Walking on Tenerife – Instead of a Fly Drive Holiday, Try a Walk Drive One

When we wrote Real Tenerife Island Drives and Island Walks we wrote them independently of each other. The idea for a series of driving routes came about because we were constantly passing visitors to Tenerife who had hired a car, parked in lay-bys with a map spread over the dashboard, or worse – arguing furiously. Having travelled all over Tenerife on a regular basis for research purposes, we knew only too well that a map had limited value, and if driving through towns, was virtually useless.

Similarly with walking, we started writing walking routes because, as avid walkers, the ones we had tried to use were often more likely to get us lost than get us from A to B and many were simply quite a few years out of date.

However, we never really thought of them being used together until we noticed recently that more and more people were combining buying Island Drives with one or more of the Island Walks routes and we thought, ‘what a damned good idea…why didn’t we think of that?’

I suppose it’s an obvious way of getting the most out of the drive to the walking location. The Anaga Mountains are a perfect example of this. To get the best out of them really requires exploration on foot and by car (or bicycle if you opt for the green option…and are super fit).

The terrain is far too demanding to explore in great depth on foot over the course of a two week holiday. Yet there are places that can only be explored on foot like the fishing hamlet with no roads to it near Tenerife’s most easterly tip (we haven’t written a walking route for that one yet, but it’s in the pipeline) or the merchants’ trails linking tiny hamlets (which we do have routes for).

On the other hand, the road which runs along the Anaga’s spine isn’t ideal for walking along, but it does have spectacular views over both coasts and there are some excellent viewpoints worth stopping at for some breathtaking photos to impress the friends back home.

So to anyone out there who has bought Island Drives and Island Walks, you may just have pioneered a new concept in tourism, The Walk – Drive Holiday; the perfect way to get the most from car hire on Tenerife.