Sóller
The train that refuses to hurry
21 — 24 May 2026
Spain
39.7658° N, 2.7154° E
It takes an hour to travel twenty-seven kilometres on a wooden train built in 1912, and every minute of that is the point.
The Sóller railway has been running since 1912 and appears to have made no concessions to the intervening century. The carriages are wood. The windows drop on leather straps. The whole thing smells faintly of oil and warm varnish.
You climb out of Palma through orange groves, then through tunnels cut by hand, and then the valley opens and there is a moment where the entire carriage stops talking at once. It is the closest thing to a collective gasp I have experienced on public transport.
“The whole valley is running about eighty years behind, and is entirely comfortable with that.”
Sóller itself is a town that has decided the correct number of things to do is two: sit in the square, and go to the sea. There is a tram to the port, also wooden, also unhurried, which completes the impression that the whole valley is running about eighty years behind and is entirely comfortable with that.
Getting around
Gallery — scroll
Places mentioned
Sight
Ferrocarril de Sóller
Book the first train. The light in the tunnels is better before ten.
Café
Plaça de la Constitució
Sit outside, order the second coffee, watch the tram scrape past.