1st January to 15th March 2025

I’ve just flown back to sunny, very chilly England, and trips by plane are fresh in my mind.

I have to tell you that flying is a pretty dreadful way to travel!

After at least an hour’s delay in a crowded terminal you’re squeezed into a plastic and aluminium tube with lots of assorted others, breathing processed recycled bug-infested air. You feel your feet swell and your ears pop; and perhaps drink the world’s most overpriced and revolting coffee, and ponder the nagging guilt from your inexcusable contribution to global meltdown. 

Of course flying is fast and easy, but if you’re at all like me, you do anxiously look forward to getting your feet on the ground once more.

Despite its horrors, did you know that at any one time, well over a million of us are whizzing through the skies. Add to that the countless millions of others clogging airports – meeting, greeting, queuing and cursing – and it’s clear that a big chunk of humanity is swallowed up in the loathsome business of air travel.

I’d not been on a plane for several years and had almost forgotten how horrid it was. In future I’ll try to stick to my sailing boat.

But that’s enough of that. Flying is an unavoidable part of 21st century life.

Before the flight home, the start of 2025 passed happily enough – very happily in fact.  A few weeks in the much-loved island of La Gomera with another visit from two wonderful sons; walking, talking, playing, swimming. 

Although I’m blessed (or perhaps cursed) with an unquenchable nomadic spirit, an almost constant urge to move on, I do appreciate the joys of staying put in one place for a while. In La Gomera, it’s wonderful to know local people, recognise regular visitors, and feel at home in local shops, on the beaches and along the many mountain paths that weave through the island’s magnificent rocky ravines and craggy peaks. 

Over the past ten years, I’ve spent more time in La Gomera than anywhere else on earth. What a thought. If I were Spanish, I think I’d live here.

With most of Henrietta’s repairs completed – sails, rigging, bimini, spray hood and electrics – it was time to move on to Tenerife for welding and other tricky bits that were beyond my rudimentary abilities. But, really, I doubt anyone wants to read about endless boat maintenance, so I’ll skip to something far more exciting – Tenerife at carnival time.

Carnival is all about noise and colour – lots of both. And quite a bit of drink, too. The noise comes from several big stages set up with some of the world’s most advanced amplifiers and speaker systems. To get full advantage of the work that goes into setting up the stages, lights and noise systems, they blast out music much of the day and almost all the night – every night. (The noise, I should tell you, is the sort that thumps you in the chest and reduces your brain cells to mush.)

Well past the age of all-night revelry I’ve spent a couple of weeks lying in bed awake at 3 a.m. wondering if it’s finally time to invest in earplugs. I don’t get earplugs. Instead I tell myself to stop being so silly and appreciate my free front row ticket to a fabulous range of Canarian music culture.

Oh! There’s also a funfair about a hundred metres from Santa Cruz marina. True to the theme of noise and colour, it’s full of thrills, colourful flashing lights and a chorus of the shrieks of overexcited youngsters. Action includes lots of gravity-defying whirly machines that can fling you, drop you, toss you and spin you – anything really to make you scream. Whatever happened to beautiful horses gently circling a carousel? Or winning a goldfish by tossing a little hoop over a stick?

Carnival concludes (except for the funfair) with a dazzling fireworks display – a final explosion of noise and colour. And by this stage, I’ve come to love it all.

There are many fine mountain walks in Tenerife, so, together with local interests in Santa Cruz – museums, auditorium, parks – and extensive bus services, I’ve begun to find my way around the peaks of the Anaga Rural Park.