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?

"I Will Wait for You Forever"

This statue, by Julio Nieto, stands at the entrance to the tunnel, just south of Estaca. From here, you can see the ferries coming into the port. The plaque by his feet says, "I Will Wait for You Forever".

I thought it was very sweet and romantic. And then I hear that the artist's wife had drowned near here.

My Favourite Wine

Viña Frontera, from La Frontera, El Hierro.

Like all the Canary Islands, El Hierro has several different wines. One of my favourites is Viña Frontera. As you can see, there are several varieties. Personally I like the sweet white wine best, even though I know perfectly well that dry wines are considered posher. You can normally expect to pay about 4€ for a bottle of the sweet white (blanco afrutado) and usually more for the other varieties.

La Higuera de Abuela Restaurant

The courtyard of La Higuera de Abuela

There are lots of nice places to eat on El Hierro, but one of my favourites is La Higuera de Abuela in Echedo. It means "Granny's Fig Tree".

The courtyard's lovely, the food's great and the service is friendly.

The restaurant's in the village of Echedo, just north of Valverde town. They open 11 am - 4pm and 7:30 pm - 11 pm, with Tuesdays off.

Give my love to the goldfish.

The entrance of La Higuera de Abuela

Roque La Bonanza

This unusual rock is called Roque La Bonanza. It's on the road from the port to the Parador (Paradors are posh, state-run hotels, and very nice too). We promptly christened it the teddy-bear rock, because to us it looks like a teddy bear pushing something along.

The rock is just on the Parador side of the long tunnel.

Hoyo de Barrio

Most of El Hierro gets pretty dry in summer, but the picnic and barbecue area at Hoyo del Barrio (near Valverde) always seems to stay green.

As you can see, there are tables and chairs. And you can just spot the barbecue grill in the middle of the wall at the the back.

And if you want a walk after your lunch, there's a very pretty path that wends up through the woods.

Video of the Bajada

Apologies for the delay, but here at last is the video of the bajada, taken at Raya de la Mareta.

The Bajada

The procession leaving Isora

I'm better informed now. The main procession with the statue of the Virgin of the Kings leaves El Dehesa at 5 am, and travels 28 km to Valverde, the capital, arriving at 10:30 pm. But there are lots of side processions. For example, I saw one procession leave Isora with their statue of St. Joseph at 7 am, to meet the main procession at La Cruz de Los Reyes.

It was still dark to begin with, and half light when they danced away up a steep lane out of the village. I was only walking, and I couldn't keep up.

They only have three musical instruments: rather high-pitched flutes, castanets and big, deep drums. When I heard Herreñan music on the telly, I didn't like it at all, because it was far too shrill. I hadn't appreciated that my TV wasn't reproducing the low notes. In real life, the glorious WHUMP! from the big drums balances the flutes perfectly, and you want to dance.

And they do dance. They have people dancing all the way, in shifts. The costumes and dance steps are a little reminiscent of English morris dancers. I believe the tune and costumes vary a little from village to village.

In fact, five processions meet the main one La Cruz de Los Reyes, each with their own statue. It's also where people stop for a picnic lunch.

Then they all travel together, with the villages taking turns for the honour of carrying the Virgin and dancing for her. I caught up with the procession at La Raya de la Mareta, where El Pinar hands over to Isora.


The procession at La Raya de la Mareta

The sun was baking, and I was amazed to see the dancers still going at it with gusto. These people are really fit! Of course, they must have been practising for months, and I expect a lot of them have physical work anyway.


The bajada dancers

Even in the middle of the procession, the crowds were huge. I would have liked to see the arrival at Valverde, where they dance inside the big church, but I didn't fancy my chances of getting a parking space within a couple of miles of the town centre.


The huge crowd at Raya de la Mareta

Juniper Trees

The famous juniper tree

One of the things El Hierro is famous for is the juniper forest at the west end of the island. Go to the Hermitage at El Dehesa and either walk or drive along the dirt track behind it. You soon reach a cross-roads, where you take the left-hand track marked "El Sabinal". I found the track in surprisingly good condition, and we were able to drive the whole way, which is 3.5 km from the chapel to the little car park.

And from the car park, you can see the tree that's on a millon post cards, fridge magnets and T shirts. It's even on the cover of a Brian May CD.


I loved it. These Phoenicean Juniper trees (Juniperus phoenicea) obviously survive tremendously strong winds and it twists them into the most photogenic shapes. And the famous one isn´t the only one worth photographing.
While you're there, take the other fork to the mirador (viewpoint) at Bascos, where you get a fantastic view across the Golfo all the way to La Peña.

View from the mirador de Bascos

The Bajada

The biggest fiesta on El Hierro is La Bajada, literally, the "bringing down", and it only happens every four years. Other islands have bajadas - for example La Palma has one every 5 years, and the next one is July -August 2010.

