05 May 2019

Two Islands ...

A somewhat belated post, from our now regular trips to the sun during the first few months of the year, to escape the cold and miserable weather of north-east England.

This year, we split our time away across two islands, with a three-week gap at home between.  One of the reasons for this was that last year we returned home from an extended break only to find we hadn't actually missed the worst of the cold weather, which was still to come in mid March.

So this year, we went first to Fuerteventura and then made another trip to Tenerife.

Feurteventura was quite cool at the start of the year, although there were several days of warm weather during the trip.  There were also strong north-easterly winds blowing continuously, which is supposedly one of the reasons for the name of the island.




Feurteventura is quite barren and rocky, especially inland where it has an almost desert landscape with only occasional oases of denser vegetation.  Compared to some of the other Canary Islands, there are also fewer public gardens and parks to visit although there are occasional splashes of colour to be found.




Feurteventura is quite similar to Lanzarote, which we've visited before, and the two islands are only separated by 12 km or so of ocean.


the island of Lanzarote in the background ....

During the second trip, to Tenerife, we were blessed with fantastic weather for the whole time.  There was no rain at all during daylight hours and only a couple of days when the sun didn't break through light-grey clouds.  The rest of the time the sun shone brightly and it felt very warm.



Tenerife is much more heavily populated than Feurteventura, and with many more long-established settlements, so there are plenty of parks and gardens to visit around the island.




I'll finish with several photos of Hibiscus from Tenerife, which is one of my favourite flowers.










I've a couple of young Hibiscus Syriacus bushes growing in our garden, which is the only poor relation of these specimens hardy enough to survive in northern Europe, and very nice they are too, but you just can't beat the more tropical species for their colour and vibrancy.

No comments:

Post a Comment