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.