El Hierro, the volcanic Canary island that's part Hawaii part Yorkshire Dales

Teresa Machan explores the little-visited island of El Hierro, the westernmost of the Canary Islands, swimming in sea pools and joining a boat tour to learn more about the island's rich underwater marine life. She also discovers to her surprise that while much of the interior is strewn with crumpled lava, pockets of the island are green and forested

The Punta Orchilla lighthouse at the southwestern tip of El Hierro, which was once marked 'prime' or zero meridian in the Old World until the official meridian moved to Greenwich, UK. Photo: Richard Hammond

I didn’t take too kindly to my guide Paolo’s suggestion that we go and look at a windfarm. My first day on El Hierro had been filled with unusual and extraordinary sights and, well, I stare at 116 wind turbines every day in the English Channel. Did I really need to see five more?

Paolo’s confused expression said it all, but he agreed to move our visit and round off the day with a dip at La Maceta – a trio of lava-hooped sea pools (charcos) scoured by the North Atlantic Ocean. El Hierro has six beaches – one of them sandy – but the sea is mostly accessed via boardwalks, rails and ladders that drop down into clear, black-green water.

Teresa at La Maceta sea pool at sunset. Photo: Richard Hammond

You don’t need to stay in fancy hotel to enjoy sublime infinity-edge views. I tiptoed around the lava rim just as the setting sun began gilding the surface of the ocean and found a viewing perch on a natural sea ledge. Wallowing in the warm wave-washed water (around 22 C in mid-October), I waited until the afterglow had tinted the pools peach and pink.

Hailing from northern Italy, Paolo Baudino came to El Hiero for a long weekend with his wife, Enrica. Having set up the guiding company Atlántida, the pair is still here almost 25 years later, living the dream under one of the island’s 10,000 volcanoes. Not a bad advert for a European island many have never heard of.

The youngest and most westerly of the Spanish archipelago, El Hierro was declared a Geopark in 2014 by UNESCO and a World Biosphere Reserve in 2000. It is pimpled by cones and craters yet, while swathes of it are bald and strewn with crumpled lava, pockets of the island are green and forested. The island’s trump card is altitude. It peaks at 1,501 metres and roads that hairpin through several microclimates can take you from prickly-pear orchard to pungent pine forest in the blink of an eye. From loamy laurisilva to black-sand calderas and cow-dotted pastures that are reminiscent of the Yorkshire Dales, the island is full of surprises.

pimpled by cones and craters yet, while swathes of it are bald and strewn with crumpled lava, pockets of the island are green and forested

The absence of direct flights, big hotels and sandy beaches keeps El Hierro well under the under the radar. Of the 30,000 to 40,000 visitors it receives annually, most are from Spain. From Mirador El Pena, a north-westerly clifftop viewpoint chiselled out by César Manrique, Paolo pointed out neighbouring La Gomera, La Palma and, on Tenerife, Mt Teide – the Canaries’ emblematic peak. A solitary ferry bound for Tenerife rippled the Atlantic’s silky surface and, not for the first time during my short visit I felt the sensation of being adrift in a place far from Europe.

Just five generators on El Hierro produce double what the island’s inhabitants – around 10,000 people – require for their day-to day needs. Photo: Richard Hammond

The island’s quest for self-sufficiency and its sustainability achievements stem in part from its location. Anyone who wants to see what a blueprint for self-sufficiency in renewable energy really looks like should visit El Hierro, where electricity based on clean, renewable energy sources saves thousands of tons of diesel fuel each year (over 6,000 tons in 2024).

In October 2025, a Climate Action Plan for El Hierro was launched with support from the UK-based charity The Travel Foundation. It was conceived as a pilot for developing similar projects on other Canary islands. “El Hierro’s strong sustainability track record made it the most suitable and feasible place to begin,” said Isabel Florido Martel, environmental sustainability technician at Turismo de Islas Canarias.

The roadmap will include improvements in sustainable mobility, preventive measures to protect sensitive areas and the introduction of incentives for renewable energy, water efficiency and better waste management in tourism businesses.

When we eventually visited the wind farm, I understood see why Paulo was so keen for us to see it; remarkably, there are just five generators that produce double what the island’s inhabitants – around 10,000 people – need to be self-sufficient in electricity.

Excess energy is used to pump water between two reservoirs at different altitudes. “This means that on days that we don't have wind we have energy produced by water,” said Paolo. “Either you consume it or it's lost.”

According to Jesus Perez Quintero, environmental councillor at the municipal council, the island is looking to photovoltaics and robotics to reach its long-term goal of achieving 100% renewable energy year-round.

Walking trails traditionally used for pastoral work and transhumance fan out across the island, traversing more kilometres of paths than road. Once every four years the nearly 29 km-long Camino de la Virgen (Path of the Virgin) is used for the day-long processional descent of the Virgen de Los Reyes in which the island’s patron saint is carried from her white-walled, bell-tower-topped hermitage, in Dehesa, to the Church of Santa Maria de la Concepcion, in the island’s diminutive capital, Valverde.

