Hotel Emblematico La Casa de los Naranjos

For two hundred years one family owned La Casa de los Naranjos and ran the farm from a room called the cabinet, which is now where guests check in. By the time it was sold the wooden ceilings had fallen in and woodworm had got into the carpentry. The restoration kept most of the woodwork and the wooden floors, and went back for the colours the house started with. Under the courtyard the old cistern still stands on arches of large stones. The library came through as well, nineteenth-century volumes in what was the island's first. Hotel Emblemático is an official title from the Canary Islands government, so for once the adjective is someone else's. In one bedroom a crystal chandelier hangs over antique chairs and tall green shutters fold back onto the garden. On the roof, the loungers face a volcanic hill.

Recommended for couples and families who would sooner have a house with a past than a pool, which is as well, since there is none. Two of the eight rooms are quadruples, and one sleeps five. Breakfast is included and cooked to order, in the salon or out in the courtyard. After that the hotel's e-bikes take over, on self-guided routes to Mirador del Río or Arrieta beach, and on Tuesdays and Fridays a guided outing for four or more pairs a walk through the Valley of a Thousand Palms with a ride past craters and ravines. The hotel also arranges tastings at El Grifo, the oldest winery in the Canary Islands. A swim means the car: the nearest beaches are fifteen minutes away. The house's name, at least, needed no restoring. It comes from the orange trees out in front.