If you think of Lanza-grotty or tacky Tenerife when someone mentions the Canary Islands, it s time to ditch those impressions. Read on for more on the hidden gems of the isles.
Fuerteventura suits surfers
Credit: Getty
Everything about the sun-soaked Canary Islands, which could be added to the UK s green list from May 17 thanks to its low Covid rates and effective vaccine programme, always seems to feel bigger and brighter.
I’ve paid the Spanish islands a visit at least once a year since I was a teenager, and the enormity of the place always strikes me, whether that is while gazing up at the pineapple-top foliage of the palm trees around the hotel pool, gawping at the human-dwarfing size of the rainforest’s evergreen ferns, or running, grinning, down the dunes, my heels spraying golden sand in my wake.
Timanfaya National Park and the volcanoes in Lanzarote
The austere, otherworldly landscape of Lanzarote is shaped by hundreds of volcanic cones, many of them dating back to a series of devastating eruptions in the 1730s. For six years from 1730 to 1736, volcanic activity covered 200 square km of fertile farmland with layers of ash and lava, destroying up to 20 villages and causing most of the island’s inhabitants to flee to nearby islands. Part of this area now forms the Timanfaya National Park, one of the most popular attractions in Lanzarote.
The parish priest at Yaiza wrote in his diary ”
a gigantic mountain rose and sunk back into its crater on the same day with such a terrifying sound, covering the island with stones and ashes. The fiery lava streams descended like rivers towards the sea with the ash, rocks and dense smoke making life impossible“