A Bajada is when they move the statue of the island's patron saint to the island's capital. In La Palma, they move the statue of La Virgen de Las Nieves about 3-4 km. Although El Hierro is only about 19 km across, they take the statue of La Virgen de los Reyes all around the island - a total of 44 km. And they dance all the way!

Well, I don't think it's the same dancers the whole time. But I'm looking forward to seeing it. Because the next bajada is July 4th.

Our Lady of the Kings

Right at the western end of El Hierro there's a lovely little hermitage at El Dehesa, where they keep the Virgin of the Kings. This is the patron saint of El Hierro.

In the 16th century, El Hierro was very poor. There wasn't enough water for agriculture, and almost everyone lived by herding goats.

So how come a very poor island got such a beautiful statue?

Well, in 1546 on the night of January 5th there was a tremendous storm, and all the shepherd at that end of the island took refuge in a cave. In the morning of the 6th, they saw a ship anchored at the nearby port of Orchilla. This astonished them, because normally only small boats anchored there. Obviously they must be pirates.

This was a very worrying conclusion, because pirates were known to kidnap islanders to sell as slaves, and the shepherds had nothing to defend themselves with.

They hid, and watched.

But there were only three men on the ship and they looked harmless, even honourable. So when they landed, the shepherds showed themselves, and asked if they needed help.

Oh they needed help! They were on their way to Cuba, and the ship had been badly damaged by the storm. They'd lost most of their provisions, too. In fact, they would certainly have sunk if it weren't for the statue of the Virgin.

The statue was brought out and admired.



At the time, the Flemish workshops weren't quite as good as Michelangelo. Not quite. These poverty-stricken goatherds can't possibly have seen a statue by a professional artist before, and this was a particularly beautiful one. They must have been totally blown away.

The ship stayed for eight days, while it was repaired and re-provisioned. The crew must have needed a break, too.

There are two different versions of what happened next.

The more prosaic one is that the ship's captain gave the shepherds the statue in payment for provisions and help repairing the ship.

The poetic version is that the captain paid with boring old cash, but when he set sail, the wind was resolutely against him. Of course if the wind is absolutely dead against a sailing ship, it can't make any progress, so they had to return to Orchilla.

According to some versions, this happened several times, which was very odd indeed - the trade winds go the other way, especially in winter. Eventually the ship's crew concluded that the statue was meant to stay on El Hierro, so they gave her to the shepherds. And when they set sail that had a strong, steady wind, blowing straight for Cuba.

Either way, the shepherds decided they couldn't keep the statue of Our Lady in a cave, so they took her to the tiny hermitage at La Dehesa, where she's been ever since.

Since she arrive on January 6th, Epiphany, when the Kings come to visit Baby Jesus, she's called the Virgin of the Kings.

Aeoniums (bejeques)

Lots of Canarian plants look seriously exotic to visitors from northern Europe. Some of my favourites are the Aeonium genus (which now includes what used to be the separate genus of Greenovia). They like dry places: cliff walls, lava flows and old roofs. This one was growing in a lava flow near Tiñor, with several hundred friends and relatives. I think it's Greenovia aurea, but I'm no expert and my book lists 35 different species, some of them very similar.

A Pretty Photo

I'm extremely busy this week, so here's a pretty photo of backlighting on the road from Valverde to Isora.

Homage to the Bajada

The artist Rubén Armiche is creating a huge statue called "Homage to the Bajada", just outside Valverde. It's something he calls "re-use art", because it's made of things like old washing machines covered by chicken wire, sacks, and finally cement. He plans to finish it in time for the big festival in July (the bajada, hence the statue's name), so I hope to see it then.

The bit in the photo is only one end. It will eventually form a giant arc, with an entrance archway which frames Mt. Teide on Tenerife. Actually, there's two archways, side by side, one adult size and one for kids, with a peep-hole between the two. I think the kids are going to love that!

Rubén was born on Gran Canaria in 1973, but his parents were from El Hierro, and he loves the island. Apart from this statue and similar, smaller ones elsewhere on El Hierro, he's painted several murals and written and illustrated two comic books, one about the bajada, and one about the Garoé.

He's also very friendly to wannabe journalists who interrupt his work.

The Yorkshire Dales

There's an area of El Hierro, which looks uncannily like the Yorkshire dales. I do a double take every time I see it. Short grass, pale, drystone walls. Definitely Yorkshire.

Except that the plants hanging over the walls aren't hawthorn trees, they're prickly pears.

And unlike the prickly pears on La Palma, they don't have cochineal beetles on them, so they look much nicer.

La Peña Viewpoint

There's a fantastic lookout at La Peña, with a breathtaking view over the whole of El Golfo.

The restaurant and garden were designed by the artist, Cesar Manrique. I've only had one meal there. It was a little pricy, but the food was delicious, and I definitely felt I got my money's worth.

