds that Romans did not eat. A purple swamphen is depicted at the bottom of the famous garden fresco from Pompeii.

Plinii the Elder already (AD 23 – AD 79), mentioned in his work Naturalis Historia that either Majorca and Menorca provided the Romans with those birds.

Sanitja and Malva Sylvestris.

The Sanitja port or Sanisera is a natural port located next to the old roman town Sansiera. The port is in the Caballeria cape and it has an approximately lenght of 800 meters and very little depth which represent a perfect shelter against Tramuntana wind for boats.

The port isn’t very exploited and you can barely see few little wooden boats during high season. The entrance to the port used to be very protected by the Sanitja Tower, a british Tower of Defense built of stone and mortar in 1801. The inside of the tower can’t be visited because over time, it has deteriorated significantly and it’s almost demolished.

The scientific name, Malva sylvestris, is just as lovely as this flowering plant in the Malva genus, and is more popularly known as high mallow or common mallow. This plant is often found in fields and hedgerows and has a striking purple flower. It is native to western Europe, but has spread to portions of the Mediterranean and northern Africa, and has been imported to much of the English-speaking world. 

 The flowers and leaves of this unique herb are used for medicinal purposes, particularly in topical applications as a pain reliever.

Spooky weather

Several tornadoes lashed last Saturday the west coast of the island and Cala Galdana. Fortunately there were no injured people but many trees plucked and small boats sunk

San Gabriel

The charm of derelict places.

Mussuptá de Sa Talaia

One of the nine farms that have that name that has an unmistakable Arabic phonetic root and that, therefore, before the Spanish reconquest of the island, that is to say, more than 700 years ago, there was already in this area an extensive farm named Mussuptá.

It seems that winter is coming to its end and some changes are already perceived.