Escape to Tenerife

I'm not going up that!

So, we're already higher than Snowdon and this mountain looks a lot higher. We were in Tenerife, a few hundred miles off the coast of Africa, we'd left the winter chill of Wales behind us for a few days. At over 12,000 feet Teide counts as the highest mountain in Spain. It's also one of 16 active volcanoes worldwide which are being closely monitored by a UN scientific committee because of their potential for huge destructive eruptions and because lots of people live close by. So we did go further up, what was there to stop us?

They filmed Star Wars up here - no sign of any Jedi this time!

As we approached the tops the lush green forests of Canadian Pine and Australian Eucalyptus ( a weed of a tree here) gave way to a desert landscape. Very little rain falls at this height and very little grows. The various shades of brown consist mostly of volcanic debris - the rusty red brown smudge across the middle of the photo is a lava field. There is a cable car to the crater but we settled for the bumpy road to the foot of the cable car.

Got any nuts?

As I said very little grows here and not much lives here either - then eagle-eyes Vicky spotted movement out of the corner of her eye and camera-ready me got a shot of this furtive little brown thing. Looked just like the meadow pipits that we see fluttering over the Denbigh moors and, after a bit of research, found out that this is a cousin - Bertholet's Pipit, (it has a bigger head than the Meadow Pipit!) Sabin Bertholet was a local naturalist who spotted one of these in the eighteenth century. Most folk who travel to Tenerife go to the sunny south where there are dozens of big beach side hotels and night clubs - not our scene I'm afraid and we stayed in the delightful capital Santa Cruz in the greener north of the island.

Worked hard for that lot.

And of course no trip is complete without a little run. I did the Tenerife half marathon in fairly warm conditions coming 2nd V65 in 1:36:41. Vicky, three hours later with an 11:30 start was really running in the heat and finished the 8K race in a superb 49:05. We didn't win the sunglasses in the picture - they're just there to add to the flavour. The only downside to Tenerife is the lack of decent beer in the very pleasant bars downtown - we tried the Alhambra, Estrella Galicia (according to the European beer guide website: "one for the sink."), the Mahou, the Cruzcampo - all tasted the same - sticky lagers the lot of them. Locally brewed Dorada was the most refreshing - I suspect that was because it's fresh and unpasteurised. Which worked well after 22K!

Sunglasses are just for effect.