The Canaries

This has been a popular location of ours for some years. In the early days, both Lanzarote & Fuerteventura featured as family holiday venues. Latterly, we've used mainly Lanzarote but on a couple of occasions Tenerife as our spring break to dispel the winter blues!

These volcanically formed islands are stunning locations, offering much variety in scenery, from beaches, through quaint towns & villages, traditional & craft markets, varied beaches & small coves, to some stunning lunar-like landscapes ( particularly Timanfaya National Park) on the west side of Lanzarote.

Being close to the equator, the climate is temperate for most of the year, making an ideal location for some sun out of the traditional high season so, unlike resorts such as Cyprus which we also love, the season here is pretty much all year around. Being "perched" off the west coast of Africa & mid-Atlantic, it can get windy in some parts of these islands, in fact Fuerteventura is know as " the windy island", although some of the places we've been on both Tenerife & Lanzarote run it close for the title.

Our "go to" resort has become Playa Blanca as our base on Lanzarote. Normally, we'll hire a villa, pick up a car at the airport which, at our normal time of year is very reasonably priced, and turns into very slick process - around 35 mins to get through the airport, collect car & luggage & another 35 mins to get down to Playa.

Whilst we've pretty much seen most of the island now, we normally try to find somewhere new to go each time. "Must sees" on Lanzarote include Timenfaya National Park, Mirador Del Rio, the Island of La Gracia, Papaguya beach, the stunning west coast village of El Golfo (perfect for the evening meal against the backcloth of the setting sun), where there are almost as many restaurants as houses, and if you like markets, the weekly one in Teguise (not Costa Teguise) is definitely not to be missed!