Walking on Tenerife – Exploring the Secret North Coast

We'd been more or less shackled to the computers over the last week and a half., so yesterday decided a bit of great outdoors time was long overdue.

Walking in an area we hadn't really explored before appealed and with yesterday being our wedding anniversary, and a long leisurely meal was due to be the reward for a morning's walking, we didn't want to travel too far.

A hasty bit of research turned up the usual. The official website for Los Realejos waxed lyrical about their wonderful countryside, but didn't actually provided details of walks. In the end we settled on La Matanza, scene of a great Guanche victory over the conquistadors [...] Click her to read more

Walking on Tenerife – That’s The First Time I’ve Ever Seen!

Normally it’s the scenery that astounds us when we’re out exploring Tenerife’s network of trails and forest paths, emerging from dense pines, or turning a corner in a barranco to be faced with an unexpected ‘WOW’ vista. However, the other day the weather performed a neat little trick which I’ve certainly never witnessed before[...] Click Here To Read More

A Big Change to Island Walks

We've decided that a nip and tuck is necessary for Island Walks. What started out as a blog has evolved to the extent that we decided that we wanted more flexibility to present information and display photographs about walking on Tenerife in a more dynamic manner. So Island Walks is moving to a brand new website - walkingtenerife.co.uk

We're currently building up the site and will continue to post walking articles on this blog as well as on the new site for the time being. But soon we're hoping to move everything across to Walking Tenerife - we really hope you'll like the change of style.

Walking Directions on Tenerife – The Chinyero Volcano – Almost Perfect Signage…Almost

This week we thought we were going to have to eat our words about the lack of consistency regarding official walking signage on Tenerife when we ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the lovely brand new signs leading us to the Chinyero Volcano in the west of the island.

Admittedly getting to the actual walk had involved ignoring a signpost which suggested that the road to the start of the walk may or may not have been shut – it wasn’t – and then knowing where the actual walk began as the signposts didn’t start till we were on the walk. This sort of flawed thinking runs through a lot of Canarian thinking. You have to know that something exists, and where it exists to find out more info about it. It means that if you’re a visitor, there are a lot of things going on that you never get to hear about. Walking routes don’t just start at the first signpost.

But being already armed with this info, this potential stumbling block at the start didn’t pose a problem. To be honest, I didn’t even think about it until I started writing this. It’s something we have to remind ourselves of on a regular basis – to try to look at walks through the eyes of someone who isn’t overly familiar with Tenerife or its quirky little ways.

Anyway we set off along a new and very clear path and at every crossroads there were signs complete with distances. Okay, the angle of a couple might not have been perfect, but that’s being overly picky.

It was one of, if not the clearest marked walking route that we’ve experienced on Tenerife and was getting the thumbs up from us as the perfect walking route. This was looking like a shining example of what the future of Tenerife as a top walking destination could look like.

But this is Tenerife; where the illogical is almost compulsory. As we reached a point in the walk which was less than a couple of hundred yards from the Boca Tauce road and therefore a perfect spot for walkers to access the route from the south and south west, the path completely ignored this and continued parallel with the road before heading inland again.

Not only were there no signs from the path to the road, or vice versa, there were yellow and white crosses advising that it was definitely not part of the route.

Basically this was a walk which was perfectly laid out for people starting from the northern side of the island, but people on the southern side might not be aware it existed even though they were only metres from it. It was bizarre and I can’t quite figure out, considering the care and attention that went into signposting the rest of the walk, why there was such a serious omission at that point.

But there you go; ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and…discover.