Bikepacking in Tenerife – The Gran Guanche Part 4

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Lanzarote film here:https://youtu.be/mV1DsXEhaE4
Fuerteventura film here:https://youtu.be/qMPKqsiN_6w
Gran Canaria film here:

I went bikepacking alone on the island of Tenerife in Spain, the fourth Canary Island on the Gran Guanche bikepacking race route.

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Routes here:
Day 1 and 2: https://granguanche.com/routes/trail/

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Time stamps:

0:00 – Intro
0:24 – Day 1: Santa Cruz to La Laguna
1:09 – The rain
2:06 – Hostel in La Laguna
3:03 – Day 2: La Laguna to the foot of Mount Teide
4:35 – The Fallen Trees and the change of plans
5:46 – Back down to Puerto De La Cruz
7:19 – BTS and Route Summary

tenar the fourth and penultimate island of my grand guanche bike packing Adventure I’ve been to tenar many times and it feels very familiar to me and after a terrible storm on Gran Canaria I was hoping the weather here would be kinder [Music] [Music] w pretty [Music] measurable still raining absolutely soed been climbing constantly in the rain which has not been ideal it’s not particularly warm either which is a bit of a shame however I have just come across this amazing little cave right by the road just going to have a little break in here and chill for a little bit so completely dry in here which is lovely I’ve been procrastinating far too long but it is not showing signs of dying down it’s absolutely chucking it down [Music] [Music] good morning so bit of change of plans from yesterday it was pretty horrendous rain and instead of carrying on and camping like I was supposed to I actually stopped 10 Mi shorter of where I was planning on and booked in at a hostel which I am very glad I did cuz uh I was Bloody cold I’m pretty tired so I’ve had a pretty good night’s sleep add something to eat I’m going to crack on today does mean though I’ve got to do an extra 10 miles either today or tomorrow cuz I am camping tonight fingers crossed before catching the ferry tomorrow from uh Los cristianos to La Palma so here we go [Music] m [Music] this bit feels really familiar reminds me of the UK Scotland a little bit just jamp forests with no sun but it’s quite nice having that familiarity sometimes it just puts your mind at ease you know what you’re doing [Music] I was just stopped by a Spanish lady and from what I can gather using my very po knowledge of Spanish uh she said that it’s pretty muddy and very deep water she was miming up to her knees so naturally I’ve chosen to just crack on any anyway but and have a look but let’s see let’s see if it’s true I might have misunderstood what that lady was saying I thought she meant mud but it could have been that she meant trees that’s a pain there doesn’t look like there’s anywhere around so I’m going to have to hop over with this bike which is heavy seems to be this island is just throwing everything at me so we had the tree issue manag to get over that cycled up for good hour and a bit now and I found that the route is closed no signs about that anywhere so now I’ve got to go back down but I don’t really know if there’s another way over without basically having to go down to the coast so I can see some life down there but it really messes up my route cuz I’m supposed to be camping at the top then and then heading downhill to the ferry tomorrow so if I can’t get up to the top I’m going to have to go around or cut some bits out again which is really frustrating see what [Music] [Music] happens e so it’s been raining all bloody day and now I’ve decided to change route and come to the coast it’s actually cleared up it’s the first time I’ve seen the sun properly since been here but it has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works now cuz I’m miles away from where I need to be and I’ve got to catch the ferry tomorrow night at 5:00 p.m. so I’m going to have to catch a bus somewhere with the bike and hope that they’ll take it on uh maybe a little bit of cycling but I’m not going to be cycling the whole way cuz it is a a pretty long one so I cannot miss the ferry otherwise I’m absolutely screwed fingers crossed but just typical isn’t it been raining the whole two days pretty much and now I’ve decided to pack it in it’s actually quite nice let’s hope that the weather on L Palmer is as good as the other few Islands thank you very much for watching my film if you liked it make sure you give it a thumbs up leave a comment and subscribe to the channel I’ve been doing the whole Grand GUI bik packing loop I decided to do it in two separate trips because of family commitments I didn’t want to go and do it all in one go cuz there’s five islands and there’s a lot of riding and a lot of climbing so the first time I went for the trip I did lanzerotti fua Ventura and gr Canaria and this time I flew in from Manchester to tene South to start the last two islands the problem that arises if you fly to the south of the island is that the route actually starts way up in the north because you should have caught a ferry from Grand canara but because I didn’t do that I had to get a bus from the south after I’d found somewhere to store my bite box up to the north which took a very long time you can take bikes on the buses in tenner Reef on most of them anyway which is really really cool you can slide it underneath in the storage area and that is really freeing it just allows you to go all over the island without having to worry about what you’re going to do with your bike I caught the bus to Santa Cruz the capital of tener I’ve actually never been there before and I’ve been to tene at least five times now in various different capacities Santa Cruz was actually a really nice place I didn’t realize how built up it was there’s like University there and there’s trams it just doesn’t feel like the rest of tene at all and from there I followed the coast up around sort of the top right hand corner of the island up to a Naga forest and the original plan was to go through the forest right to the top of the sort of mountain range near there and find somewhere to Wild camp but as you’ve seen the weather was atrocious from about the first couple of hours onwards it just carried on raining and raining and raining and it didn’t stop I got absolutely soaked I was freezing it was like 13 degrees which is rubbish for tene so I didn’t really enjoy that day I had to change plans stayed at hostel which was really nice I’ve actually stayed in one of the sister hostels of this company I roughly know the owner he owns the entire Nest hostel group up in tene so I knew they were good hostil and they’re relatively cheap There’s Always Somewhere you can store your bike so I went for that I was on a bit of a schedule cuz I needed to get to the ferry at Los cristianos which was back in the south of tenar where a lot of bricks go and make their holidays I didn’t want to Hemorrhage any more time so every day that I didn’t go where I needed to go because of bad weather meant I’d have to do more the following day I’ve got to be honest I didn’t enjoy this section of the trip I love ten and I always go there if I can in the winter for a cheap cycling holiday because nine times out of 10 it’s a welcome relief from the miserable weather here in the UK but I was really unlucky I had equal if not colder temperatures than what we had back in the UK and worse rain uh and as a result I just didn’t enjoy it I felt like I should have saved my money and stayed at home but I was determined to get to the finish line and as a result I had to do even more but because of the issues with the trees and then the closed route which really threw a spanner into the works I decided to head back down to the coast I stayed in another Nest hostel it was a Puerto Nest so down at Puerto De La Cruz an area that I’ve been to a few times and I had to basically pack it in and get the bus from there back to the South to tackle the next bit of the trip next month is the final island in the grand GUI route I’m heading to La Palma which is known as The Jewel of the Canary Islands it’s hardly ever visited compared to tenar and lanzerotti by Brits anyway and it is absolutely beautiful so make sure you stay tuned for that thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you in the next video