Thank you to Sir Old Golfer, who sent me a notice regarding the dates for this year’s Tenerife Ladies Open. He says that all resident or visiting golfing men on the island should be sure to mark the 24th to 27th of September in their calendars so that they might pop along to Golf Costa Adeje and see how to properly swing a club. The ladies can apparently do so whilst maintaining balance and getting the ball to project for 300 metres or so (and according to rascally Sir Old Golfer they manage to do so while looking rather easy on the eye into the bargain). Good heavens! The PC brigade will murder him if he keeps that up.

Whether you see the point of battering a wee ball around with a big stick or not you can’t have missed the importance of the game of golf to the island. There are certainly more quality golf courses in Tenerife than you can shake a stick at and even a pint sized one at Las Galletas for those who’d like to squeeze a round of golf into their lunch hour.

Rattling about in my head is the story that golf was once a sport for ‘Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden’ hence the name GOLF. Somehow I doubt that as there were once so many things that were open only to the hairier half of the human race that everything from voting booths to public bars could have been called GOLF.

Anyway, only the very odd or criminally insane would dispute that the Auld Game originated in Scotland so who better to discuss the finer points of golfing in Tenerife and Scottish golf than Sir Old Golfer, a golf writer who divides his time between his home here in Golf Del Sur and his home on the golf course bonny Ayrshire?

I did a double take on one of the Mirror’s online headlines today. ‘Kerry Katona, Look Stoned!’, I read. But no, actually it said Kerry Katona Looks TONED. That’s all right then.

And so she did, bless. Gallivanting about in all her glory at Siam Park. Happy as a … well as a very happy person, I suppose. And all those lovely pictures of her looking healthy beautifully captured in glorious technicolour – that’ll do her career a word of good.

In other sort-of-celebrity news it seems a Manchester City footballer has spat the dummy and run away from his team’s winter training camp in Tenerife. I wonder if they’ve thought of trying to talk him back him via his website which clearly invites, ‘Contact Robinho,

Because my phone number is given on eTenerife.com on the off-chance that some mad person wants to call me to arrange some internet advertising I get quite a lot of phone calls from people thinking they are calling a particular hotel, restaurant or travel shop.

For some reason Directory Enquiries in the UK seem to give out my number for any query related to Tenerife. As an example I recently had a conversation with Dave who thought he’d got through to a certain restaurant.

Unfortunately Dave happened to call at a bad time for me – I always enjoy these phone calls and am happy to help if I can but at kid’s bedtime …uh… what? With one ear out for bathtime mischief and the other for the kids killing each other I am not the best one to take a message. Dave asked me to help him out with an alternative restaurant recommendation for Christmas Day and I scribbled down the email address he gave me whilst aware of a rising level of squabbling coming from down the hall.

Now I’ve got a couple of alternatives for Dave, I can’t read the damn email address. So sincere apologies to Dave in the UK. I would have recommended the Moroccan Paris Marrakech restaurant for a fab night out.

Just this morning I had a call from a Russian travel agent. Apparently she has a group due over to Tenerife soon and she needs to find a rock climbing instructor for them. Again she found me because of the phone number on the footer of the rock climbing in Tenerife page. I seem to get quite a few enquiries via that page and have had my eye out for supplemental informative links for a long time. For ages the best I could do was the UK Climbing forum and a couple of Spanish language sites (which given that most visitors to eTenerife are from the UK is helpful but not ideal) but lo and behold as I was fiddling about in Google while talking to the Russian woman, I came up with some new sources.

For absolutely anything to do with outdoor activity and adventure check out Tenerife Outdoor and for those looking specifically for rock climbing in Tenerife visit Roxtar.

Being as I am a little on the vertically challenged side, my young nephew bravely stepped into the breach and volunteered to go Bob Diving on my behalf.

He’s very happy he did as you can see from the following excert.

I did one of the most extraordinary activities in the world or Europe at
least. Bob (Breathing Observation Bubble) Diving. It was one of the most
brilliant experiences I have ever had.
It all started in Puerto Colon where I boarded a boat full of people and six Bob Scooters. Once on the boat it was about a 20 minute ride to the location where the anchor was dropped and we were shown how to operate the scooters – a button to go forwards and handlebars to steer.

Read Bob’s Tenerife Bob report on eTenerife where you can also make an availability request and receive a whopping €4 discount per person on a confirmed booking!