El Hierro

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The smallest and most westerly of the Canaries, long considered the end of the world, cultivates a different idea of travel. A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Geopark and renewable-energy pioneer, El Hierro lines up dizzying cliffs, wind-sculpted junipers, lava pools and some of Europe's clearest waters.

The end of the known world

El Hierro is the smallest and most westerly of the main Canary Islands, 269 km² and around 11,000 people. Until 1884 the Punta de Orchilla at its western tip was the prime meridian of the known world — the zero degree from which Ptolemy, and the French after him, measured longitude, because there was nothing beyond it. It still feels like an edge: a crescent of cliffs around the collapsed caldera of El Golfo, a high green plateau of pasture and juniper, and a south coast of lava and diving.

The island has made its isolation into a project. The Gorona del Viento plant, opened in 2014, combines a wind farm with a pumped-storage reservoir in a volcanic crater and can power the whole island from renewables for days at a time — a world first at this scale. The whole island is a UNESCO biosphere reserve and a geopark, and in 2011 a submarine volcano erupted off La Restinga, in the south, turning the sea green and adding a new seamount to the map.

Two things to see above all: El Sabinar, the grove of junipers on the western plateau bent flat by centuries of wind, and the Mirador de la Peña, the viewpoint César Manrique built over the 1,000-metre drop into El Golfo. La Restinga's marine reserve is among the best diving in the Atlantic.

All year, mildest in the Canaries

El Hierro is temperate all year — 19–21 °C in winter, 24–27 °C in summer on the coast, cooler and cloudier on the plateau — with no real high season and very few visitors at any time. Summer is best for diving and the natural pools; spring for walking and wild flowers. Every four years — next in 2029 — the Bajada de la Virgen de los Reyes carries the island's patron across the island in a procession that takes the whole of July.

Slow, small, and without a beach to speak of

El Hierro is reached by ferry from Los Cristianos in Tenerife, around two and a half hours to Puerto de la Estaca, or by small plane from Tenerife North and Gran Canaria to the airstrip near Valverde. El Hierro is Spain — no formality for EU citizens, euro. A hire car is essential; the roads are good and empty, and nothing is more than an hour away. Book the car ahead — there are not many.

There is almost no sand: swimming is in natural lava pools — La Maceta, Charco Azul, the Charco Manso — which is better than it sounds. Stay in Valverde, the tiny inland capital, in the El Golfo valley or at La Restinga for the diving. Eat the quesadilla herreña, a sweet cheese cake, the island cheese, the pineapples of El Golfo and the fish of La Restinga.

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