A sub-species of the El Hierro giant lizard, one of a 112 endemic species, can be seen (behind glass) at the Guinea Ecomuseum’s Recovery Centre. Photo: Richard Hammond

History and cultural heritage can be explored at a handful of museums including the open-air Guinea Ecomuseum, where visitors can see how the Bimbaches – pre-Hispanic settlers who colonised the island over 2,000 years ago, lived. A sub-species of the El Hierro giant lizard, one of a 112 endemic species, can be seen (behind glass) at the museum’s Recovery Centre. The Bimbaches left their mark in a series of spiral, alphabetic and geometric rock engravings that are preserved at El Julan Cultural Park. Petroglyphs aside, it is worth visiting just to see this vast and empty lava slope that was graffitied by the early settlers sliding away into the sparkling sea.

Teresa and guide Paolo Baudino at an interpretation sign within the forested section of the Llanía Trail. Photo: Richard Hammond

Early one morning we left sunshine behind on the north-east coast and drove into centre of the island to join a short, forested section of the Llanía Trail, which crams several of the island’s geographical features into a two-hour hike. As we plunged into the lichen and moss-draped fayal-brezal, a wooded area of wax-myrtle or “fire” trees and Canarian heather, moisture clung to my hair and face.

Created by the Tradewinds, the mists that roll around this elevated habitat preserve some of the Canarian archipelago’s last remaining laurel forest. The three of us on the walk took it in turns to wrap our arms around the voluptuous girth of a Canary Island Pine, leaning into its mottled, fire-adapted trunk.

Not long after leaving the trail we were zigzagging down hairpin bends towards the juniper forest of El Sabinar. These curious, wind-warped trees, some more than 20 feet high, are the island’s unofficial emblem. Trunks hinged in an inverted V, their spiny crowns sweeping the ground, these specimens are the tree version of Downward Dog pose.

One of the island's iconic wind-warped juniper trees, Photo: Richard Hammond

Although the island is the largest producer of pineapples in Spain (with bananas not far behind) food production is generally small-scale. The island employs regenerative farming techniques and holds the highest proportion of land – 3,995 hectares – and registered under organic production systems within the Canary Islands. El Hierro produces Designation of Origin wines, delicious goat, cow and sheep’s cheeses and has swapped nets for line fishing. “We fish in the traditional way, at dawn, with rods, hooks and live bait,” says David Pavón, president of the cooperative, Pescarestinga.

Not long after leaving the trail we were zigzagging down hairpin bends towards the juniper forest of El Sabinar. These curious, wind-warped trees, some more than 20 feet high, are the island’s unofficial emblem.

The village of La Restinga, on the island’s southwestern tip, is a busy fishing harbour and a springboard to several dive sites in the Mar de Las Calmas (calm sea). Divers can hover over lava tongues, black coral, caves, craters and arches. Visibility here is excellent, and the waters here are home to marine life including manta rays and one of the world’s most important communities of beaked whales.

The area has been a protected marine fishing reserve since the mid-90s and in 2024, the government proposed a bill which, if successful, would create Spain’s first marine national park. Extending several miles offshore, the Mar de las Calmas National Park would support species including sperm whales and whale sharks and set a precedent for marine conservation in Spain.

In the hope of spotting bottlenose dolphins, I joined a boat trip from La Restinga. From the water, the island’s rugged beauty came into sharp focus. Near-perfect cones rose like chocolate hills while caves and sea pools puddled in the island’s blackened, broiled skirt. Instead of dolphins, we were joined by scores of flapping-tailed flying fish, their pectoral fins gliding on the wind. It was a first for most on the boat and dolphins were soon forgotten.

That evening, we dined at La Refugio, one of a handful of fish restaurants in La Restinga. As we tucked into a pile of shrimp and slurped limpets drenched in garlic, vinegar and parsley from their shells, our neighbours, a bunch of Welsh divers, pored over their underwater photo haul of seahorses, giant groupers, Moray eels, rays and nudibranchs.

Limpets, shrimps and catch-of-the-day at. Restinga. Photo: Richard Hammond

I ended my time on El Hierro with another sunset, off Spain’s most westerly tip. Orchilla lighthouse marked the edge of the known world for over two hundred years. A monument nearby marks the Prime Meridian that was, before it moved to Greenwich in 1884. Even now, as we picked our way across a field of cavity-pocked pahoehoe lava toward the lighthouse, I found my bearings tested. Paolo asked where I thought a bird would make land if it continued west. I would never have guessed Orlando.

I sat on the smoothest bit of lava I could find and stretched my feet out towards the ocean, bathed in the silvery beam of the sun’s descent. For the last time – on this visit at least – I savoured the sense of solitude and the feeling of being deliciously and somehow secretly, off grid.

Teresa savours the solitude on the final evening of her trip to El Hierro. Photo: Richard Hammond

==

Disclosure: Teresa Machan was a guest of El Hierro Tourism and the Spanish Tourist Office in London. She had full editorial control of this feature, which has been written in her own words based on her experience of visiting El Hierro in the autumn of 2025. All opinions are the authors’ own.

How to travel to the Canary Islands without flying

There are two ferry routes from mainland Spain to the Canary Islands, from Huelva (near Seville) operated by Baleria, and from Cadiz, operated by Armas Trasmediterránea. For how to travel to these ports from the UK without flying, see our guide to how to travel overland to Spain.

The ferries from Huelva run to the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (which takes about 40 hours) and stop at the Port of La Luz in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria en route, while the ferries from Cadiz run to most of the main islands, including Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, La Palma, Lanzarote and Tenerife, taking 28–35 hours.

Ferries travel several times a week from Tenerife to El Hierro and take about two hours. The ferries are operated by Armas Trasmediterranea.