I spent the weekend visiting a friend on El Hierro. We went for a holiday this summer ( see The End of the World) and shortly afterwards, my friend took a job there. So I abandoned my family on Friday lunchtime and got on the plane.
The landscape around Isora looks a lot like the Yorkshire Dales – lots of dry stone walls and short grass. And then you notice that the bushes leaning over the wall aren’t hawthorn, they’re prickly pear.
My friend took me for a wonderful drive on Saturday. We went round the west of the island, past the road to the end of the world, and we found a beautiful little hermitage. When I was there with my family in September, I must have missed it by less than half a kilometre.
On La Palma we have a fiesta every five years, where they bring the statue of the Virgin Mary from Las Nieves down to Santa Cruz. In El Hierro they have a similar fiesta where they take the statue of the Virgin all over the island. And this is the statue.
