Gran Canaria 2022

This holiday came about because part of Kathryn’s 50th birthday present fell through. The theatre performance for January was cancelled and so I no longer had a gift for January. A last minute holiday was in order. Somewhere close but warm. Gran Canaria fitted the bill.

We flew with Jet2 from Manchester and were lucky to avoid the biggest queues, though security was still a long wait. On arrival at Cala D’Or, it wasn’t looking good. Puerto Rico was full of concrete hotels with a small sandy beach and beach umbrellas lined up like soldiers, Irish pubs and full English breakfast on offer everywhere. However we were determined to make the most of it and we managed to discover another side to the island.

Daily walks along the cliff promenade led us to new beach discoveries — Playa de Amadores, Playa de Tauro and Playa del Cura. All unique and all beautiful. We also took the early morning ferry to Puerto de Mogan which was a really interesting place—so different to Puerto Rico. We also hiked up into the mountains behind Puerto Rico, encountering goats and fantastic views. It turned out to be a very long hike and we were exhausted when we finally managed to climb down to Anfi so got a taxi back! We also took the bus to Maspalomas and had a great day wandering in the impressive dunes and sampling some excellent ice-cream.

So in the end it turned out to be a fantastic holiday. The weather was great, the hotel turned out to be really good and we managed to see quite a lot of the island. COVID restrictions were reduced so we only had to do a lateral flow test when we got back to the UK. Indeed the only negative aspect of the trip was on the return flight to Manchester during storm Ely. The pilot had to abort the landing due to the high winds and we ended up landing at East Midlands and being bussed back to Manchester very late.