This is the shortest walk in the guide and the one with the most specific advice attached: do it downhill. Start near the first roundabout in Icod de los Vinos, follow the road down, pass through the tunnel underneath it, and you come out at Playa de San Marcos.
Why the direction matters
Icod sits several hundred metres above the coast, and the road between the two does not pretend otherwise. Walking down is a relaxed half hour. Walking up is exercise, on a road, in the sun.
Our hosts are blunt about this and they are right. If you want the walk, get up to Icod some other way — drive, take the bus, or combine it with a shopping trip, since the large supermarkets are up there — and walk back down.
Making a morning of it
The obvious pairing is with Icod itself. The town is the home of the Drago Milenario, the enormous dragon tree that is the most photographed object on this coast, and the reason most visitors stop there at all.
Do the town, have a coffee, then walk down. It turns an errand into an outing, and it means the car is already at the apartment when you get back.
Practicalities
The tunnel under the road is unlit. Use your phone torch if you are walking late in the day — this coast gets dark quickly once the sun drops behind the ridge.
Sturdy shoes rather than boots. This is a road walk, not a mountain trail.
What you see on the way down
The route drops through the terraced land between Icod and the coast, which is where the town’s name comes from: Icod de los Vinos, Icod of the wines. Vines have been grown on these slopes since the sixteenth century, and although bananas took over much of the lower ground, the association stuck.
Below that, the last stretch opens out onto the bay at San Marcos — which, after twenty minutes of walking down towards it, is a considerably better arrival than the one you get through a windscreen.
Shoes and timing
Road surface throughout, so trainers rather than boots. Half an hour at an easy pace, longer if you stop.
Go in the late afternoon and you can be back at sea level in time to eat. The village restaurants are a few minutes from where the walk ends.