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Hoya del Morcillo

One of the barbecue grills


Hoya del Morcillo is a lovely picnic and barbecue area deep in the pine woods of El Pinar. Like most of these places, it's very popular with the locals. It has water taps, picnic tables, and proper barbecue grills, which makes it much easier to cook lunch without starting a forest fire.

The play area

There's a slide and climbing frame to amuse the kids while the food cooks, and plenty of space to kick a football around.

The climbing frame


There's also a camp site, and this rather fun map of the island made of branches. I couldn't fit it all in the photo: this is the south-west of El Hierro.

The map of the island

And this sign commemorates a balloon flight.

In recognition of the feat achieved by the aeronauts Jesus Gonzalez Green and Tomas Feliu who, following in the footsteps of Christopher Columbus in the first transoceanic balloon flight, departed from the island of El Hierro and arrived in Venezuela. 5th April 1992

The flight itself was in February 1992. They survived technical problems, a tropical storm, and lack of oxygen before they got into the trade winds, which blew them all the way to the Orinoco delta. The journey was a total of 5,000 km and 130 hours 19 minutes (and the previous world record was 1,075 km and 45 hours 13 minutes.)


The sign commemorating the balloon flight

Homage to the Bajada

The "Homage to the Bajada" statue.

I love this statue.

It stands about a kilometre outside Valverde, on the road down to the port and airport, which means most people are going to see it fairly soon after they arrive on the island. As the name suggests, it celebrates the Bajada, the big once-every-five-years fiesta where they take the statue of the island's patron saint to the capital for a month.

The back of the statue

I wrote a post about this while it was being built, and I was fascinated to see the finished statue. It meant so much more, now that I've seen the bajada dancers.

The biggest archway in the Canaries.

The artist, Rubén Armiche, clearly has a good idea of what appeals to kids aged from 4 to 94. This archway is only one of the ways into the statue. He calls it the biggest archway in the Canary Islands, because on a clear day it frames Mt. Teide. (Shame about the haze when I took the photo.)

Holes for peeking through.

There are actually two archways, side by side; one is adult size and the other kid-sized. Better yet, there are peek-holes between the two.

The scaffolding for the huge statue is made from things like old washing machines, which saves them going into landfill. And as you can see, some of the details on the outside are recycled too.

Detail of the statue. Yes, they're bottle tops!

El Pozo de las Calcosas

The path down to El Pozo de las Calcosas

Although El Hierro only has one real beach, it has a lot of natural inlets which have been developed as natural, salt-water swimming pools

The summer houses

"Developed" sounds dodgy, I know, but all the ones I've seen really have been improved by the process. They build a path so you can walk down to the shore instead of slithering down and turning your ankle. They add some steps or ladders so you can get in and out of the water without scraping your knee. And they level off a few patches for comfortable sunbathing. If they're feeling ambitious, they might add a barbecue area or smooth off the bottom of one of the pools to make it toddler-friendly. But all the concrete is the same colour as the natural rock, so you have to look twice to see which is which.

The statue of Neptune by Ruben Armiche

Not so very long ago, most Herreñens were goat herds, and it was quite normal for a family to have two or three houses -- all right, two or three hovels -- because they had to go wherever the pasture was. Today, lots of family have converted one of the hovels into a beach hut, even if they aren't rich. Frequently, the whole family moves in for the school summer holidays. And if someone in the family is good at DiY, the beach hut gradually morphs into a very nice cottage.

The swimming pools

El Pozo de las Calcosas has a lot of these beach huts and cottages, near two swimming pools. It's also got a lovely statue of Neptune by local artist Ruben Armiche, just beside the path up to the car park.

I had a very nice paddle in the shallow pool, and spent ages trying to get a decent photo of the crabs down by the surf. They were as uncooperative as cats, but I was pretty determined about it.

And then I had to walk back up all those steps.

Crabs in the surf

Isora's spring

The footpath down to the spring at Isora

Water is an important resource on El Hierro, like all the other Canary Islands. It's not so long ago that everyone had to go to the spring to fetch water.

In Isora, the old spring is northeast of the village centre. You can follow the signs from the main road through the village (NB "main" is relative: we are not talking about a six lane highway here) down to a car park. That's a nice view in itself, but if you take the steep footpath that meanders down from the car park, things get better.

The water tank at the spring

After perhaps two kilometres, you reach the spring. In 1943 they built a modern, concrete water tank here, presumably to store the water and keep it cleaner. If you go there, watch your step as there's a hole in the top. If you fell in, I think it would be impossible to get out again without help. (In fact I may use this for one of my stories some time).

The bit that fascinated me was the old laundry. You see, if you don't have running water at home, your clothes weigh a lot less than the water you need to wash them. So you take the laundry to the water rather than vice versa. So here are six tubs for hand washing.

The old laundry



One of the concrete panels between the tubs has a series of initials scratched in while the concrete was still wet, and the date "1963". This puzzles me. That's about the time when my husband's family on La Palma had to pump water into a tank on the roof by hand once a week, but once you'd done that, there was running water in the house. So 1963 seems very late to be carry the clothes to the spring, but rather early for restoration work. I'd have thought it would be just old enough to be boring. Of course, La Palma is a much richer island than El Hierro, so maybe people were still carrying their clothes to the spring then - and all the way back up. It certainly makes me appreciate my washing machine!

But they certainly had a fantastic view while they lathered away.

The view from the spring

The Big Green Electric Machine

One of the windmills

El Hierro plans to be the first island in the world to be self-sufficient in electricity from renewable sources. There'll be six modern windmills on the ridge where the wind generally tries to blow your hair off, and most of the time, they'll provide the electricity direct to the island's power grid.

It's not too hard to see the catch. "Generally" isn't enough. Nobody wants to wait for a windy day to switch the kettle on. They want their cup of tea now.

So when the windmills generate more electricity than the demand, the excess will be used to pump water uphill to a reservoir in a natural volcanic crater. Then when the windmills can't keep up with the demand, the water will be released to run downhill through turbines into another lake near the port of Estaca to generate the extra energy. This should smooth out the bumps nicely.

At present, most of the island's electricity comes from a diesel-fired power station. That will be on standby for the first year, while they make sure that everything really does work reliably, and then moth-balled. After that, the whole island will run on clean energy.

Of course it helps that the population is only about 10,500, and the winters are fairly mild.

The top reservoir

One of my favourite places to eat in El Hierro is the Parilla in Isora.

Parilla means grill, and they mostly serve grilled meat with salad and wrinkly potatoes or chips. It's not a particularly innovative menu, but they use good ingredients and cook them very well. The service is friendly and the prices are reasonable. What more could you ask?