It's worth remembering when you visit Tenerife that the Canary Islands are volcanic.

The natural black sands that encircle the island were, some decades ago, considered by some of its resorts to be tourist-unfriendly, and so they amazingly embarked upon a considerable series of costly imports from the Sahara Desert.

So while southern resorts such as Los Cristianos and Playa De Las Americas boast golden sandy beaches, other northern resorts such as Puerto De La Cruz are justifiably proud of their natural black sands.

The climate is split by Mount Teide, with trade winds from the western Atlantic creating a warm and often humid sub-climate with impressive year-round sub-tropical foliage to the north of the island.

While nearby Africa accounts for the prevailing weather that makes the south and east to be on average hotter and drier.

Mount Teide itself is well worth seeing. Coaches meander up seemingly impossibly winding roads through forests, then suddenly you're beyond the tree line and other Canary Islands are visible in the shimmering Atlantic.

The roads take you up through increasingly sparse terrain, where you'll see villages that aren't visible from the sea and which were originally home to inhabitants who were obviously wary of pirates and other raiders. And then soon, the full majesty of Mount Teide reveals itself; the road snakes across a 2-mile wide crater, in the middle of which sits the tip of Teide's peak.

A stunning natural sight that offers amazing views out over the Atlantic.