Sineu

The Wednesday traffic jam starts at 08:45. Not with cars, but with wheelbarrows. Farmers from the surrounding plain roll them through Sineu's stone gates, chickens flapping in the wire baskets, rabbits blinking in the sun. By 09:30 the square smells of almond blossom and manure—an unlikely combination that tells you, immediately, this isn't the coastal Mallorca most Brits know.

Sineu sits dead-centre of the island at 145 metres above sea level. That modest altitude is enough to shave three degrees off Palma's summer heat and add them back in winter, when the Tramuntana peaks glitter with snow 30 kilometres away. The difference matters: August here is bearable without air-conditioning; January mornings can dip to 3 °C and catch out villa renters expecting eternal sunshine.

A market that predates the United Kingdom

Records for the weekly market go back to 1306, making it older than the Act of Union. What began as a royal concession still functions much the same: livestock at the top end, produce in the middle, household tat along the cloister. The animal section is the draw—penned pigs, sheep, even the occasional horse—though photographers sometimes miss the point. Locals aren't performing heritage; they're buying dinner. Prices are scrawled on scraps of cardboard: conill €8/kg, pollastre vivo €6. If the handwriting is shaky, that's because the seller is 82 and has been doing this since Franco was in short trousers.

Serious shoppers arrive before nine. By eleven the place is grid-locked with pushchairs and selfie sticks; by two the square is hosed down and the cafés have run out of ensaimada. Miss the window and you'll see a perfectly pleasant medieval village, but not the organised chaos that keeps the town on the map.

Walking rings around the plain

The old centre is walkable in twenty minutes if you stride like a German rambler, but that misses the point. Every alley peels off into something worth seeing: a Gothic portal propped open to reveal a lemon tree and a motorbike, a bakery selling coques de trempó (a sort of Majorcan pizza) for €2.50, a convent whose nuns sell biscuits through a revolving wooden hatch. Ring the bell, state your order, money goes in, biscuits come out—no eye contact, no small talk, pure efficiency.

Outside the walls the land flattens into the Pla, a chessboard of almond and carob groves stitched together by camí tracks. Cycling is almost too easy: gradients rarely top two per cent, tarmac gives way to graded grit, and the only hazards are hedgehogs and the occasional loose goat. Head north-east for 7 km and you reach Lloret de Vistalegre's single-bar village; south-west for 9 km delivers the wine cellars of Santa Maria. Both rides finish with an unavoidable cortado—no one leaves a Spanish village without caffeine and gossip.

Summer hikers should start early. By 11 a.m. the Pla's heat haze turns the horizon into a watery mirage and the only shade is underneath a century-old olive. Spring is kinder: the almond blossom arrives late February, followed by a brief but furious display of wild tulips along the field edges. Winter walkers need layers—morning frost burns off by eleven, but the wind that barrels down from the Serra can knife through a fleece.

What lands on the plate

Sineu's restaurants don't do tasting menus; they do lunch. Celler Bar on Carrer Major still occupies the town's old wine store, stone vats now converted into booths. Order the frito mallorquín—lamb liver, lung and potato hacked small and fried with onion, bay and enough pepper to wake the dead. It arrives sizzling in an earthenware dish the size of a satellite dish; two people rarely finish it. Price: €14, bread included.

For lighter appetites the market stalls assemble pa amb oli to order: crusty roll split, rubbed with tomato and garlic, topped with ramallet tomatoes and a slab of mahón cheese. Cost: €3. Eat it leaning against the 14th-century church wall and you'll understand why Majorcans rate bread and oil as a national dish.

Evenings are quiet. Most kitchens shut 3-8 p.m.; the exceptions are two British-owned bars on the square who'll serve you a burger if you insist, though the local police still find it hilarious that anyone wants dinner at six. Better to embrace the siesta, re-emerge at nine, and join the townspeople for copa under the plane trees. A glass of local rosat costs €3.50; the people-watching is free.

Getting stuck (and unstuck)

Public transport exists but demands patience. The train to Palma trundles twice an hour, taking 50 minutes and costing €4. From Plaça d'Espanya it's a 20-minute airport bus, total journey about 1 h 20 min—fine for a 14:30 departure, nerve-wracking for 07:00. Car hire remains the sensible option; Sineu is 30 minutes from PMI airport on the Ma-15, assuming you don't meet a tractor hauling hay.

Parking logic is simple: if you can see the church, you're already too close. Use the signposted industrial estate on the ring-road—five minutes' flat walk and you won't spend 25 minutes reversing out of a medieval gateway while a queue of septuagenarians watches in amusement. Wednesday visitors should arrive before 09:00; after that you're parking in the almond groves with everyone else.

The catch

Sineu is not undiscovered. Coach parties from Peguera and Magalluf roll in on market day, releasing 50 Germans with long lenses who block the alleys for 20 minutes then retreat to the coach. Their footprint is brief but irritating. Stay overnight and the town reverts to residents; stay a week and the butcher will remember your name, but you'll also notice the bins are emptied at 06:15 to the sound of reversing beeps.

Accommodation is thin on the ground. There are three small hotels, a handful of legal rural lets, and a cottage industry of British-owned villas on the outskirts. Book early for April-May and September-October; outside those windows you'll find space but not necessarily atmosphere—August is half-empty as locals flee to the coast, January feels like a closed set.

Worth the detour?

If your Mallorca checklist is beaches and nightlife, stay on the coast. Sineu offers something narrower but deeper: a functioning agricultural town whose rhythms haven't bent completely to tourism. Come with a bicycle or good walking shoes, an appetite for offal, and a willingness to sit still. The reward is the sight of an island still keeping its own hours, where market day is not a theme-park turn but the weekly pulse of a community that, for the moment, still outnumbers the visitors.