Winter Sunshine in Mahon

After decades of cold, wet, northern winters David and I are enjoying the warmth of Mahon, capital of the Spanish Mediterranean island of Menorca.

It is a new day and another sunny one. It is also time to replenish our food supplies. A few yards up the quay from our berth there is a small square. From there a flight of wide, white stone steps takes you up to the town. It is lined with feathery pines and palm trees and its borders are still bright with summer flowers even though it is now November. As you stand at the top, to let the muscle spasms in your legs and the rasping in your lungs subside, you can enjoy an unimpeded view of the harbor. It is only the second time you climb these steps that you think to count them there are 153 and realize with relief that you are actually fitter than you thought.

At the top of this flight of steps is a steep, narrow, irregular-shaped village square. At its far end is a Carmelite church huge, square, stone and locked. Beside it is a flight of steps up to another square building, unmarked but not unlike a town hall. Its entrance is busy with people going in and out. Remembering yesterday's blunder into the Department of Social Security, which we had mistaken for a supermarket, we enter with caution.

It turns out to be the cloisters of the church next door, complete with stone columns and classical capitals. An escutcheon on one of the columns dates it from the 1770s. It is a beautiful building in the process of being renovated as a very up-market market hall. There are stalls along one side, for fruit, vegetables and flowers, and one corner is ablaze with great maroon chrysanthemums, white daisies and pots of green herbs.

While a friendly woman serves us fruit and vegetables, she explains how many English words along with those of every other occupier of this island over the centuries combine with Catalan and Spanish to form the island's unique Menorquin language. Opposite her stall are small, specialist shops: one for red meat, one for poultry and another for cheese. I indicate a large slice from a huge, delicious-looking cheese. Fortunately the man says tentatively, 'Butter?' before he starts cutting and then guides me to something that really is cheese.

A few doors down from the market is a bread shop. Not a baker's, more an odd jumble of a shop, not only selling bread but bits of grocery, soft drinks and mineral water. And on the right-hand side of its counter, in a glass case, are the most heavenly creme caramels, the first we have encountered since leaving northern France. Across the square is an old-fashioned bottle shop with modestly-priced wines and a cheerful, elderly lady behind the counter.

At the bottom of the square is the fish market which, from outside its high green gates, looks more like a luxury villa than a fish market. It is single-storey cream stucco with a terracotta roof, and built around an open courtyard where the fish is delivered each morning and the empty trays are washed ready for return in the afternoon. The long low rooms around the courtyard contain the stalls where the local women sell the fish their menfolk have caught. On the wall behind many of them hangs a painting of the family fishing boat. The fish is very fresh and very reasonably priced.

We amble away from the old square laden with fish, fruit, vegetables, cheese, fresh bread, wine and a couple of orgasmic cr�me caramel pastries. Mindful of the climb needed to get back up here if we have forgotten anything, David pauses at the top of the long flight of steps. Raising the shopping bags he is carrying he asks, 'Do we have everything we need?'

I look from the bags of fresh, delicious food up into his tanned, relaxed face which only recently had looked so tired and unwelland then out over the breathtaking beauty of Mahon Harbor sparkling in the Mediterranean morning sunshine.
'Yes,' I say, 'we have everything we need.'

Sandra is an award-winning writer. The substance of the above article is extracted from her book, Dolphins Under My Bed, which has been selected as a Finalist in the 2008 Best Books Award sponsored by USA Book News. To find out more about the book, and read more extracts, visit http://dolphinsundermybed.com