Santa Ponsa - Fontenille Collection

Santa Ponsa wastes no rain. A gravity-fed irrigation system of the 17th century, restored, gathers it in basins in the rock and runs it down to the cisterns beneath the outdoor pool and the spa, and the spa is down there with it, in the old palace's 18th-century cisterns: a covered pool for lengths under a vaulted stone ceiling, with a hammam beside it. Above ground the house is a deep red, trimmed in white round its arched windows, on 100 hectares outside Alaior. Eight of them are listed terraced gardens in the Hispano-Moorish manner, cypress paths and geometric hedges, with more than 200 fruit trees under the palms. Thousands of tortoises live there, with peacocks and three donkeys. The 22 rooms have linen at the windows and beams overhead, some with black and white cement tiles for a headboard, and in one the doors open onto a walled courtyard of pale stone, a bowl of lemons on the table.

Recommended for anyone who would rather spend a Menorcan summer in a garden than on a beach towel, and for families happy to swap a kids club for a Junior Suite Famille and the donkeys. The sea is a drive: fifteen minutes to beaches such as Son Bou and Cala en Porter, and ten to Torre Vella, the sister hotel on the cliffs, where the boat trips and the sunsets are kept. Nearer the house there is yoga in the gardens and massage under the holm oaks. Lunch and dinner are at Nura, in the old palace, where Albert Riera's kitchen picks herbs every day from the permaculture garden and sends out grilled fish and seafood off the brazier. The hotel opens from mid-March to early November, and out of season the gardens belong to the tortoises.