Menorca

Arrive on the sun-bleached shores of Menorca after a spell on Mallorca or Ibiza and notice the drop in volume – here it's more birdsong than Pete Tong. The easternmost Balearic island moves to its own mellow beat. Its twinset of sea-splashed cities, eastern Anglo-Spanish Maó and western maze-like Ciutadella, are delightfully low-key and distinctive, and the white- and golden-sand bays that stud its 216km coastline are among the loveliest in the Mediterranean. Inland, the island remains distinctly rural, with an estimated 70,000km of dry-stone walls criss-crossing fields and rolling hills between whitewashed villages.