Bay Watch

At 8.30 this morning, as I swim out across the millpond still surface of water that might actually be warmer than my bath, there’s a song rattling around my brain. It goes something along the lines of

‘It was thirty years ago today…

…dum di da…

That I first came to Pollenca Bay…’

Now I’ve got to be honest and admit that I can’t be precisely sure that it was thirty years ago to the day that I first came to this island. Thirty years is rather a long time. And some of us don’t have the memory they used to! But it must have been pretty close. Because the first time I came to Puerto Pollenca I was pregnant with my son. And it was September. And he’s going to be thirty in December! (How it manages to be possible that I’ve got a son who is going to be thirty is a whole other question? But we won’t go into that one here!)

So as I was saying… It was thirty years ago that I first came here. My mum and dad were renting a one bedroom apartment behind the Ila d’Or and I came and slept on the sofa-bed for a few days. We did pretty much the same sort of thing we still do today. Wandered into town along a Pine Walk that looked not hugely different to how it does now. Could it have been narrower? My memory says it was. I do know that the path was of beaten earth, with here and there the roots of the pine trees twisting up through the surface. There were certainly no sunbeds or umbrellas on the beach; the villas along the sea front were not so smartly dressed as they are now. Were all the apartment blocks there? Most of them I think.

I do remember that thirty years ago there were boats moored in much closer to the shore, so that when we swam we had to negotiate our way between them. Was the water quite so clear and sparkling in those days? I’m telling myself it’s cleaner now than it used to be. Not all change is unwelcome!

Sis Pins and Miramar – definitely both there; been there a lot longer then I have. Corb Mari was called the Bec Fi – in those days my dad’s favourite restaurant. We used to go to La Lonja for dinner, but the jetty was wooden and we sat at tables by the water’s edge and threw bread to the fish. On the way home after dinner we often stopped at Katy’s Bar (now a private house just after you get to Little Italy) for a late night lamumba. We ate lunch at the Ila d’Or – beaten earth under the pines, plastic chairs and tables, and the bar was built of wood with a straw roof rather like the swanky new beach umbrellas that have appeared on the beaches this year. The food in those days was simple: squid, sardines, tortilla. But the white painted hotel was as quietly elegant as ever and the view from the bar at sunset was – as it still is today – impossible to beat.

So there have been a few changes. Which in thirty years is inevitable. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is the way that the water of Pollenca Bay has stayed blue and beautiful and better than anywhere else in the world.

I wish I could show you some pictures of what it used to look like. Unfortunately back then I was more interested in taking pictures of my family than the view. But for those that are interested here are a selection of more recent pictures taken at various times of the day from various locations around the bay.