Nine kilometres northwest of Alaior you arrive at ES MERCADAL , squatting amongst the hills at the very centre of the island. Another old market town, it's an amiable little place of whitewashed houses and trim allotments whose antique centre straddles a quaint watercourse. The town also boasts a top-notch restaurant , the Can Aguedet , at c/Lepanto 30 (tel 971 375 391), which serves up traditional Menorcan cuisine, and a simple, one-star hostal residencia , the spick-and-span Jeni , in a modern building at c/Miranda del Toro 81 (tel 971 375 059; ¬60-90). To get there, leave the main square - Sa Plaça - along c/Nou and take the first left and then the first right. Buses from Maó and Ciutadella stop just off the C721 on Avinguda Metge Camps, which leads on to c/Nou.

 

From Es Mercadal you can set off on the ascent of Monte Toro , a steep 3.2-kilometre climb along a serpentine road. At 357m, the summit is the island's highest point and offers wonderful vistas: on a good day you can see almost the whole island, on a bad one to Fornells, at least. From this lofty vantage point, Menorca's geological division becomes apparent: to the north, Devonian rock (mostly reddish sandstone) supports a rolling, sparsely populated landscape edged by a ragged coastline; to the south, limestone predominates in a rippling plain that boasts both the island's best farmland and, as it approaches the south coast, its deepest valleys.

Monte Toro has been a place of pilgrimage since medieval times, and the Augustinians plonked a monastery on the summit in the seventeenth century. Bits of the original construction survive in the convent , which shares the site today with an army outpost and a monumentally ugly statue of Christ. Much of the convent is out of bounds, but the public part, approached across a handsome courtyard, encompasses a couple of gift shops, a delightful terrace café and a cosy church.