This splendid dragon, also by Manrique, decorates the wall inside.

Pineapples

They certainly aren't a crop I associated with the Canary Islands, but El Hierro exports pineapples.

Most of the fields are in El Golfo, at low altitudes. This is the warmest and sunniest part of the island, but originally the ground was very stony. Most of the soil was brought in from the woods on the central ridge, and irrigation added.

The spectacular cliff in the background is the Tibataje nature reserve.

Giant Lizards

El Hierro has a unique species of giant lizard, Gallotia simonyi. They're about 60 cm long, although most of that is tail. That makes them about the size of an iguana.

La Gomera also has its own species of giant lizard, (Gallotia bravoana) as does Tenerife (Gallotia galloti) and Gran Canaria (Gallotia stehlini). They're 60 cm - 40 cm long, and they're all in the Lacertidae family. A different species was recently discovered on La Palma, but the location's a secret (which is probably wise) and they're only 30 cm long.

On the other hand, you can go and see the ones on El Hierro. There's a breeding station and museum open at Guinea. It's on the main road from La Peña to La Frontera, signposted "El Lagartario"

The Sacred Garoe

As the trade winds hit the island, they're forced upwards, and the water vapour, picked up from the sea, forms clouds. This means that El Hierro often has a cloud pouring over the top, much like the cloud waterfall on La Palma. Unlike La Palma, there aren't nearly as many trees to trap the fog in their leaves so that it drips onto the ground, which makes El Hierro much drier.

This makes any tree that does so, very important. At the time of the Spanish invasion, the Garoé was a large tree (a or Ocotea foetens or Til) which grew near the summit of the ridge at the north of the island. It was so important that the Bimbaches (the pre-hispanic inhabitants) considered it sacred, and the water it provided helped them to resist the invasion for a while. Legend says that the secret of the tree's location was betrayed by a local girl who fell in love with a Spanish soldier. Once the Spanish controlled the drinking water supply, the Bimbaches had to surrender, but the girl was condemned to death.

Sadly, the original tree was destroyed by a storm in 1610. Rather surprisingly, a replacement wasn't planted until 1957.

Today it's a beautiful place. You can drive along the track with care, or you can walk about 3 km from the tarmaced road. I saw it in the mist, whch was wonderfully atmospheric, but I'm told when it's sunny, it's lovely in a completely different way.

The last little bit of the path is downhill. You pass a tiny souvenir shop, tucked away around the corner so that you can't see it from the tree. Then you find a series of natural (or perhaps just very, very old pools) near the tree, which is tucked in a hollow in the hill. (I took this photo from the back of the hollow.) I suspect that the original tree was big enough to have its crown well above the sides, so that it would have collected much more water. Nonetheless, it's a special place, and I'm very glad to have seen it.

The Edge of the World

The western edge of El Hierro used to be the edge of the world. In the second century AD, Ptolemy made it the zero meridian, marking all longitudes east from there. In 1634, France decided it was exactly 20º west of the Paris meridian, and some old French maps mark longitude in both degrees from Paris and degrees from El Hierro.

When they found that El Hierro is 20° 23' 9" west of Paris, they kept the Paris meridian. And an international conference moved it to Greenwich in 1884.

Today there's a monument on the old zero meridian. It really does feel like the end of the world. The whole island's rather dry, and this is the drier end of it, so there's no trees or grass, just scrubby little bushes which look very odd to English eyes. The minor road turns into an unclassified road and then a dirt track. Then we had to park and walk a mile. No houses in sight. The mobile phone had no signal. As we arrived, a couple of people were just leaving in a 4x4, and that was the only other car we saw the whole time.

The monument itself is modest – just a block of concrete with half an iron globe poking out of it. But it was amazing to think that we were the most westerly of the 497,000,000 people in the EU.

Where the Heck is El Hierro?

El Hierro is the smallest of the Canary Islands, at the bottom left-hand corner of the archipelago which lies off the coast of Morocco (7.7º north and 18.0º west). It's shaped rather like an equilateral triangle that's sucking its cheeks in, and each side of the triangle is only about 12 miles (7.5 miles) long. Just 10,500 people live there, give or take. For all that, it's incredibly varied. You spend a week there and still not see all of it.

The island is volcanic, and still has over 500 visible cones, besides the ones covered by more recent eruptions. Today it forms a three-pointed star, with the highest point rising to 1501 m. The top of the ridge is frequently covered in cloud made by the moisture-laden trade winds being forced upwards by the island.

The island's capital town, Valverde, is 590 m above sea-level, and noticeably cooler. It's a pleasant little town, as long as you're not expecting a major shopping centre.

There are ferries and flights to Tenerife, plus three ferries a week to La Palma (Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday) and one direct ferry from La Palma to El Hierro (Sunday evening).


View El Hierro in a larger map