Tag Archives: Landscapes

Gran Canaria Day 6 – Hike Quality

1 Reply

Wednesday 9 March 2022 –  Three days of dashing about the island (plus one of going back over some of the original workings) had left us with the luxury of not having to dash about to find multiple exciting new sites with which to dazzle our senses (and, of course, yours). There are a couple of things we’d like to do before we go, but since one of them was to go up to the top of the island (Pico de las Nieves) and the forecast was for fog up there (something I suffer from increasingly, these days), a day of leisure beckoned.

I spent much of this day of leisure battling up a mountain, and back down again (don’t ever let them tell you that downhill means speedy progress, unless they’re talking about ageing). Jane elected to stay at the hotel and drink tea.

The excellent Augustin, at the hotel reception, had given us a map of a local hike, plus  the key information that we’d need a, erm, key to get through the hotel’s fields, so I set off, armed with the map, sunscreen, water, hat and the key. Very soon after that I returned to the hotel to change my sandals for the walking boots I’d always intended to wear for the hike had not the downhill ageing process taken hold quite so effectively. Then I set out again, this time properly equipped for what turned out to be somewhat tougher than I had expected.

Quite soon after the start, and some initial intellectual exercise in connecting the map provided to the reality of what I could see, I started to rise above the level of the hotel and local houses.

You can see the hotel’s vines in the foreground and a further ammo for the comments I made in yesterday’s blog about the “sludgy” colours of some of the buildings (you can skip down to the last couple of paras if you’re pressed for time, or have a life to live).  In the sunshine, these look quite jolly, but when it was dull and rainy we really noticed the ochre shades.

The path ascended gently through farmland (more vines, mainly) and I noticed an attractive plant, so took a photo for Jane to look at.

It turns out to be an Echium, which is apparently a member of the Burridge Borage family. Yes, it’s an in joke.  If you don’t understand, just read on; nothing to see here.

All of a sudden, the gentle ascent started to be a bit steep

and it jolly well stayed that way right up to the top, I may say. At one stage I paused to take a photo (not a breath, oh, no) which seemed to show a slope similar to the one I was toiling up.

It may not look much to you, languishing there with a cocktail in your hand as you read this blog with a slight smile twisting your lips, but it looked fucking steep to me as I toiled up it.  I approached what I thought was the top

only to find that cruel fate was laughing at me and I had more uphill terrain to conquer.  But conquer it I did, and the views back down the valley were quite rewarding.

I was by this stage on the edge of a caldera, a volcanic crater, and, as one might expect, this was also quite a spectacular sight.

If you look carefully at the top left of this picture, you can see evidence of the oldest golf club in Spain,

Real Club de Golf De Las Palmas. Really. Founded in 1891 to cater for the English tourists of the day, apparently.

(I actually spent quite some time waiting for some sunshine into the crater.  Although the clouds were moving rapidly, they weren’t uncovering the sun; I suspected that the clouds themselves might have been caused by the very hill that I was standing on.  For amusement, I recorded the cloud’s movements. Please note that this represents ten minutes of watching the shadows. Just wanted you to understand the extent to which I suffer for my art.)

There were paths along the lip of the crater and I pottered about on them for a bit, appreciating the view, and working out whether to carry on up to the top of Bandama.

you can see that the final bit of the route to the top is simply a spiral round the peak, and this is actually a road, which wouldn’t be too rewarding to walk on.  That, and the fact that I’d used up nearly all my water, and wasn’t sure about whether spending the next three hours getting up there and back was a good idea or not, persuaded me to limit my ambition.  So I started down again, but not at all at high speed.  The going was steep and over slippery, gravelly paths.  Going up was hard work; going down was a little nerve-wracking, as a fall would certainly be annoying and possibly serious. Anyway, I made it down, back to the gate into the hotel vineyard.

I arrived back just in time to go for lunch in the hotel’s restaurant.  Those of you who have been paying attention will remember that we lunched there on out day of arrival, last Friday, and were not particularly impressed, so we thought that we’d try again in the hope that it would be better.  And, frankly, it wasn’t.  I was fortunate in that my food was very good, but Jane was left unimpressed with hers and aspects of the service were really not up to the spec one would expect of a destination hotel.  I did try the hotel’s own wine

and it was pretty good.  It’s unusual for me to drink wine these days – this was the first wine I’d drunk in three holidays in Spain over the last two years.  While I enjoyed it, it left me feeling a bit more bleary than the equivalent hit of gin would have, so I shall continue to avoid wine for the time being.

However, there’s still half a bottle of it left, and it won’t drink itself; Jane won’t help me, so I shall have to man up and take on the task of ensuring it doesn’t get poured down the drain.

We have one more full day here before travelling home on Friday; the weather auguries are favourable for a clear day in the mountains tomorrow so we may well take on the twisty roads once more and head up to Pico de las Nieves en route to exploring some more of the north of the island.  Come back and find out if that’s what we did, OK?

 

Gran Canaria Day 5 – Revisiting Time

1 Reply

Tuesday March 8 2022 – After three days of relentless tourism – and buttock-clenching roads – we decided that a more leisurely day would be nice. The opportunity to revisit a couple of places from the first full day we had here, when the wind and gloomy conditions really affected our enjoyment at the time, seemed a good way to fill the day.

