2026 Menorca – Day 2 Cala Pudent to beach near Punta d en Valent 06 04 2026

2026 Menorca – Day 2 Cala Pudent to beach near Punta d en Valent by Ally 06 04 2026

Having spent our first night of the adventure on Cala Pudent beach under the stars, we awoke to a beautiful morning, the perfect start to our day 2 adventure and exactly what we were hoping for. If you look at the photo of the beach, you’ll notice a tarp and groundsheet arrangement. This tarp belongs to Chris, who was brave enough to spend the night with only a bivi bag and tarp for cover, unlike the rest of us softies in our tents. It had been a cold night, but the weather was forecast for light winds and wall-to-wall sunshine, so perfect conditions, as we also had a small tailwind.

Everyone had successfully repacked their kayaks, cleared up after ourselves, and we set off in good spirits just after 9 am. The coastline on this part of the island, like most of Menorca, consists of rocky cliff faces, occasionally interspersed with small sandy beaches, and it became a game of spot the animal or famous face in the rock formations, with one notable rockface, apparently, resembling a giant bear! We took the opportunity to dive into as many caves as possible, which was a good opportunity to cool off in the chilled air of the caves.

It’s always a big responsibility, on these trips, to find a suitable place to stop for elevenses,” and we were fortunate enough to have the small town of Fornell’s on our route for today. On our arrival, we scouted for a suitable landing spot but were at first refused landing, as kayaks are not welcome in the marina, so instead, we found a very small rocky beach on which to land, our 6 kayaks taking up half the space available. Fornell’s turned out to be by far the biggest town along the north coast, and it was the only occasion on the trip where there was an opportunity to top up on supplies. There was a small shop on a back street behind the main sea front, and I was glad to purchase a large ham and cheese baguette, which sufficed for lunch and much of the evening meal. With hindsight, I would have bought at least another and saved it for the next day, take note anyone considering a tour of Menorca, food stops are almost non-existent on the coast.

Anyway, having dined on the tasty baguette, we continued on our way and having passed the end of the headland coming out of Fornell’s, we made the decision to temporarily suspend our cave explorations and head across the open bay directly towards the next head land of Cap de Cavalleria, where we passed the light house, going between the mainland and a small rocky island just off shore.

It was getting hot in the afternoon with a warm tail wind, and the rented Perception Essence I was kayaking tended to point into the windward (weathercocking, I think it’s called), which was annoying, and so I found it necessary to deploy the skeg, much to the disdain of our more experienced team members!

After that, we continued our cave explorations, stopping for a further comfort break before looking for a possible landing place to bed down for the night. This wasn’t as simple as we imagined, and after checking out a number of locations, it was deemed best to paddle back to a likely looking beach just west of Cala Mica. From memory, it wasn’t populated like some of the other beaches, apart from a friendly young couple, who were happy to chat. So it was then just a case of relaxing, making the evening meal, in most cases tuna and pasta, then taking time to reflect on the day’s kayaking, which, according to Chris, was a total of 26.5 K’s, only slightly more than we had achieved on the first day but a successful day’s paddling nonetheless.

The young couple stayed until dusk and entertained us with their guitar playing. After that, we settled in for the night, and I think everyone was a happy camper, that was until it got cold in the night, and my sympathies were, once again, with Chris under his tarp, although to be fair, I never heard him complain. I’m not too sure, but in the night, we may have had a dog visit our camp and judging by the size of its paw prints in the sand, it was a large hound. Thankfully, if there was a dog on the loose, it didn’t trouble anyone and left us intact and ready for our day 3 adventure to unfold.