Tenerife,Costa Blanca, Mallorca are all great holiday spots, and the aspects that make them great – sunshine and cheap flights – together with fantastic mountains, make these wonderful areas for out of season walking. You can add in a few other places as well like Morocco, Madeira and Crete and there is enough winter sunshine to last a lifetime.
Arriving in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, you are greeted by the expected sprawl of hotels along the coast but with glimpses of high mountains rising beyond. The highest, Teide, is technically the highest in Spain and often has a snowcap. The whole island is volcanic, so the landscape is dramatic and unique with recent lava flows, spectacular rock formations and sand deserts. Pine forests cover the middle slopes, giving an unexpected softness to the landscape. If you’ve been to Iceland it will be familiar, but there are trees and sunshine!
On my recent visit we had great walks among the lava and on some of the lower peaks,
following marked paths. There are reasonable maps and several walking guide books with route descriptions that sometimes need a little imagination, but generally it’s all straightforward. Car hire is cheap and you can reach most parts of the island in an hour. There are two airports, North and South, which have relatively cheap flights from many UK airports. A huge range of accommodation is available in these two areas, but with a bit of searching you’ll find pensions and small hotels in some of the mountain towns and villages.
The island adjacent to Tenerife is La Gomera, probably better known for its walking. Most visitors follow an inn-to-inn circuit of the island and, for my money, this is
always the best way to organise a walking trip. La Gomera does not have the same dramatic landscape as Tenerife, but it does have far, far fewer people, so this is the place to head if you are after some peace and quiet.
Footloose has many group walking trips to all the Canary Islands, Southern Spain, Mallorca, Madeira, Crete and Morocco, so please contact us if you would like more
information.
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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