The first of these was the Guadayeque Barranco (Ravine), which is reputedly lovely, but was all full of people when we visited because it was a weekend and the place is especially popular then. There are some interesting buildings along it, and some great-looking places at the top; but parking was all but impossible at the weekend, so we weren’t able to get the best out of the place.

Today was much calmer; fewer people, less wind, more sun. So we were able to get a good look at the places built into the rock as you go up the ravine

and see some of the restaurants at the top.

We stopped for a coffee break at the second of these, La Era, and it was an unusual coffee stop in that it featured no coffee, since their machine had broken down. However, I got a beer whilst the staff discovered this, so all was not lost. The terrace at La Era features a great view

and several cats.

Behind it is a path leading down the side of the hill, which was actually closed at one point, but we walked along it from the other end as far as we could, and learned that it led past accommodation which could be booked

and also featured a souvenir shop.

Another feature at this top end of the ravine is another restaurant called Tagoror, whose car park seemed to offer a convenient space – so Jane booked us a lunch table whilst we wandered around the other bits here. From the outside, it looks like any other restaurant with an outdoor terrace. But inside it is very unusual,

including some little cavey bits for groups to dine in.

It’s all entirely artificial, of course, but one has to admit that it’s fairly unique. The lunch here was workmanlike rather than posh, and served by a waiter who seemed to have a schtick about how hard put upon he was. But he was (almost) perfectly efficient and so we had a decent meal. Jane had curried goat, which she said was very good, even if at first it doesn’t seem a natural fit for a subtropical island’s fare.

We had timed the lunch so that we should, we hoped, arrive at the second revisit of the day at about the right time. This involved consulting the tide tables, as the place in question was El Bufadero, the blowhole on the east coast by La Garita. This was the scene, last Saturday, of winds so violent that not only was it not safe to go anywhere near it, but also my video gimbal couldn’t stabilise footage in the frankly alarming gusts of wind.

Today was utterly different. The sun shone, the breeze was gentle, and we had judged the tide right. There was still a barrier to dissuade us from going near the blowhole, but we laugh in the face of danger when it’s safe to do so, and I joined the various people who also had the same idea down by the blowhole. The resultant footage was very satisfactory.

So, after two such signal successes we decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a celebratory gin or two, having had another good day.  On the way back, there was a decent view over Agüimes, which we’d visited a couple of days ago (the windy day!)

You can see the very distinctive church of San Sebastian.  In the distance, you can also see a forest of wind turbines.  We’d noticed that there were a lot as we drove round the island’s main road towards Maspalomas, and, because she’s like that, Jane later consulted Google Maps and counted them up – there are over 140 onshore wind turbines in that south-eastern patch of the island.  Here’s a section of Google Maps to give you an idea.

The turbines are shown up by their distinctive shadows.

The final thing I did was to walk down the road from the hotel to take a photo of the towns below the hotel.

The reason I did this was because during the first couple of days here, we formed the impression that the buildings we saw near the main roads tended to be of rather dull, sludgy pastel shades – yellow and red ochres, and dull pinks, for example. By contrast, the villages and towns we saw up in the mountains featured, we thought, a lot more white buildings.

I think there is some merit in this view – it’s certainly true that the hillside villages we’ve seen have largely featured white in their palette – but also I wonder about the effect that the rather gloomy weather we experienced in our first couple of days had on our assessment; also, we’d just come from Lanzarote where the building code practically mandates that all buildings should be whitewashed, which perhaps made the contrast more noticeable. In the sunshine, the Gran Canaria colour palette doesn’t look so scruffy, that’s for sure.

So, here we are, drinking gin and eating crisps and starting to think about Passenger Locator Forms and all the other pre-requisites for an orderly return to the UK. But we still have two full days here and at the moment we have no definite plans as to how we’re going to fill them. If you’d like, please come back and find out how we got on.

Gran Canaria Day 4 – Moments of Teror in the mountains

Leave a Reply

Monday 7 March 2022 – While the hotel we’re staying at is a very nice environment, I think we might need to Have A Word Or Two about some of the catering.  The restaurant on the day we arrived was a little patchy in its service and food prep, and the breakfast today was not properly organised; the lady in charge was too busy behind the scenes to notice that items on the buffet needed refreshing until someone pointed it out. We might give the restaurant another chance; after all, it was only its first or second day after reopening. But it’s a shame that such a lovely environment lacks a bit of care and attention in places.

Never mind – we managed to construct a reasonable breakfast and then headed out for the day’s travels.  The weather forecast promised that early cloud over the mountains would dissipate and so we headed out with the idea of making the central peak, Pico de las Nieves, the central part of the day, then head over to the west before wending our way back home round the north of the island.  Because of its geography, or possibly geology, or indeed maybe both, the best way to cover any significant distance on Gran Canaria is to drive round the major road which rings the island to the point nearest your intended destination and then head inland.

Let’s do a worked example.  Our first port of call today was a town called Teror. Our last, before we hightailed it back to the hotel was a village called Agaete.  To do that as efficiently as possible, Google maps suggests this:

basically 39 km in 39 minutes – 60kph.

