Category Archives: food

Majorca’s half hidden gem: the idyllic honeymoon hotel of Joan Miro

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Hotel Illa D'Or, Puerto Pollensa Majorca. from the jetty.Picture by me

Hotel Illa D’Or, Puerto Pollensa Majorca. from the jetty.Picture by me

Almost a year after Margaret had her devastating stroke on the Isles of Scilly we took  courage in both hands and took our first holiday.

We returned to a particular tranquil spot in the Majorcan resort of Puerto Pollensa on the North West coast.And to a particular hotel , the Hotel Illa D’Or, on the outskirts of the town overlooking the bay.

Now the centre of Puerto Pollensa – though at my age thankfully no Magaluf- is bustling and busy with a yacht harbour. Where we were is much quieter but the brilliant thing is you can walk ( or cycle ) all the way from the centre to the hotel on a traffic free promenade with outstanding sea and mountain views.

 The luxury hotel itself is still owned by the same family since  it opened 85 years ago in 1929 and one of its first guests was the Catalan surrealist artist Joan Miro who spent his honeymoon here. I am not surprised. The hotel itself is now much bigger than in 1929 but it has not lost its personal touch while providing all the facilities you might need from swimming pools to tennis courts and a superb terrace overlooking the sea. The food supervised by an Argentinian chef is  superb and creative without being flashy or indigestible  and the choice at the breakfast buffet is stunning – from Serrano ham to a cooked grill and fresh fruit to pastries and even chocolate gateaux.

But this time what we really appreciated was the courtesy and facilities the hotel provided for the disabled. We had an adapted room with a walk in shower and its own terrace accessible by a ramp. it was near the lift and the entrance to the restaurant and the front terrace were level – easily negotiable by a stroller or a wheelchair – and we soon dispensed with the use of a wheelchair. The hotel could not have provided better facilities.

Margaret resting along the promenade

Margaret resting alomng the promenade

Margaret was able to use a stroller and walk in part unaided along the front – gradually increasing the distance until we achieved our objective of getting to the centre and having lunch!  The ground shaded in part by pine trees can be a bit uneven but as the physios would say it was good rehab.

It was also our first experience of using an assisted flight – and I have to say the outsourced company at Birmingham Airport and the staff at Palma Airport were superb is getting us to and from the plane.

The one blackspot: the flight on Monarch Airlines

The one blackspot: the flight on Monarch Airlines

The one black spot was Monarch Airlines who did seem to confirm their lowly ratings in Which? magazine by ignoring all our requests via Sovereign Holidays for an aisle seat and to be near the toilets.This led to a dispute with another elderly passenger when Margaret took an aisle seat – as he had booked and paid for it. Only after protests  to a rather badly disabled aware air crew and the fact the flight had some spare empty seats at the rear  was it solved amicably.

But if you want a week away in four star luxury, sun and some the taste of some rather superior Catalan Rioja stocked by the hotel I would recommend it, disabled or not.

 

 

 

Phone Hacking Trial: alleged conspiracy pizza “probably” large Italian Supreme, with extra garlic bread – Martin Hickman

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Revealed : The Pizza in Pizzagate

Inforrm's Blog

pizzahut1 Day 85, Part 2:   The pizza at the centre of an alleged conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie was probably a Large Italian Supreme with an extra portion of garlic bread, the Old Bailey heard today.

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Immigration: Hypocrisy from the Home Office to Waitrose and Marks and Spencer

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waitrose: aiding and abetting the end of higher agricultural wages

waitrose: aiding and abetting the end of higher agricultural wages

high class/low wage produce from hugh lowe farms pic credit: twitter

high class produce from hugh lowe farms pic credit: twitter

While a Home Office van tours the London borough of Brent telling illegal immigrants to go home or face arrest the food suppliers to our most ” ethical “supermarkets are going out of their way to encourage low paid immigration to Britain to pick the strawberries, raspberries and blackberries now on sale in Waitrose and Marks and Spencer.
The most prominent is run by Marion and Joe Regan. She is one of the leading lights in the fruit growers world and she supplies strawberries to Wimbledon, Waitrose and Marks and Spencer.
Look at the website more closely and you will find it is in English, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Russian The reason is Hugh Lowe Farms are desperate to recruit labour and are targeting workers from these countries to come to Britain. The Bulgarians and Romanians – though not allowed to come here until next year – can come through a government seasonal workers scheme run, yes, by the Home Office – the very ministry behind the offensive vans.
Why Russian you may ask. Well, believe or not, fruit growers are worried ( Nigel Farage of UKIP please note) that when the Romanians and Bulgarians get the freedom of the whole EU, they won’t want to come here. Why? Because the UK under the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition – is now being regarded as such a low wage economy and so expensive to live in – that they would rather work on farms in other EU countries.
So the fruit growers want to RELAX immigration control further and get the Home Office to approve a seasonal workers scheme for Ukrainians from next year to pick their fruit. The reason Ukrainians are even poorer than Romanians – and can’t get access to the EU.
One might have a smidgeon of sympathy for the growers need to attract workers if it were not they are also the leading lights in abolishing from the end of September the Agriculture Wages Board – which guarantees slightly higher wages than the minimum wage and the supermarkets, while officially neutral, are aiding and abetting them.
This allows lower wages from British workers recruited for the next season – a group as you can see, the fruit growers have great difficulty in recruiting already or they wouldn’t be chasing people abroad.
Waitrose can be directly implicated in the move behind lower pay – since one of their leading women executives, Heather Jenkins sat on the Farming Better Regulation Task Force – the very body that recommended its abolition. Waitrose say her role was independent, but I presume they gave her time off to do it.
Lord Currie, chair of Leckford Farms, ( more in a separate blog about him later) a major supplier to Waitrose and having opened the company’s first farm shop, is hysterical about abolishing the board.
So when you next shop in Waitrose or Marks and Spencer just remember the fruit on sale there from Britain is most likely picked by foreign workers whose suppliers are keen to get rid of a board that provides a minimum standard for workers in an already low paid industry.
Of course Waitrose and M & S deny to me that want to cut wages, so does Marion Regan of Hugh Lowe Farms in Kent- promising to put them up. But Marion Regan’s company was so lax in checking its own website – that until this week it was advertising for foreign workers on its foreign language sites at last year’s rate of pay – a full 11p an hour lower than the legal rate.