The best of friends...

Willy and Jules at the Taberna del Temple, originally uploaded by Racmol.

What a heartwarming scene - father and son gazing fondly at each other as they dine out under a plum tree on a balmy summer's evening in Pollenca. And then, quite literally, it all turns to poo.

Two minutes later, when Jules had carted Willy and a complete change of clothes off to the (very small) toilet, all you could hear were bloodcurdling screams. (Mostly William.) The lady at the next table went to the toilet herself and came back shaking her head. 'Ooh, he's struggling in there,' she said cheerfully and picked up her wine glass again. I just smiled ruefully and set about decontaminating the highchair.

However, the holiday wasn't ENTIRELY miserable. We had a great day when we drove up into the mountains to Soller, a small town that was pretty much cut off from the south of Majorca until they put a tunnel in in 1997. It is surrounded by orange groves and quite pretty. From there you can (and we did) take an open-sided tram to Port de Soller, which was where the oranges left for France from and is now a seaside resort. We had a swim and an ice-cream and then caught the tram back again. Then on the way up over the mountain we stopped at some viewpoints for quite spectacular views down to the port.

The day we went to Port de Pollenca was also quite successful - after a morning swim, Fia and Willy both went to sleep in the pushchair while we were walking about looking for lunch so we had a nice quiet tapas or five while they slept.

Our two child-pleasing days were the waterpark (Aqualand) at Alcudia, and Marineland (dolphin show, seals, turtles, aquarium etc) at Palma. Expensive, but the kids loved them.

On our last night in Pollenca, we finally discovered how you eat out with small children in Spain. We tried to go to a fairly nice restaurant and ended up with William shaking and incandescent with rage so we had to leave without having dessert, which was a shame as the menu looked pretty good. So we wandered into the town square, thinking we could at least have an ice cream. And there we found all the residents of Pollenca relaxing with a bottle of wine at outdoor tables while their children ran and scooted around the pedestrianised square in the dark. So we did that, and all was well.