7 Day in Tenerife: An Honest Review

Tenerife was my first ever cycling destination and there's a lot that shocked and surprised me, many things I fell in love with and, always when adventure is involved, some things I learned along the way.

While planning this trip, although we knew we wanted to go somewhere warm everyone we asked was mostly heading to Gran Canaria or Lanzarote and we found it really hard to find honest advice about what cycling in Tenerife was really like. So now that we are back from our trip, here it is, an honest review and recap of seven days of cycling in the north of Tenerife.

Don't have time to watch the entire video? Here are our routes:

What shocked us: We didn't know before we arrived but the Canary Islands suffer from over-tourism. This left us with feeling quite guilty and pushed me to speak with the locals to ask them how they felt. It seemed the core problems in Tenerife stem from: rental cars, monopolies on apartments/airbnbs and massive chain hotels and inadequately distributed wealth. How you navigate this is up to you but I know if and when we go back we are going to try to make more conscious decisions about how we travel around the island, where we stay and who we support. The highlights (other than the obvious epic views and sunshine):

98% of the local drivers were so patient and so kind and most often gave us an entire lane when they passed us, it made coming back to Swiss roads feel sketchy somehow The nice gradient of climbs. Although you can't avoid climbing on this island, most of the climbs are really well paved and angled so that you can keep your cadence up and really practice pacing your energy expenditure over the duration of the climb. This also means a lot of the descents are quite enjoyable too. The bakeries. I think I ate a dozen empanadillas, homemade sandwhiches, churros, cakes and sweets!

Getting waved at by the pro teams (not all of them but there were so many friendly riders).

The nature and feeling like you're going back in time.

The salt in the air.

Seeing and feeling the magnitude of Teide from a distance.

Some of my fav moments: