Majorca: sun, sand and Chopin

And so, once more, Christmas is over and the temporary cheer is fading. January looks bleak and our scheming minds are wondering how we might best slip a little winter sunshine into the snow-white pages of our new 2010 diary. At such moments, as we flick and click through enticing images of blue skies, palm-fringed beaches and camels wearing Father Christmas hats, it is salutary to recall one of the great winter holidays of (relatively) modern times.

In 1838, the 28-year-old Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin arrived on the Spanish island of Majorca hoping for an exotic interlude of rest and work that would revive his tired spirits and failing health. With him was his lover, the radical-thinking, cigar-smoking, trouser-wearing French author Aurore Dupin, who published under the nom de plume George Sand. Just like us, they wanted to swap grey northern skies for warmth, romance and stimulating sights.

"Sun all day, and hot; everyone in summer clothing," Chopin wrote home gleefully on November 19. His letters read like a brochure for the genteel station d'hiver that Majorca would become just 70 years later. "A sky like turquoise, a sea like lapis lazuli, mountains like emerald, air like heaven." Accompanied by Sand's two children, the couple settled into dreamy days of country walks and sightseeing while waiting for his beloved Pleyel piano to be shipped from Paris.

Sadly, the idyll didn't last. The weather changed, Chopin was diagnosed with tuberculosis and the locals took against this unorthodox pair who didn't go to church. Evicted from their palatial villa near the island capital, Palma, the family retreated inland to an abandoned Carthusian monastery in the hilltop town of Valldemossa, where they lived amid its sturdy cells for the next eight weeks. According to Robert Graves, who translated Sand's spirited account of the holiday, Un hiver à Majorque, this scenic spot has "the worst weather of any village in the island". "As the winter continued," Sand duly noted, "every attempt at cheerfulness and calm was frozen in my breast by the gloom."

Despite all this, it was a famously creative sojourn. While Sand's description of the Majorcans as "monkeys" won her no favours, her book is both an enjoyable portrait of the island and an engaging meditation on why we travel. Chopin, meanwhile, wrote or completed some of his most loved works, including his Prelude in D flat major, appropriately known as the "Raindrop". "His first days here were ones of great happiness," explains the distinguished Majorcan pianist Joan Moll, who has studied this celebrated winter of discontent in depth. "They produced works that are intimate, contemplative and as luminous as the landscape. Then he realised his sickness was incurable …"

In 2010, as the world celebrates the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth, Valldemossa will be a key stop for fans touring the island. Once reviled, the two travellers are now miraculously rehabilitated in a whirl of commemorative events and souvenirs.

Every summer the monastery stages an acclaimed Chopin Festival, and visitors can tour the cells where the outrageous couple resided.

With three rooms and a garden terrace, a winter here doesn't appear quite so bad. Star exhibits include a jar-filled pharmacy dating from the 1720s, an original manuscript from Chopin's final works, and that long-awaited piano, which arrived three weeks before the party left.

So should we follow Chopin and Sand to Majorca? They were pioneers in what is now a well-established annual quest for winter sun, and their experience proves you can still have a fruitful time even if the weather is foul – but then, after three successive barbecue-less summers, we all know about that.

The answer depends on how vital it is to have blasting heat and a cast-iron guarantee of sunshine. If you simply must have this, then I wouldn't go anywhere near Europe or north Africa between November and March. Every winter the riads of Marrakesh are littered with frozen fools in flip-flops who wrongly assume that Morocco equals hot. Why risk it now that we have long-haul flights, websites stacked high with climate charts (try www.weather2travel.com) and a bevy of stimulating destinations within easy reach?

On the other hand, Majorca remains a choice spot for a winter weekend abroad. Easily reached and with more than 200 four or five-star hotels to choose from, the island is perfect for a few days of touring and tapas – come rain or shine.

"We get plenty of sun in winter," says Valerie Crespi-Green, an English nurse who has lived on the island for more than 30 years and leads guided walks through the magnificent peaks of the Serra de Tramuntana. She recommends a visit in late January or early February, when the island's four million almond trees are in blossom. If there's a nip in the air, pop into a café for a reviving lumumba (hot chocolate with brandy) – or just move to another part of the island. Simply by taking a short drive south from the mountains to the sea you can find yourself swapping cardigans for short sleeves.

With its tree-lined promenades, abundant art museums, swirling Modernista architecture and cosy bars – plus a six-mile seafront cycle path for fighting the Yuletide flab – Palma is made for a stress-free city break.

For holiday reading, pick up a copy of Sand's A Winter in Majorca (available locally in English) and make sure your iPod is loaded up with Preludes 4, 15, 17 and 23 – all deeply infused with Chopin's time on the island. Find a quiet slice of countryside (or better still, check into the Mirabó hotel, which has a superb view of Valldemossa), then sit back and listen to the "Raindrop". Even if the sun isn't shining, you'll still be in paradise.

Majorca basics

Getting there

EasyJet (www.easyjet.com) and Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) offer flights to Palma de Majorca from numerous UK airports.

Where to stay

Just outside Valldemossa, Mirabó (00 34 661 285 215; www.mirabo.es) is a beautiful, calm, nine-room, family-run hillside hotel with a private restaurant and classical CDs playing in the lounge. Double rooms cost from £126 with breakfast.

Tucked away in Palma's historic heart, the 14-room Dalt Murada (00 34 971 425 300; www.daltmurada.com) is perfectly placed and comes decorated with antique furniture and historic portraits. Double rooms costs from £86 with breakfast.

What to do

For information on Valldemossa and the Chopin Festival, see www.valldemossa.com and www.festivalchopin.com

Valerie Crespi-Green (00 34 625 981582) offers guided walks in the Serra de Tramuntana and has written Walk & Eat Mallorca (Sunflower, £8.99).

For more information

see www.infomallorca.net