I was approached by the Rough Guide team to update their existing Pocket Rough Guide to Tenerife & La Gomera. After a quick read through the 10 year-old copy it became very obvious that an entire rewrite was required so the commission became a new edition.

Almost guaranteed, year-round sunshine is the main reason some eleven million plus visitors annually flock to the island of Tenerife where, in its south and west coast resorts, the archetypal holiday pleasures of sun, sea and sand beckon from within a safe, familiar environment. Yet outside the resorts, there’s a very different side to Tenerife, one where ancient rainforests and ragged mountains border abyssal ravines; where whales and dolphins inhabit warm coastal waters and where Spain’s highest mountain sits within a vast, volcanic crater beneath some of the world’s clearest skies.

Criss-crossed by ancient trails, Tenerife is one of Europe’s finest winter walking destinations, complimented by a network of boutique rural hotels. In the traditional northern towns and cities that grew up around a frontier society at the crossroads of Europe and the New World, the elegant facades of colonial architecture line cobbled streets and leafy plazas alongside bustling markets and an emergent gastronomic scene.

Lying just a 40 minute ferry ride off Tenerife’s west coast, the strikingly precipitous and thinly populated island of La Gomera is a startling contrast to its populous neighbour. A lack of major beaches and resorts has preserved a sense of remoteness and left the island’s laid back rural tranquillity largely to sustenance farming and the boots of the hikers who tread its trails.

Article

Commissioned by Rough Guides for their Pocket Rough Guides series

Publication

Rough Guides

Published

December 2018

Anaga Mountains path