Lockdown in Tenerife ... updated

Today is Day 19 of our planned 28-day break in Tenerife.

We went out earlier this afternoon on our hired motorbike.  It seemed quiet on the streets, but it's Sunday and today's the first day since we arrived when overcast conditions have persisted into the afternoon, so I didn't read anything unusual into it.  The sky's clearing up now, and it looks like it'll be a nice evening as usual.

We rode up to the east side of Los Cristianos, near to where all the motorhomes park up for the night, and went onto the rocks for a spot of fishing.   We've been there a few times in the last couple of weeks, and many times during previous trips here - this time, we've seen motorhomes registered in many other countries, and from as far away as Scandinavia and Bulgaria.  

A few other people were around, walking on the beaches or clambering over the rocks, but we were the only ones fishing today.

We'd been there for a couple of hours when my wife noticed a pair of police officers gesticulating from the car parking area, but we were a couple of hundred metres away and couldn't hear them above the sound of the waves, so we just ignored them.  Anyway, I had an idea what they might have wanted from reading the news last night ...

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.

Madeira ...

We've just returned from a holiday on the island of Madeira, which is a place we'd never visited before. 

As keen gardeners, we'd heard about its ideal conditions for growing just about anything, and so we came here to see for ourselves and also maybe to identify another potential location for our longer winter breaks in the future.

Madeira's quite upmarket compared to some of the holiday destinations we've visited.  There's not much in the way of sandy beaches, and access to the sea can be difficult to find since there are high cliffs around much of the coastline.  And there's a lot of steep hills to negotiate if you're on foot, so some form of motorised transport is a must if you want to explore places off the beaten track.

There's an extensive modern road system linking the major settlements via dual-carriageways with long tunnels and bridges to cut through the mountains and cross the deep valleys between, although we generally travelled more leisurely on the older roads which wind around the mountains with spectacular views but greatly extended journey times.

the Via Rapide from the Funchal botanical gardens

Notes from a small island ...

After the success of our long winter break early last year, we decided to do it again in 2018.  By 'success' I mean avoiding the cold, miserable, grey days that characterise much of January and February in northern England.

So we're back in the Canary Islands for the best part of two months, although staying on a different island to last year. 

Of all the many places I've ever been in the world, I think the Canaries have one of the very best winter climates.  We're around 5 degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer, and it's very mild - warm even - but without the high humidity of the tropics.   The sun's bright, the sea's crystal clear and at night we can see many more stars than at home, due to the clearer air and lower light pollution.

The local flora is stunning, even at this time of year.  It's just a very nice place to wander around.

flowering vine growing wild on scrubland - naturally, I took a cutting ....

Six weeks in the Canary Islands !

We've just arrived in the Canary Islands, where we'll spend the next six weeks in an apartment hotel.

Now that we don't have animals to worry about back home, we're again free to spend extended periods on our travels.   We're no strangers to being away, I've worked in expat roles and on projects in foreign locations where we've been away for years at a stretch.

The Canaries are really the only place where there's decent weather all year round, but also easily accessible from local airports - other warmer places in the world require long flights and only tend to operate from just a few very large airports.

A Grand Tour ...

I mentioned in a previous post that we intended to take our 'new' convertible on a driving tour of Europe.   Well, we've now returned from a great holiday, and here's brief diary of the trip.

the route, anticlockwise from Zeebrugge to Amsterdam

A new toy ...

Well, I say new but it's an eight year old Astra 'Twintop' coupe-convertible....

Camping in Europe...holiday on the cheap ?

It was time for a holiday, the first real one we'd had since a package to Turkey in 2008, although admittedly we did spend around a week very early this year driving to a few cities in Northern Europe.  

Although I get  to travel around the world occasionally with work assignments, and even take my wife on some of them, they don't usually allow too much time for sightseeing and just general chilling-out.

It's many years since I'd been to the warmer parts of Europe, and my wife had never been at all.  A timely lull in foreseeable work commitments coincided with the end of the mad August rush on the French Riviera, and so two or three weeks away in September was the plan. 

The initial intention was to just drive around and stop wherever we fancied, generally in the cheaper hotels and B&Bs, but if the weather was fine then we'd fit in a bit of camping instead.