Tenerife, Mount Teide and hiking trails galore – not just sun, sea, and San Miguel...

A volcanic island with marvellous mountains, breathtaking barrancos, verdant pine forest, eerie landscapes and incredible coastal paths.

Amazing sculptured and eroded rocks at Los Roques de
Garcia, Mount Teide, Tenerife, January 2011
(c) Mat & Niki Adlam-Stiles

Needing an easy-to-organise holiday (in the middle of a harsh English winter) where we could travel light and just get on with being outdoors enjoying ourselves, we found that Tenerife ticked many of the right boxes.

With its year-round good weather, easy access from the UK (and other European countries) and ever-increasing network of superb walking trails, Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, is firmly established as something of a hikers’ mecca.

Away from the Brit-pack and condensed concrete jungle of crowded beach resorts such as the (perhaps too) well-known Playa de las Americas, Tenerife has much to offer the more discerning visitor who is prepared to travel just a little further afield.

To experience the chill, fresh mountain air high up on the flanks of Mount Teide, still classified as an active volcano, to walk in the verdant and misty pine forests around quiet, pretty little Vilaflor (Spain’s highest village, by all accounts) or to traverse the boulder-strewn bed of a barranco breathing in the scent of almond blossom – these are some of the things that make Tenerife quite a special destination.

Getting to Tenerife by plane is easy – there’s a host of airlines all jostling with each other for business: Ryanair , Jet2, EasyJet, Thomsonfly and Monarch to name just a few of those offering choice for the budget-conscious traveller.

Accommodation’s not hard to find either, though you may have to hunt around to find somewhere other than an apartment or hotel in Playa de las Americas – but then again, if you’re game for a lively night on the town after a hard day’s trekking in the hills, PdlA might be just what you’re after.

Los Cristianos is slightly quieter and more refined, whilst Los Gigantes, next to the old fishing village of Puerto de Santiago, boasts a superb setting, next to enormous 500m-high basalt cliffs. Puerto de la Cruz is a pleasantly vibrant, if large, seaside town, with a plethora of water’s edge seawater pools for safe swimming (the breakers on the North side of the island may suit surfers better than swimmers!). If you really want to get away from it all, and don’t mind it being cooler at night than down on the coast, see if you can find something up in Vilaflor or one of the surrounding villages. We were lucky enough to secure some accommodation in La Escalona.

View looking up one of the barrancos on Mount Teide, Tenerife, January 2011
(c) Mat & Niki Adlam-Stiles

Travelling around Tenerife is pretty straightforward, too. Car hire is remarkably cheap and good roads link most towns and villages. The driving is generally civilised, though as ever, you do need to be vigilant, especially in towns.

There’s also an excellent network of buses to choose from via national bus company TITSA (the green buses) and using these – which are very good value for money - you can get from the coast to the craters of Teide within less than an hour and a half. Using public transport can also open up some unexpected opportunities to do linear walks.

Sendero 27 in the "badlands" in the Las Canadas caldera, Mount Teide, January 2011
(c) Mat & Niki Adlam-Stiles

Cycling is a popular pastime and a pleasantly energetic means of getting around the island. There are numerous well-marked mountain biking trails and there’s ample opportunity to tire those thigh muscles taking your road bike on some of the mountain roads.

With the peak of Mount Teide a staggering 3,718 metres above sea level and the road through the Teide National Park averaging an altitude of around 2000m, you’ll need to be fit to get the most out of cycling here – but you’ll certainly be well rewarded for your efforts.

For the caving enthusiast, there are plenty of lava caves to explore. The Cuevo del Viento "Cave of the Wind" is now a tourist attraction, but with several entrances and many kilometres of passage beyond the showcave, it’s worth doing a bit of research to see if you can secure a trip to its inner reaches. A number of Mendip cavers have spent a considerable time exploring and researching the lava caves of Tenerife (and Lanzarote, too) – so if you’re a bona-fide caver, take a look at some of the threads on the UKCaving internet forum for further information.

But for an easy-to-organise holiday where you can travel light and "just do it" you can’t beat getting out on foot around the island. The weather is good for walking all year round, although the summer months can be very hot.

Spring, when the greens become greener and flowers burst from every corner of the landscape, is perhaps the prettiest season in which to walk, and of course winter, when the UK can be condemned to weeks of greyness, wetness and bitter cold, is a very attractive proposition.

There are so many trails to explore we can only hint at the delights to be enjoyed on the island; here are some of the walks that we undertook. We hope you get chance to try these and enjoy them for yourself.

There are also numerous walking guides for Tenerife; just published in 2010 is Discovering Tenerife on Foot - 10 Walks in South Tenerife by Tenerife resident Gary Rosson, plus Discovery Walking Guides have updated their Tenerife Hikers Maps to accompany their Walk! Tenerife guide book.

Seafront church with palms and dragon tree, Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, January 2011 (c) Mat & Niki Adlam-Stiles