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There's always posts on STW asking for riding spot recommendations so here's mine for La Palma. Jet2 now offer a direct flight from Manchester and there's a guiding/uplift service called Flow Trails who also offer apartment accommodation next to their bike shop. A bit like Freeride Maderia but a small outfit with the owner (Rodrigo- top fella) and some part time guides and drivers to help.
Summary is it's an amazing place to ride and to see. Active Volcano (last eruption in 2021), uplifts to nearly 1800m and many of the trails start there and finish at the sea. Not a lot of "dirt", a huge amount of spiky black volcanic rock, grip-less volcanic dust and occasional bedrock. Plus lots of forest Singletrack often enlivened by pine cones I came to think of as "slick backed hedgehogs"
Anyway some pics:
You should get the idea by now 😉
Island is compact so even the longest uplift is only 50-60 mins and then you're riding one to two hours. Food was great, stopped in lots of interesting places, day off in Santa Cruz which was good fun. Weather was about perfect except for a monster rain storm first day and colder winds near the end of the trip. Once you were off the tops tho, all good.
I don't wear a full face much, but I was very happy to ride with one here. Same with elbow pads. The couple of crashes i had definitely would have been worse without knees/elbows etc.
Riding is pretty full on. There aren't any easy trails (for me anyway). Lots of variety depending on which part of the island you go to. Sometimes one trail could have four different surfaces.
Would defo go again. My Bronson was fab there, enough travel and noticeably more agile than my Giga in the tight stuff of which there was a lot.
Rodrigo from Flow Trails La Palma is a great host. Can't recommend him enough. Especially after we'd done a trail to the south of the island finishing at the lighthouse. At which point the van turned up with cold beers stashed in the back 🙂
Oh if you want to see more pics, I uploaded all 300+ (and a couple of vids) to flickr:
Mostly taken by the guide. I didn't dare have my phone in my shorts!
@danti - they do. Norco FS. Nice bikes. I should have said there is very little pedalling. It says 20% on their website, but we did over 17500m of descending in five riding days and less than 1000m of climbing. Guides tend to run ebikes, but I think all the other riders we rode with were on Norco's and maybe a Yeti.
Id love to go back to La Palma, I could persuade the missus that this is a winner as we got engaged there in 2011.