Flowers of all shapes, sizes and colours have flooded the countryside on the hills and gorges behind Las Palmas. There have been a couple of short downpours which have kept the Northern side of the island green. On one traverse of the peaks, Mount Teide on Tenerife was clearly seen covered in snow down to a low level after one particularly violent storm which killed a tourist on La Gomera.

Our plans for the American trip have firmed. We have booked flights to New York on 15th May from London and will stop off at Alison's brother's village in French Provence for a few days before we leave. He is the last of the British relatives to be seen in the flesh before we depart from this side of the Atlantic.

We will be three whole months in the U.S. By coincidence, Alison's aunt lives near a convenient part of the Appalachian Trail in Bethesda. We join the trail at Harper's Ferry on the Maryland / West Virginia border and amble through 450 km of the Virginian Appalachians before a long bus journey over to the West (Pacific) Coast. Here we will probably spend nearly two months walking along the crest of the Cascade Mountains, either mostly in Oregon or Washington and then return to Las Palmas via New York mid August. This western mountain route will see us walk some 800 km or so. There are many Americans, mostly young, who set off early in the year to "thru walk" one of America's great long distance paths, but we don't have the time, money and probably stamina to do any of them in their entirety.

It might seem a rather odd way of seeing such a diverse and huge country like the United States, but we need the opportunity to get out in the bush and see a bit of nature after so long in relatively urbanized Europe, as well as get a lot more regular exercise. Walking and camping will probably mean we meet a lot of interesting Americans - probably a lot more than if we did the conventional thing and tiki toured around in a rent a car, which incidentally seems to be exorbitantly expensive, anyway.