Five Nights at Cap Rocat

There is no beach and there will never be a beach, and if you can make peace with that in advance it is the most unusual hotel in the Mediterranean.

Property: Cap Rocat Location: Cala Blava, Mallorca, Spain Booked: Sentry Room Occupied: Sentry Room 12. Not upgraded and I didn't want to be. Party: Two adults Occasion: None Rate basis: €890 per night including breakfast, before 10% VAT and the tourist tax of €4 per person per night Benefits through the booking channel: Breakfast for two, €100 credit, upgrade if available, 2pm checkout. The credit and breakfast landed. No upgrade was available in June and they said so at booking rather than at check-in, which is the right way to handle it. Conditions: Mid-June. Highs 29C, no rain, water at 22C and swimmable. Previous stays: First visit. Sixth trip to Mallorca.

We know the Tramuntana side well and were tired of the drive. Every good hotel on the northwest coast puts you forty-five minutes of switchbacks from anything, and we'd spent our last Mallorca week in a car.

The alternatives were La Residencia in Deià, which we've done twice and love and which is exactly that drive, and Son Bunyola, which is new and gorgeous and further still. Cap Rocat is twenty minutes from Palma airport and twenty-five from the cathedral, and it is a nineteenth-century fortress cut into a cliff. That combination doesn't exist anywhere else.

What I expected: that the fortress thing would be a gimmick you notice on arrival and forget. It isn't. The building genuinely changes how you move through a day, and I'll come to that.

Palma airport to the gate is 22 minutes and a taxi is about €40. The hotel car is €95 and there is no reason to take it. We hired a car for the week at €55 a day and used it three times, which was three times too few to justify it and I'd hire one for two specific days instead.

The approach is a long private road past scrub and pine, then a gatehouse, then a tunnel cut through rock that you drive into and out of before the sea appears. It is a genuinely theatrical arrival and everybody goes quiet. Check-in is at a small desk in a stone room and took twelve minutes, which was longer than needed because the woman doing it was actually explaining the property rather than reciting it.

Sentry rooms are the original gun emplacements, and room 12 is a single vaulted stone chamber, about six metres deep, with a private walled terrace at the front looking straight down the bay to Palma. The walls are metre-thick sandstone left bare. The ceiling is a barrel vault. It is the most interesting room I have slept in.

Practically: the bed sits at the back of the vault, firm, very good, and I slept every night. The bathroom is behind a stone partition rather than a door, with a walk-in shower, one sink, and no tub in this category. Pressure is strong. Hot water in about thirty seconds. Storage is limited, genuinely limited, and two large suitcases will not fit anywhere out of sight. Pack for a week in one case each.

The terrace is the room's whole argument. Private, walled on both sides, a daybed and two chairs, and nobody can see you. We ate breakfast there four mornings out of five.

What stone costs you: it's dark. There is one small window and the door, and if you want a bright room this is the wrong hotel. It's also cool, which is a gift in June and would be less so in April. No noise at all, from anything, at any hour. Air conditioning exists and we never used it. Wi-Fi was 55 Mbps and dropped once for about ten minutes. Two sockets by the bed.

The room I'd book next time: the same category, and specifically the even numbers from 8 to 14, which sit furthest from the path down to the water and get no foot traffic past the terrace. The Sentinel suites have more space and, to my eye, less character.

Small staff, no uniforms in the corporate sense, and everybody does several jobs. On the third morning the man who had served us dinner the night before drove us down to the water platform in the buggy and remembered that my wife had asked about a particular local wine, then produced a bottle of it at lunch. That is a small hotel doing what small hotels can do and large ones can't.

The failure: the buggy service down to the sea platform is on request and on our second day it took twenty-five minutes to arrive, in full sun, with two people already waiting. The walk is about eight minutes and steep. Nobody explained the delay and nobody offered water. It was better every other day, so I'd call it one bad shift, but on the day it happened it soured an hour.

Breakfast can be taken on your own terrace at no extra charge and you should do this. It arrives on a trolley, hot things covered, and includes a proper Mallorcan spread with ensaimada that is worth the calories. Coffee is good. If you paid for breakfast it would be €48 a head.

