Gran Canaria: Rother Walking Guide Paperback – 1 May 2024

I can find no fault with this guide. During a week in Gran Canaria, we did 7 of these walks, with the aid of the GPS tracks downloaded onto my Garmin. All of the GPS tracks and walk descriptions were accurate, giving a realistic description of the route with respect to difficulty and timing. Useful information is given regarding bus transfers, so we were able to do all of the walks by public bus from Las Palmas. You do need to do your own research about buses, because timetables change, but the best routes are indicated. I accidentally deleted 2 of the GPS tracks, but we found the written directions ready to follow. There is a huge variety of walks, with a range of length, difficulty and character, so you can select an easier walk when you need a rest day. This is a book about walking, but there are several pages about history, culture and context, to give you a bit of a start. I found the Rother guide for La Palma similarly excellent.

This is a small sized guide that you can carry with you, it has 72 walks although some are very short or just linking routes. The book is mainly aimed at car hiring walkers but on Gran Canaria the terrain limits walks like these and the book includes some walks that require a bus to return to your car and some for people staying in Las Palmas using different busses out & home. Walks in in different parts of the island are included but if you want to see the blue flowered tajinaste which only grow in the El Rincon de Tenteniguada area you will not find those walks here.The walks are described with way-points which are shown on both a graph giving height, time & distance and also on a map with walk highlighted in red, alternative routes in red / white & other walks in pink so it should be easy to switch to another walk if you desire, however the other walk numbers are not shown so you need to refer back to the contents before you can switch but you can make an estimate of the overall time & distance of combined walk. An additional map is useful, in my view the "Gran Canaria Tour & Trail" (discovery walking guides) is far superior to the Freytag & Bernt recommended in this book.Some alternative suggestions could be made, particular in regard to long distance walks, for example, walk 7 from Cruz Grande to Pico de las Nieves is just an out & back via the same route but can easily be linked to 42 alternative down to Santa Lucia, bus time are convenient from & to San Bartolomé.Walk 45 noted as closed (west of point 7) in 2013 is still closed - the best alternative is to continue along S57 from point 5 to Degollada de la Manzanilla (the text is incorrect here "steep short cuts <descend> should read <ascend>") to join walk 37, or return.The book is translated, some grammar is odd & a few German words appear here & there but is perfectly understandable.

I bought both the Rother guide and the Sunflower guide for Gran Canaria and for our purposes the Rother guide won hands down for the reasons below:1) In 64 of the 72 walks you can return to the place where you started. Sometimes this means returning the way you came or adding in an extra bit. It was therefore for us as car drivers highly suitable. In contrast in the Sunflower guide which has mostly linear walks so in only 6 out of the 26 walks described return you to your start.2) The walks are of variable length but mostly shorter. In fact only 19 are reckoned by the author as taking 4 hrs or more without a break. Walks can often be joined to make a longer route if wished. In contrast in the Sunflower guide 19 out of the 26 are 7 miles or more in length and 16 are 8 miles or more.3) Almost all are suitable for those without a head for heights in contrast to only 6 out of the 26 in the Sunflower guide.4) The Rother guide has 72 walks vs 26 for the Sunflower guide.So unless you are travelling by bus, have a good head for heights and like longer walks this is the guide to buy rather than the Sunflower guide.

This guide (in English) has been a constant help during our month's rambling on the island; the hikes are carefully selected from short to more more ambitious ones dispersed across the island. Although the island has a fairly well developed network of trails, the approach routes and the starting points and junctions are sometimes difficult to negotiate. The book tackles all these problems and more. In most hiking books the writers seem pressed for writing space and tend to abbreviate their descriptions--nothing like that in this guide, the writer goes into all the necessary details to make your hike a pleasurable experience. Strongly recommended

The routes are generally well described. The starting points are sometimes a bit vague (for those not using GPS), and a lot of the routes are linear. As the buses in G.C - outside the main routes from Las Palmas - are pretty infrequent, this does make some walks quite impractical. There are a lot of very well-marked routes on the island, and if you can use a map to get to a trail head the book can be a little redundant.

I think this is the fourth Rother hiking guide I've bought. I find the format, grading system and walk descriptions and instructions consistently good. The author invariably tries to include as many circular walks as possible, which I always look for. Nice size too that fits in your pocket.