'Tis the season to be jolly, but 'tis also the season to be chilly: Tenerife beckons. Instead of following millions of other sun-starved Brits to the sprawling resorts and lava-strewn landscapes of the island's south coast, though, I'm heading north to find some very different attractions.
The weather here may not rival the year-round sunshine of the south, but with winter temperatures averaging 20C, it's still much warmer than the UK. What I'll lose in sunbed hours I'll gain in lush natural beauty, fine architecture, fantastic food, history and culture.
Of course that has always been there, but in recent years visiting the north has become a more attractive proposition. A rash of low-rise boutique hotels and casas rurales have opened, and British Airways' launch last year of direct flights to the north means you no longer need to do the one-hour drive from the south. The latest addition to the skyline of the capital Santa Cruz is the Sydney Opera House-style Auditorio: karaoke bars and discos might be fine for the resorts, but the north now enjoys the more cultured sounds of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra and various visiting opera and drama companies.
It's local culture of a different kind that I find in Icod de los Vinos the day after my arrival. It's St Andrew's Day eve - 29 November - but the fiesta has nothing to do with haggis or tartan. In Tenerife this is the day to celebrate the year's new wines. The island has five wine-growing regions that produce some very drinkable whites and reds so you might expect this festival to revolve around sampling said wines, but in Icod, and several other villages dotting the north coast, the emphasis is different.
The tradition, a sort of rite of passage, is for local kids to slide down the steep streets on wooden boards. As we stand, pinned to the side of the road, teenagers blur past us. Sparks fly from the cobbles as they hurtle towards the car tyres heaped at the bottom to provide a landing softer than head on concrete.
It all looks very dangerous, though our guide, José Ramón, insists that this is tame. And the night is still young. By 11, he says, there will be boards carrying dozens of people at once, and no one will wait for the route to clear.
Further east in Puerto de la Cruz - the island's first tourist resort, now favoured by anti-Costa Spaniards - it's not exactly quieter, but injuries seem less likely. Here the tradition is for children to pull strings of cans, pots and pans through the streets. Which they do with considerable enthusiasm. It's possible that this is done to emulate the sound of wine barrels clattering through town. We retreat gracefully to the harbour-front stalls where we buy roasted chestnuts, grilled sardines and baby squid, washed down with the new San Andrés wine and accompanied by music from local bands.
In Tenerife it doesn't matter if you miss San Andrés, arrive too early for Corpus Christi or haven't booked in time for the carnival. José Ramón told us his home village celebrates 80 fiestas a year - each one lasting about four days. That sounds like a lot of partying, but his point was clear: this is the kind of place where life is lived to the full in a more traditional way than in the lager-fuelled nightclubs of the south.
Not that the north doesn't have its share of nightclubs - La Laguna, in the northwest of the island, has a party reputation. As in university towns worldwide, the students are more interested in the late-night bars, live music clubs and discos than the architecture. But the city, a Unesco heritage site, is beautiful; the island's capital until Santa Cruz claimed the title in 1723, it has some of Tenerife's most historical buildings.
Looking over the jacaranda trees of the main square is the 17th-century convent of Santa Catalina. On an upper floor, the ajiméz, a Moorish-influenced wooden filigree grille, still allows the cloistered nuns to observe the scene unobserved: women bearing fruit and exotic flowers out of the covered market and men sitting around chewing the fat in that unmistakably south European way.
We wander the streets, admiring the intricate Canarian pine balconies and nosing into the typical leafy courtyards of former merchants' homes. The smells wafting out of tascas tell us it's lunchtime; resistance is futile so we plump for La Carpintería, an establishment whose corpulent patrón is as good an advertisement for the food on offer as anything else.
In a dimly lit bar lined with racks of wine and legs of cured ham, we polish off a platter of meats and cheeses, tender calamari, tuna stewed with tomatoes, papas arrugadas - the salty Canarian potatoes cooked in their skins and served with spicy mojo sauce - and solomillo steaks. Lunch is a serious affair here and a siesta becomes more necessity than indulgence.
Nevertheless, La Orotava town is more sleepy than us when we arrive. Once the prosperous base for families made wealthy by the fertile green valley with which the town shares its name, it is now a peaceful place blessed with views over banana plantations and the Atlantic beyond, and more well preserved architecture. Cobbled streets and squares are lined with bulky churches and grand mansions decorated with more of those wooden balconies - all paid for with the proceeds of the roaring trade in sugar and wine that the island enjoyed in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It is here that José Ramón reveals the secret behind the plant-filled courtyards. 'Let's make this clear. Canarians are not outgoing people - we're not like the southern Spanish. Families built the courtyards so guests could be greeted without going into the home.'
But if Tenerifans historically used their courtyards to keep visitors at arm's length, they're now being used to lure us in: the boutique hotels and casas rurales often have rooms ranged round the central space. In La Orotava, the Marquis de Florida's old house has been transformed into the Hotel Rural Orotava. Garachico, a fishing port along the coast, boasts two new hotels handy for exploring the Teno, the craggy green north-western corner of the island.
In the north-east we've opted for the Hotel Rural Costa Salada, which sits between banana and exotic flower plantations and the churning sea. Sweeping up behind us is the Anaga peninsula, the oldest part of Tenerife created millennia ago by volcanic eruptions. Climbing up the winding roads into the mountains, we are rewarded by stunning views over the west and north coasts, of Santa Cruz and of the relatively young Mount Teide - the highest peak on Spanish territory.
Higher still, mist wreathes the pines that line the roads and the air takes a turn for the chillier. Populated sparsely with hamlets, and beachside hippie communities inaccessible by road, this region is a walker's delight. There's something of the Himalayas about it, only the mountains fall sharply away to black sand coves and the sea rather than plains. As we take the cactus-lined trail past Chinamada's cave-built houses to look out over the rugged coast, it seems incredible that so many people visit the island and miss this primeval beauty.
Factfile
British Airways (0870 850 9850; ba.com) flies from Gatwick to Tenerife north from £99. Seven days' car hire costs from £107 with Hertz (0870 844 8844; hertz.co.uk).
Doubles at the five-star Hotel Mencey (00800 3253 5353; sheraton.com/mencey) in Santa Cruz start at £150 and from £63 at the Hotel Rural Costa Salada (00 34 922 690000; costasalada.com), both B&B.
Further information: Tenerife Tourist Board (020 7431 4045; webtenerife.com)
