The Geology of the Canary Islands


Book Description

The Geology of the Canary Islands provides a concise overview of the geology and volcanology of the Canary Islands, along with 27 carefully planned day excursions comprising trips on all of the islands. Each stop includes a description on how to approach a site and where to park with GPS locations provided. The book covers all the spectacular features of the islands, including active ocean island volcanoes whose origins are linked to a hot spot or plume causing anomalously hot mantle material to intrude the African plate, submarine volcanic sequences uplifted inside the islands, sub- aerial shield volcanoes, and the remains of giant lateral collapses. Through its clearly written and richly color-illustrated introduction and field guide, this book is essential reading for geologists who visit the Canary Islands, one of the largest and most fascinating active volcanic systems in Europe. - Includes a forward by Prof. C. J. Stillman (Trinity College Dublin), a leading expert on the volcanology and geology of the Canary Islands - Features 500 full color images, coupled with in-depth introductory text and a chapter on each island, followed by 27 guided excursions that include all of the seven islands of the archipelago - Familiarizes the reader with the variety of volcanic landforms and eruptive products in the Canary Islands and provides practical support in recognition, recording, and interpretation - Develops understanding of growth, evolution, and destruction of ocean island volcanoes, promoting temporal and spatial thinking within a given geological framework




Tenerife


Book Description

Tenerife can easily be described as the most versatile hiking paradise of the Canary Islands. The “Island of Bliss” not only offers the highest peak of the Canary archipelago and the whole of Spain - the Pico de Teide measuring 3718m – it also unites countless, completely different types of landscape: the extremely bare, almost desert-like south, holiday destination of sun aficionados, is in strict contrast to the picture landscape of the fertile north with its sumptuous nature. The mountain regions are covered in evergreen laurel and heathered forests as well as extensive woods of pine tree. A scenic highlight is bound to be the moon landscape of the Cañadas del Teide National Park. As a result, Tenerife is not only a refuge for central Europeans who shy away from winter, but mainly an ideal island for hiking. With the wide ocean at all times in sight, the range of the 85 hiking tours presented in this guide includes easy paths over rough cliffs and picturesque trips to heights as well as ascents to peaks that offer a fabulous view – hiking paths through fairytale-like nebulous primeval forests are also included, such as the partially paved Caminos, which in the early days where the main connecting routes between villages. Many tour suggestions in this hiking guide are suitable for less experienced hikers. Skilled mountaineers who do not fear “tours of the drastic kind” and who are in for a touch of adventure and a bit of a kick will also find a rich offering: daring cliff tours, spectacular ravine excursions and extensive mountain trips whose highlight must be the parade summit of the National Park. Atmospheric pictures and excellent hiking maps at an ideal scale of 1:50,000/1:75,000 and informative height profiles round off the picture and ignite curiosity for ever new tours into this bizarre and charming world of mountains. An overall successful guide brought up to date, which leaves nothing to desire!




Teide Volcano


Book Description

Teide Volcano has many different meanings: For the Guanche aborigines, who endured several of its eruptions, it was Echeide (Hell). Early navigators had in Teide, a lifesaving widely visible landmark that was towering over the clouds. For the first explorers, Teide was a challenging and dangerous climb, since it was thought that Teide's peak was so high that from its summit the sun was too close and far too hot to survive. Teide was considered the highest mountain in the world at that time and measuring its height precisely was a great undertaking and at the time of global scientific significance. For von Buch, von Humboldt, Lyell and other great 18th and19th century naturalists, Teide helped to shape a new and now increasingly 'volcanic' picture, where the origin of volcanic rocks (from solidified magma) slowly casted aside Neptunism and removed some of the last barriers for the development of modern Geology and Volcanology as the sciences we know today. For the present day population of Tenerife, living on top of the world's third tallest volcanic structure on the planet, Teide has actually become "Padre Teide", a fatherly protector and an emblematic icon of Tenerife, not to say of the Canaries as a whole. The UNESCO acknowledged this iconic and complex volcano, as "of global importance in providing evidence of the geological processes that underpin the evolution of oceanic islands". Today, 'Teide National Park' boasts 4 Million annual visitors including many 'volcano spotters' and is a spectacular natural environment which most keep as an impression to treasure and to never forget. For us, the editors of this book, Teide is all of the above; a 'hell of a job', a navigation point on cloudy days, a challenge beyond imagination, a breakthrough in our understanding of oceanic volcanism that has shaped our way of thinking about volcanoes, and lastly, Teide provides us with a reference point from where to start exploring other oceanic volcanoes in the Canaries and beyond. Here we have compiled the different aspects and the current understanding of this natural wonder.




