Hotel No-TellA secluded hotel high on an active volcano holds a morbid fascination for hardcore cycling fans. Bother climbs the slopes to discover why.
In professional cycling terms, if Tenerife’s Hotel Parador was a nightclub, it would be somewhere like LA’s Viper Room or Manchester’s Hacienda. The remote, high-altitude hotel has seen some of cycling’s most famous sons indulge in the sort of prolific drug taking that alarmed even those inured to such behaviour by a sport with a spectacularly chequered history.
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and his former United States Postal Service team were among those who ‘prepared’ for the sport’s biggest race at the three-star Canary Island hotel, safe from unwanted oversight. It’s not just Armstrong – later stripped of those titles – whose spectre has earned the Parador a colourful reputation. Lots of top teams and professionals have used it as a base, including Team Sky’s Tour de France-winning Brits Chris Froome and Sir Bradley Wiggins. A string of controversies over drugs and dodgy doctors have since fuelled speculation that they also weren’t just at the Parador for its perfect high- altitude training conditions, despite the absence of a properly-smoking gun and the team’s insistence they were clean.
Seb stashes the bike cartons
Route planning in baggage reclaim
Ben dropping down a dirt road from the first night's camp spot
Moths to a flame
For me and three cyclist friends, it’s this fascinating infamy and the hotel’s spectacular, lava-strewn location in the shadow of the 3715m Mount Teide volcano, that draw us to it like moths to a flame.
The basic plan is to fly to Tenerife in mid-December and ride around the island for four days with everything we can carry. We aim to wild camp for two nights and spend the third revelling in the relative luxury – and controversy – of the Parador, before dropping back down to the airport for the flight home.
Much of the mystique and suspicion surrounding the hotel comes down to its seclusion at 3152m above sea level on the rubbly, pyroclastic flanks of Teide. The reason cyclists train at altitude is that if you exercise where the air has less oxygen, you increase your body’s ability to absorb what is actually available and you’ll be stronger. Combine that with hormones such as like EPO that improve your ability to absorb oxygen, and you’ll be stronger still.
What that means for unacclimatised, un-doped human beings is the higher you go, the harder it gets.
My companions are Gordon, Ben and Mike, a nuclear scientist and two doctors, men who have cycle-toured all over the world, riding through the likes of Tehran, Marrakech and Calcutta. I’m the freshman in this group, with just a few UK tours to my name. For the last 20-something years, the trio have done similar trips to this, usually flying out, cycling, and getting a sleeper train – or trains – home. Clearly we’d be flying home, but the underlying principle is to spend as little money as possible but end up with a splurge.
Camp cooking by head torch
Railing down from Teide to the coast
Windy and wet: camp two is memorably shite
Marauding Dog
Friday 13 December sees us dragging our cardboard bike boxes out of Tenerife South–Reina Sofía Airport into the 22C afternoon heat. While we re-assemble our bikes, Ben, a 47-year-old GP, finds a trolley and takes our empty boxes to look for a spot where they might possibly lie undiscovered for four days.
Just a few miles from the airport, we stop at a garage to get diesel for Ben’s stove and grab a beer and a sandwich. It’s a joy to be riding in shorts and short-sleeved jerseys having left a 4C Manchester a few hours before in puffas and beanies.
Map-master Mike has scratched out some possible routes for the weekend and today’s destination is a rough track heading up a hill where he thinks we can find a stealthy spot to bed down. We only have about 12 miles to do today and take in a big supermarket where we stuff the essentials of a wild camp – wine, beer and food – into our brimming panniers.
Now dark, we leave the road to grind up a rocky path through a netted banana plantation. After a close encounter with a marauding dog, we find a secluded, flat, sandy spot with a potential sunrise view. Ben, Mike and Gordon are so dialled with the whole process that they’ve cooked an impressive chorizo risotto by the time I’ve fathomed out my wife’s mountain-marathon tent. All that night, the poorly-pitched flysheet flaps as freshening winds whip sand into the air.
We wake to a stunning red sky and a sea of banana netting, like a cloud inversion stretching below us to the coast.
We can see the summit of Teide and although it looks close, Ben – who earlier in the year ran to its summit from the airport and back (I know) – assures us it’s not.
It’s Gordon’s birthday, and after a coffee at the bivvy we opt to drop down to the tourist hotspot of Playa de Las Américas for a full Scottish breakfast at Petra’s Bar and Bistro.
Mike doesn't have a tent
Breakfasting like full Scottish kings in Playa de las Americas
Miraculously, the volcanic plateau is sheltered from the 50mph winds
Los Gigantes
Even in December, the coastal highway is busy and we’re relieved to leave it behind as we reach another of the island’s resort town’s – Los Gigantes. It’s named after the spectacular cactus-strewn cliffs that rise up to 800m above the sea.
It turns out there are upwards of 50 different types of cacti on Tenerife. Prickly pears, Agave and the deliciously named Houseleeks, pepper the molasses-brown vertical basalt, that the road switchbacks up and through.
Since stopping full-time work, I ride a lot. Ben is a machine and has silly-fast marathons and silly-long fell races to his name. Gordon, 48, has three kids under seven and Mike, 47, has spent the last five years as the anaesthetic clinical director for two major hospitals. They both balance riding with busy lives, but can pace themselves up any climb. Over several hours, we grind up to the mountain town of Santiago del Teide, sitting at just under 1000m. We opt to head for an official, free woodland camp spot around an hour away over a pass.