There are two restaurants. Sea Club is down at the water, open for lunch, and does grilled fish by the kilo at around €90 for a two-kilo dentex that fed us both twice over. It's the best thing here. Fortalesa is the evening room, inside the fortress, and it's ambitious: tasting menu at €135, à la carte mains €38 to €52. We did the tasting once and à la carte twice, and the à la carte is the better bet.

Here is the honest problem: there is nowhere else. You are on a headland with no walkable alternative, so five nights means five dinners in two rooms unless you drive into Palma, which we did twice and which is easy and worth it. Budget for that. A wine list that starts at €35 and has real Mallorcan depth around €60 to €80 helped.

This is the section where the beach question gets answered. There is no sand. What there is instead: a large saltwater pool cut into the rock at the top, an adults-only pool, and a swimming platform at the base of the cliff with ladders straight into deep, clear, cold water. You swim in the open sea off a concrete apron with nothing between you and the bay.

I preferred it to any beach on the island and I want to be clear that not everybody will. There is no wading in. There is no sitting at the edge with a child. If you cannot get up a ladder in a swell, the sea is closed to you here. In five days I saw two guests who had clearly not understood this before arriving and neither looked happy.

Loungers were available every day at every location, including at noon in June, which tells you how small this hotel is. The spa is inside the rock, dim, and the treatments run €140 to €220. The hammam is included and empty. Gym is small and fine.

Nothing is walkable. The nearest village, Cala Blava, is a residential sprawl and not a destination. Palma is 25 minutes by car or taxi and is one of the best small cities in Europe, and the fact that you can be at dinner in the old town in half an hour is the practical case for this hotel over the Tramuntana properties.

Es Trenc beach is 40 minutes if you want sand. Deià and Valldemossa are an hour and ten. The airport being twenty minutes away means the last morning is not a write-off, which after five nights I valued more than I expected.

Couples, almost entirely, and skewing European. German and British in roughly equal measure, a few Spanish from the mainland. Very few children, and the ones present were older. It is quiet at every hour. Dress is smart and relaxed; linen, no jackets, and nobody is performing.

The buggy wait. A dinner reservation at Fortalesa that was recorded for 8pm and held for 8.30, which cost us the light. And a bill at checkout with the tourist tax added twice, which was corrected without argument in under two minutes but which I only caught because I read it.

The structural one, again: five nights and two restaurants. We handled it by going into Palma twice and I would build that into the plan from the start rather than discovering it on night three. If you don't want to drive at night, four nights is the number.

Room and breakfast, five nights: €4,895 plus €490 VAT plus €40 tourist tax, so €5,425. Food and drink on property, including one tasting menu and two Sea Club lunches: €1,180. Spa: €360. Car hire and fuel: €330. Taxis to Palma on the two nights we drank: €90. Total for five nights, two people: about €7,385.

Where they're generous: breakfast on your own terrace at no premium, the hammam, the buggies when they run, and no charge for the loungers or towels anywhere. Where they nickel you: the airport transfer at €95 for a twenty-minute drive, and spa pricing that is Palma pricing plus fifty percent.

Good value at €890 with breakfast in June? Yes, clearly. At €1,300 in August, which is roughly what it goes to, I'd be at Son Bunyola or in a finca.

Would you return? Yes, in June or late September, for four nights with two evenings in Palma. Who should stay here: confident swimmers, couples, people who want architecture to be the point, and anyone who has done the Tramuntana and is tired of the drive. Who shouldn't: families with small children, anyone who wants to walk into the sea from sand, anyone with limited mobility, and anyone who needs a choice of restaurants. What I'd do differently: four nights instead of five, hire the car for two specific days rather than the week, book Fortalesa for the early sitting, and pack light because there is nowhere to put a big case.

Against Belmond La Residencia. La Residencia is in a village, has gardens, art, tennis, more restaurants and a great deal more to do without a car. It is also 45 minutes of mountain road from the airport and the sea is a shuttle away. La Residencia for a family or a first Mallorca trip. Cap Rocat for a couple who want the room to be extraordinary.

Against Son Bunyola. Newer, larger rooms, a proper estate, and a beach club down at the water. It is also further from everything and considerably more expensive. If the budget is open and you want space, Son Bunyola. If you want a stone vault and Palma at dinner, this.

What I'd tell a friend one click from booking: check that everyone in your party is happy getting into the sea off a ladder, then book it.