Trekking in the Canary Islands


Book Description

A guidebook to trekking the 560km (348 mile) GR131 across the Canary Islands. The island-hopping long-distance trail crosses Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro and can be hiked in around a month, or split into shorter sections. Most of the route uses quiet roads, tracks and old mule paths, but there are some remote stretches, as well as occasional steep and rocky mountain paths. The route is presented in 32 stages of between 7 and 30km (4–18 miles). Also included is an optional ascent of Spain’s highest peak, El Teide on Tenerife. Clear route description illustrated with 1:50,000 mapping GPX files available to download Notes on accommodation, refreshments and local transport Information on ferry transfers between the islands Sized to easily fit in a jacket pocket




Walking on Tenerife


Book Description

This guide provides 45 walking routes revealing all the best walking to be had on Tenerife, including routes on the slopes of, and ascent of El Teide, and along the GR131. With distance and difficulty ranging mainly from 4-12 miles and from easy to arduous there is suitable challenge for walkers of all abilities, including a 20 miles 'Three Peaks of Tenerife' tour




The Cornhill Magazine


Book Description




The Real Tenerife


Book Description

The most comprehensive guide to Tenerife's resorts, towns and villages available in the English language, written with insight and passion by travel writers who have spent years treading the streets of every town and village, trekking along goat trails in the mountains and revelling at fiestas until dawn (all in the name of research). In short exploring the Tenerife that visitors and even most residents never see...the Tenerife which lies beyond the holiday brochures. Much more than just a tourist guide, The Real Tenerife gives you the insiders' view of this surprising, beautiful and diverse Spanish island which lies off the coast of Africa. Inside you will discover: hidden treasures beyond the tourist hotspots, a brief look into Tenerife's past and future, intimate guided tours of towns and villages across the island, personal photographs from the authors' travels, a guide to Tenerife culture and celebrations; hotel and restaurant recommendations; tips on when, where and how to enjoy the island's fiestas and much, much more... The Real Tenerife gives you everything that other travel guides to Tenerife don't. Previously published as Going Native in Tenerife - revised, updated and additional locations and photographs included as well as additional information on existing locations added in December 2012.







Mountains Figured and Disfigured in the English-Speaking World


Book Description

The essays in this book, written by poets, novelists, mountain-climbers and academics from all over the world, evoke the representation of mountains in the English-speaking world as artists, writers, philosophers or mountain-climbers have represented them from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries. From the Alps to the Pyrenees, from Mount Fuji to Mount Shasta, from the Himalayas to the Scottish Highlands, from Ikere in Nigeria to Devil's Tower in the United States, from Uluru in Australia to the most northern mountain of the Arctic, the shapes of the world speak the same language and tell the world its own story. This interdisciplinary book, weaving together mountaineering, literature, philosophy, painting, cinema, ecology, history, palaeontology, geography, geopolitics, toponymy, law, religion and myth, invites people to an innovative reading of mountains: it reveals the close relationship existing between the shapes of the world and all forms of writing and, at the same time, it shows how the representations of the imagination may be instrumental in protecting the natural world. The story told by the landscape inscribes a broken line in the shapes of the world, tearing the landscape like a fragile page whenever historical and political events (wars, mining or deforestation) leave scars in the landscape; but writers' and artists' representations of mountains constitute a path to awareness as they are not only a painting of beauty, but an image of our link to nature and a warning as well. For centuries the image of the mountain has conveyed a symbolism telling the story of human thought, and this book shows to what extent literature and art play an essential part in our awareness of nature.




The Living Age


Book Description