Rolling into the secluded car park in light rain and gathering dusk, we begin to get giddy spotting its cafe and shower block and people drinking beers outside. Our excitement is short lived as an apologetic ranger informs us that a forecast of 50mph winds means the forest is closed and we can’t camp there.
With around an hour until sunset, we don’t have too many options and – as the ranger probably knew we would – we roll down the road that borders the forest, looking for a stealthier way in, which we find. We set up camp on a flat, grassy ridge where the tree cover is perfect and Ben prepares dinner while we toast Gordon’s 48 years on the planet with a smooth, red Tenerife wine.
I’m beginning to feel that I’m getting the hang of this cycle touring, but it turns out there are still performance-enhancement lessons. Gordon is disparaging of my admittedly quite heavy Decathlon camping cutlery set, declaring that I should have a featherweight titanium one like him. I question why I’d bother when everything else is so cumbersome. In a voice usually reserved for his four-year-old.
Gordon explains:
‘The lighter your kit, the more beer and wine you can carry.’
Loading up on essential booze and food at the supermarket
Gordon (left) and Mike - hypoxic but happy to make it to the Parador
A giddy, post-sauna team in front of Mount Teide (L-R) Seb, Gordon, Mike and Ben
Gale Warning
Heavy overnight rain clears by morning, but the forecast is for southerly winds over 50mph and more rain. Our main concern is that the authorities will close the road up to Teide and the sanctuary of Hotel Parador. The road is quiet though, and no one stops us, but by halfway up it’s properly windy and we’re moving increasingly slowly. Mike in particular is struggling from the excesses of the performance-impairing drugs we all enjoyed the previous night. We’re up at around 1800m and the air is noticeably thinner. This would be as good a time as any to raid Lance Armstrong’s or Chris Froome’s sponge bag for a bronchodilator to open our lungs.
A block headwind is huge for the last couple of miles, but as we move up to 2000m and onto the plateau below the huge stratovolcano, it’s cold but sheltered. There’s little other than swathes of fist-sized rocks up here, and even the tenacious Canary Island Pines that litter the lower lava fields are few and far between. The lavas negras are spectacular, and we all take dozens of photos. Fitness-tracking app Strava will reveal we’ve taken more than two and a half hours to get up the final 10 miles of climbing. For perspective, the current World Time Trial champion, Remco Evenepoel, managed the same climb in a little over 36 minutes. Fortunately, years of improved testing and detection means the young Belgian and his peers don’t face the same pressure to take drugs as those in the Armstrong era.
White tablecloths and wine lists - the Hotel Parador is fine
Breakfast of champions: churros con chocolate
Hotel Parador at 3152m
Home Run
Then, after a final 300ft winding climb from the plateau, there it is. The Hotel Parador. Its remote location means the drug testers who police professional cycling paid a surprise visit only once in the eight years up to 2013 that the likes of Froome and Wiggins were training here with Team Sky.
For us, the Parador feels like an absolute oasis in this rocky, lofty desert. Armstrong’s toxic whiff has long since dissipated and even though we’re ill-equipped for the type of therapy the Texan’s doctor would have been prescribing, we certainly make the most of what’s on offer. After warming our bones in the sauna and swimming pool, we demolish some barely-cooked red meat and make full use of a bar we have not had to squeeze into panniers.
We wake early, hungover, and faced with a double whammy. Extreme wind warnings mean roads to the Parador have been closed. No staff access means no breakfast. Word has it the airport may be closed too.
On the plus side, the sun is coming up and it’s beautiful and eerily still outside. It’s also only just above freezing, so we layer up and set off in anticipation of more of what Ben calls ‘mild peril’.
We climb over a pass on the road heading south. It’s fairly sheltered but a few chunky gusts move us around. Soon we spot the Atlantic and, where yesterday we could see its wind-whipped white horses, today it just looks blue. As we crest what will be the trip’s final climb, we’re still up around 2000m but out of the lavas negras and back into the pines. Despite the altitude, and the fact we are looking due south, it’s clear the forecasters had it wrong – there is barely a breath of wind. The astonishingly smooth asphalt snakes in and out of the trees and we rocket down with the sort of grip and stability that 20kg of extra weight gives you.
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Fueling up!
We stop in the pretty village of Vilaflor and savour a condemned man’s breakfast of churro dipped in chocolate. I’m pretty confident Armstrong and his team gave the deep-fried dough sticks a wide berth, but we go all in.
It’s said a wryly pessimistic approach to life can be the most satisfying, as disappointment can result from setting expectations too high. Riding down one of the world’s most beautiful roads in the sun with barely a car or a breeze is always going to be good, but add in the expectation of ‘mild peril’ and you can maybe imagine that ‘not-so-mild euphoria’ is the result.
Approaching the coast, the temperatures hit 28C. We’re making good time and can see planes flying in and out, so we stop for a round of celebratory beers in a cafe.
We find our bike boxes are still lying on the wasteland where Ben left them. They’ve been rained on but are sound and we’re soon checked in and airside.
As we board the plane in just shorts and sandals we can see Teide’s summit set against the impossibly blue sky. Just four hours later, we’re waiting at baggage reclaim in a near-freezing Manchester and I’m googling Turkish sleeper train services and titanium camping cutlery.
Words and Photos by Seb Ramsey
First published in Issue 4 of BOTHER magazine February 2025