Beat the sun to a lighthouse at the far end of a peninsula

The lighthouse on Cap de Formentor stands at the very end of the Formentor peninsula in the north of Mallorca, on a cliff about two hundred meters above the water. The sun comes up out of the open sea in front of it, and on a clear morning Menorca is on the horizon.

The road out along the peninsula is a long run of bends over the cliffs. In summer it closes to everything but the shuttle bus from mid-morning to late evening, so the hour worth having is the one before: at first light it is open and empty.

Getting there before the sun means arriving while the cliff is still a dark shape against a dim sea. Then the light comes up behind the horizon and the whole headland turns from gray to gold.

The lighthouse went into service in 1863. There was no road then: the stone came in by sea and went up the cliff on a winch that took forty men to turn. The road came about sixty years later, laid out by Antonio Parietti.