TENERIFE 1st FEB

After my epic sleep and with no damage by falling trees I broke camp. I’ve been using pine needles to make a deep soft bed, Ray Mears would be proud, and I haven’t slept that long in any pension bed.
The days hike,20km or so, consisted of a lot more ups and downs nearly all of it in pine or laurel forest, the last half in the cloud, so views were limited.
There was a lot more wooden steps, it seemed at times like job creation, and a lot of zig zagging across debris strewn forest slopes.

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Being out of touch I had forgotten it was a Sunday so was slightly surprised to be sharing the forest with so many mountain bikes, hikers, trails bikes and runners hurtling past me down the steep drops. And I often heard gunshot off in the distance although I haven't seen anything to shoot.
I think it's brilliant that all these ancient paths, and there are tens of thousands of kms of them across Spain, used for centuries, probably with a fair bit of drudgery involved, should be kept open and repaired for recreational use.

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At the supposedly “well equipped” rest area of Siete Fuentes , where there were no Fuentes let alone Siete, and the table and benches had disappeared, I was joined by a middle aged couple of likely lads with big staffs out on a hike who insisted I shared their vino and some dry powder(?) with them. I shared my La PALMA fig cake and they then produced more vino and sweet cakes. I had only been hoping for some water. Water to wine– must be some kind of divine intervention.
I certainly needed it to deal with the next few hours of life in the wet mist,trudging along the muddy trails.

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I past a wayside shrine, of which there have been many.

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And eventually made it to LA Esperanza where the end of the GR131 on Tenerife was marked by a headless statue.

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I was lucky enough to get a bus straight away to LA Laguna and another down to Santa Cruz where I catch my ferry tomorrow to Gran Canaria.

2 comments

  1. Good luck with your last island. Bear in mind that the GR131 across Gran Canaria hasn’t yet been waymarked… or if it has… then it’s only just been done and no-one has told me yet!

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