With little luggage: Road bike tour on four Canary Islands - Spain: Stage tour across four Canary Islands
Martin Roos
· 15.01.2018
It's Team Sky's fault that we don't have dinner with a volcano view. It was no longer bookable for us, the only hotel at an altitude of around two thousand metres, in the middle of Tenerife's inhospitable Martian landscape at the foot of the Teide peak. Because six professional cyclists and their entourage are still staying there during the racing season in mid-May. As we climb up the endless slope to the collapsed crater rim of the volcano in the morning, already a thousand metres above sea level, the light blue Sky jerseys whizz towards us, followed by a team car. The next moment we are alone again with the Canary Island pines to the left and right of the tarmac. At this altitude, we have escaped the muggy vapour bonnet that sits over Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz in the morning. We had filled all our water bottles there, because today we were crowning our week with the final, the most divine tour. There are 2,300 metres in altitude between Santa Cruz and the bizarrely furrowed lava terrain of the "Cañadas" plateau, littered with volcanic eruptions. In between: one of the most spectacular roads in Europe.
You can find the entire travel article with this GPS data in the download area below:
- Stage 1 - Lanzarote: Puerto del Carmen - Playa Blanca (90 kilometres, 1,200 metres in altitude, max. 12% gradient)
- Stage 2 - Fuerteventura: Corralejo - Puerto del Rosario (103 kilometres, 1,400 metres in altitude, max. 11% gradient)
- Stage 3 - Gran Canaria: Las Palmas - Tejeda (78 kilometres, 2,400 vertical metres, max. gradient 22%)
- Stage 4 - Gran Canaria: Tejeda - Agaete (76 kilometres, 1,800 vertical metres, max. 18% gradient)
- Stage 5 - Tenerife: Santa Cruz - Vilaflor (90 kilometres, 2,860 vertical metres, max. 14% gradient)
- Epilogue | Stage 6 - Tenerife: Vilaflor - Airport (Tenerife South)
The Canary Islands lie in the Atlantic Ocean at the level of southern Morocco, while Fuerteventura is only around 100 kilometres from the coast of Africa. We travelled the four largest islands from east to west, starting with Lanzarote, then Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and finally Tenerife, which is home to Spain's highest mountain, Pico del Teide (3,715 metres). Travelling around the four largest main Canary Islands offers the opportunity to get to know the volcanic landscapes garnished with beaches and cliffs. For the tour described here, seven days of travelling are the minimum (including arrival and departure). The first few days on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are ideal for breaking in and acclimatising; there you have to contend with the wind and the rough tarmac (25-millimetre tyres are recommended) rather than the mountains. After that, the climbing gets down to business. On Gran Canaria, longer ramps with gradients of more than 20 per cent await, and the climbs to Pico de las Nieves and on Tenerife to Pico del Teide can compete with the ascents on major Alpine passes. Compact cranks and mountain sprockets are therefore a must. On a positive note, we noticed that on the few but unavoidable major roads - apart from the proverbial exception - even local heavy goods vehicles drive considerately.
