Going for a week at the end of October – primary mission is walking and a bit of sunshine. Booked the flights but looking for somewhere to stay. I’d prefer not to be in some holiday complex. Has anybody been? Got any recommendations?

I’m going in two weeks and need to book somewhere to stay, what did you find?
I found this interesting blog from Hannah Barnes when she visited to go biking. This was before the days of the direct UK flights. I’m tempted to get a day’s biking if I can find somewhere to hire.

Hotel Madrid
Plaza de Cairasco, 4, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain

Basic and reasonable but full of character

ps make sure you take in the anthropological museum

Cheers billmc, but this is La Palma, not Las Palmas. It’s the less visited Canary island.

Yes went in April and it was superb. Fantastic mtb and walking. Will post some more details up for you in a bit

Ps for sun you are better on the south west side. The north east is often cloudy

Sorry, wasn’t wearing my glasses!

This is where we stayed

Recommended – great place, fairly basic accommodation but cheap, clean, not tatty at all, shared pool. Alan the owner is a Brit and a top guy to boot. He let us stay for the whole of the last day rather than booting us out at 10 like some do for cleaning. He was always very friendly and happy to pass on his local knowledges

The local area around el paso is great, plenty of restaurants, MTB (an awesome DH run) ~ 10-15 mins riding from the door, volcano walking a very short drive away.

I would also bery highly recommend thsi book for walkign routes and local knowledge. There’s no way we would have done such fantastic walks without this book.

For maps, I struggled to find decent large scale paper ones, so downloaded the OSM maps for my garmin and phone, and they were fine.

If you want any other routes or ideas where to go (e.g. biking) give me a shout and I’ll sort some GPXs out for you.

It really is a superb place!

PS the north is very beautiful and worth visiting however I’m glad we stayed in the south west, due to the better weather, and also there are more facilities (towns) around.

I went over 25 years ago, we stayed in a villa near Los Llanos I think. The island is stunning, minimal tourists but lots of great scenery, walks etc. I could imagine the mtbing would be great.

Thanks for the responses. So confusing without having been there to get a feel for the different parts of the island.

A second vote for the Walk La Palma book el bouf links to.

Several walks in the south will take you through lava fields from volcanic eruptions that happened less than 50 years ago. Very cool.