Away from the crowds in Mallorca

I was on a hillside when the first celebrities made their appearance. Eager to escape the office for a morning, the manager of my hotel, Lluis Rullan, had led me into the countryside of his boyhood. Like a proud father, he showed me paths whose cobbles dated from the Moorish occupation of Mallorca in the 12th century, and chattered amiably about olive pruning and local spring-water laws.

At a sign for "Ca's Xorc", Lluis nodded up a track that weaved through the olive rees. "Pierce Brosnan had his birthday there last year," he said of the rural hotel. "Claudia Schiffer and Bono have stayed, too." With royalty of
acting, fashion and music arriving for holidays, it's fair to say Sóller in north-west Mallorca has arrived.

For years I had a blindspot when it came to the Balearics' largest island.

All I saw was either the Mallorca of bling-filled resorts or Majorca, a ribald carnival of sun, sea and sangria. I was dimly aware that Deía on the north-west's craggy coast had been a favourite of European glitterati ever since Hapsburg archduke Ludwig Salvator had tinkled piano recitals by moonlight in his villa. And that the village struggled to cope with its fame in season.

Which is what made Sóller such a surprise. I emerged from a tunnel after a 40-minute drive from the airport to see a town pooled like molten sugar among the citrus groves of the Golden Valley. After cold London, the sight appeared so voluptuously fertile it felt like a rush of blood to the head.

"An island within an island," Mallorcans call it. They mean the location is embraced within the highest mountains in Mallorca, the Sierra de Tramuntana. However, the detachment is mental as much as geographical.

For an hour or so I rummaged away from the postcard-perfect main square, Plaça Constitució, among green-shuttered streets the colour of old ivory.

Modernist townhouses by Juan Rubio, a protégé of Anton Gaudí, cut a dash of unexpected Barcelona swagger. Mountains rose at the end of every cobbled lane. Sóller could have been on every tour-group itinerary but I got the feeling its heart just wasn't in it. There were no postcard racks or an inflatable dolphin, just a few galleries and a gorgeous art nouveau house.

Sóller gets its share of tourists, too. But in early spring there were just a handful of visitors, mostly walkers or Palma day trippers brought by a vintage train fit for an Agatha Christie whodunit. However, what has put Sóller in little black books has been the arrival of hip hotels such as L'Avenida. Created from one of Rubio's modernist mansions and effortlessly glamorous, it is more Barcelona than backwater.

From Sóller's miniature train station I caught a wooden tram to the port. Sóller's minor beach resort has long been where Mallorca meets Majorca; where chic beachside restaurants like Agapanto mingle with the odd tacky giftshop. By next year both will be joined by the most luxurious hotel in Spain, says Jumeirah, the group behind Dubai's Burj-al Arab hotel which has selected Port Sóller for its first European resort. Even the locals are surprised.

The 120 rooms are rumoured to have cost 1million each to create. With only 220 guests maximum it's not even big by Majorcan standards.

Small is beautiful, Lluis explained as he told a story about how he had turned down a major managerial job in Shanghai to return home. "For me, Sóller is about heart," he says.