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 Calle 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 Calle Miranda del Toro 81. To get there, leave the main square - Sa Plaça - along Calle 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 Calle 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 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.