Eh?

None of trips made to Tenerife are really complete without a trip up the mountain. Certainly the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen have done this many times - indeed more than once on some trips.

The mountain only sported a few fluffy clouds and the day seemed perfect. To the uninitated the route up the south face through Villaflor would be the obvious choice. The Gorse Fox would admit it's pretty. However our favourite route is more interesting and involves driving down the spine of the island. We headed up TF-1 towards Santa Cruz, then looped onto TF-2 across to La Laguna (once capitol of the Island and home of its famous University - and Ikea!!!). We then turned south west, passing Los Rodeos airport and heading up through La Esperanza into the Coronal Forest an up onto the spine of the mountains.

As the road loopd first one way and then the other, stunning vistas of one coast then the other open up before you and to the south the peak of El Teide dominates the skyline.

Well, that's how it should be. Actually, we headed up into ground hugging cloud. It started to rain - heavily, and visibility was a few hundreds of metres at best. As the temperature plunged past 4C the rain turned to hail and the car was pounded by huge hailstones. In minutes the mountain road was covered in huge hailstones and driving became "interesting".

We continued to climb, passing the observatory at Inaza and then as we broke through the wall of the crater near El Portillo the clouds dropped away and the skies were blue and the sun shone. The journey through the crater was as spectacular as we have come to expect, and we stopped here and there to take photos... and to get some lunch.

Eventually, we moved on and eschewed the southern route, turning north west at Boca Tauce and heading down towards Chio. This is a gentle and easy drive, and virtually the whole descent can be achieved without a touch of the accelerator and the occasional dab of the brake.

From Chio we headed back along the west coast and back to the villa for a quiet afternoon with our books. All-in-all we had only covered 121 miles but we had seen some pretty unique weather - certainly it the first time we have seen the like in the 20-odd years we have been coming here.

As a postscript - there was heavy rain during the night. Looking up at El Teide this morning many of the slopes of the mountain and those that rim the crater are dusted with snow... yet down here it's pleasantly warm as usual.