Timanfaya with children: what works with small legs, and what does not

Parents arrive expecting a volcano to be a climb. Here it is not. The protected heart of the island’s volcanic south is crossed by one road, and that road is worked by coaches: you board, you sit, and you are driven a fourteen-kilometre circuit through cones and frozen flows with a commentary running. You do not get out and wander, because the flows are protected and wandering across them is not permitted. For an adult hoping to walk, that is the one disappointment of the place. For a family, it is the thing that makes the whole day possible.

What a child actually sees. Black cones one after another, craters open at the top, flows that stopped mid-movement and stayed that way, and colours in the rock — rust, ochre, grey — that photograph much better than they sound. The scale does the work. Children who are bored by a viewpoint are usually not bored by twenty minutes of driving through something that looks like it belongs somewhere else entirely.

The stop everyone remembers. At the visitor building the heat still held in the ground is shown rather than described: dry brush lowered into a pit catches from the warmth coming up out of it. It takes a minute, it is visible from the back of a crowd, and it is the part children tell people about afterwards. We are not going to put a temperature on it, because the listings do not publish one and we do not invent numbers.

Which listing to pick. $68 is the standard half day, five hours, 2,785 reviews at 4.4. $68 runs six hours and adds the vineyards planted in pits of volcanic ash, which is more interesting to adults than to a seven-year-old but does say pickup available. $56 is the shortest way in at two and a half hours, written for people with a ship to get back to, and it works just as well for people with a child whose patience has a timetable of its own.

Two practical warnings that have nothing to do with volcanoes and everything to do with travelling with children.

The camels. There is a camel stop by the road near the park entrance, and it is impossible for a child to miss. It is a separate paid attraction, run on its own, and it is not included in any listing on this site. Whether your coach stops there is the operator’s business, not ours, and if you do want it you pay on the day. Decide in the car park rather than in the queue; it saves a conversation.

The long days are long. $100 at eight hours and $102 at nine are the fullest versions of this island, and both are genuinely good. But they are nine hours of coach, walking between sites, queueing and eating on a schedule. A child who is delighted by the fire mountains at ten in the morning is a different person by four in the afternoon. If you want the lava tunnels, they are a fine thing to do on their own day rather than bolted onto the park.

The lava caves themselves. Jameos del Agua and Cueva de los Verdes are tunnels left behind when the outside of a lava flow set hard and the inside kept running. Children generally love them: they are dark, cool, echoing and enormous. They also have steps, uneven floors and low sections, so a child who needs carrying will need carrying. The $102 day includes both of them along with the park, which is why it is the nine-hour listing.

If your children are nine or ten and upward and already walk happily, the picture changes completely, because the best rated listings on this whole site are the guided walks. $48 carries 4.9 on 945 reviews and runs three and a half hours with transfers included. $50 is three hours in a small group with pickup available, on 1,518 reviews at 4.8. $54 is the same length and works the ground the six-year eruption of the 1730s covered, on 973 reviews at 4.8.

What they are actually like. Guided, on marked ground outside the national park road, over surfaces that range from fine black grit to rough broken rock. There is no scrambling and no technical climbing. What there is, is three hours of uneven footing in the open with no shade, which is a different kind of hard from a steep path. Teenagers who like walking find it straightforward and memorable. Children who have to be persuaded to walk to dinner will not enjoy it.

A sensible compromise. Do the coach day with everyone, and put one walk on a different morning for whoever wants it. The two things are not substitutes: one shows you the scale of the place, the other puts you on it. With free cancellation on every tour on this site, there is no penalty for planning both and dropping one if the family mood says so.