‘The first time I came to Mallorca I slept in a Palma square. I wasn’t homeless but I sat all night on a park bench until the trains started running. This was after arriving in Palma in the middle of the night. I laugh about that now, but I had such preconceptions of what Mallorca was like, that sleeping on a park bench seemed like what people did here.
Friends with houses had invited me and my partner, but we always said no. Mallorca to us was Magaluf, Arenal and out of control teenagers. Eventually we let ourselves be persuaded to come and see what they liked. That’s when we started our first visit, on a park bench.
We arrived early in Soller on the train and sat outside Bar Turismo drinking coffee and appreciating the complete shock this place was to us. We loved it then and we have sat outside Bar Turismo ever since.
In the meantime, I went back to work for Rolls Royce in Chesterfield which followed on from my career in road planning for Leeds Council. We became frequent holidaymakers to the Soller Valley and started making our plans to one day find the money to come and live here full time.
The circle of life passed, and we saved and inherited some money from family who passed on. In 2010 we came to live here and bought a house. No more park benches for us.
My life started in Preston, then college in Blackpool and then Leeds and Sheffield were home. I am now retired, home is Mallorca, in City Centre Soller. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I really am home now and I’m not going anywhere. I am proud to be a Human of Mallorca.’
