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