On the other hand, you could go over the middle of the island, and this is the route we took.

According to the god of online maps, that route is 85 km, and would take 2 hours and 12 minutes, which equates to 39kph. And that, reader, would be going some; the Sunflower book of Gran Canaria walks and tours suggests a planning assumption of 15-20 kph on the mountain roads.  It would take fierce concentration and sphincters of steel to average 39kph.

Anyway, we took all day.  It was still buttock-clenchingly tense at times, but we escaped without any accidents and with several photos, to see some of which please read on.

We started in Teror, because it held the promise of some handsome buildings with an interesting variety of balconies.  And it delivered on these promises, erm, handsomely.

Here, for example, is the Calle Real de la Plaza.

As well as some lovely balconies, it has some interesting buildings, such as this one, which is covered in tiles.

The church is an imposing building

(sadly closed on Monday mornings for cleaning) and there are plenty of other interesting sights.

Among all this interestingness we noticed one thing which seemed a bit unusual; everyone was wearing masks all the time, even outdoors.  It didn’t seem compulsory. We started walking around maskless and no-one, not even a chap dressed in official-looking uniform, asked us to mask up or motioned that we should.  But the discomfort we felt at being the only unmasked individuals was greater than that of wearing a mask, so we completed our walking around wearing masks.

Jane had read about a particular thing, a water feature, she wanted us to see, so we trailed about looking for it, and….

it wasn’t running. We consoled ourselves with a coffee and then headed back to the car, past the very imposing town hall

before heading out.  It wasn’t long before we came to the first viewpoint of the day, the Mirador de la Vuelta de los Pájaros

after which we carried on further up into the hills.  The original plan had been to head to the highest point on the island, but that depended on the clouds clearing, which it began to look like a distant prospect.

The Canary Pines in the photos above had been the site of pretty significant fires in 2017 and 2019, and you can see the demarcation between the areas affected and not. We read that the pines are pretty resistant and should survive.

A little further on, another “astronomica” viewpoint on the way persuaded us that perhaps heading any higher would be optimistic

and so we rather headed down; soon after the above scene, we saw this

which is pretty much the view we would have had from the formal viewpoint, but you can see where the cloud starts.

Having decided to avoid going higher, we headed off across the island, with the distant destination of La Aldea in mind.  En route we passed some attractive scenes.

Above is Candelaria, which is very attractive but utterly remote. We wondered how the people who lived there managed for schools, shops, doctors and such.

I took this picture at a mirador called la Atalaya.  Overall, the views were not that  fabulous, but I liked what looked like a fringe of single trees on the horizon, like injuns about to spring an ambush (can one say that sort of thing these days?).

Very soon, the very twisty and often nerve-rackingly narrow road took us into some Big Scenery – Very Big Scenery.

We passed a viewpoint called the Mirador del Molino, mainly because it had the remains of a mill there.

More to the point, it had rather a spectacular view over a lake called Presa del Parralillo.

If you look at the left side of the photo, you can see the road running downhill towards the dam at the end of the lake.  When you get down there, you can look back and just about make out the mill.

The road led past the dam

at which point, some 25km into this precipitous, narrow and winding road, The Powers That Be put up the most spectacularly uncounterintuitive sign.

Mind you, they might have been referring to the cyclists, who were alternately toiling up and whizzing down the road in completely lunatic fashion.

We stopped for a late lunch in La Aldea and I tried my hand at yet another arty photo of the scene just by the café.

Then we carried on towards the end of the mountainous part of today’s excursion.  Not, it has to be said, without some more buttock-clenching moments.

This lorry was one of what seemed like an endless stream of heavy vehicles headed in the opposite direction.  We think it has to do with creating a tunnel to bypass the twisty bits.  The tunnel is complete in places, and I must say that it’s a lot more relaxing to drive in than the roads it is due to replace.

La Aldea, where we had lunch, is the centre of the fruit and vegetable growing part of the island, and as we took the road out of it, we got a sight which shows the extent of the area given over to growing stuff.

The whole basin of the valley is covered in vast areas of netting to protect the crops – an extraordinary sight.

We rather thankfully headed towards the tunnel, but, before we went into it, diverted to a noted viewpoint, the Mirador del Balcón. Actually the view from it was so disappointing that I didn’t bother to take any photos, but it seems that its main purpose is for people to behave like tourists on it – who gives a crap about the actual view when you can arse about in front of it, eh?

Before we hit the final stretch of the main road home, there were a couple of interesting vignettes:

Above, the village of Gáldar, clustered round the base of a volcano; and, below, a couple of shots of parts of the town of Algaete

including this slightly strange complex of buildings.

And that completed the day’s touring – some lovely views, big scenery and terrifying roads.

We’ve covered quite a lot of ground over the last three days, but there are still lots of possibilities for new and exciting things to do tomorrow – Gran Canaria certainly offers a varied mix of scenery, history and culture to be explored. We haven’t decided what we’ll aim for tomorrow, so you’ll just have to come back and find out for yourselves what we got up to, won’t you?