On this visit we did not hire a car for the first five days and this worked well, the bus services are good, the buses seem to run on time and it saves the hassle of parking but there are quite a few places you would want to visit for which you do need a car so at some stage you do have to get some wheels.

El Hierro was new to us and another nice Canary Island and very different from either La Gomera and La Palma both from a landscape point of view and in character. Being so small everyone really does seem to know everyone else, there is very little tourism with only four flights a day in little 100 seat planes coming over from Tenerife. We met a couple of retired Brits who proudly told us there were eight other Brits living on the island, they have been living here for 20 years and love it. In the six days we were on the island we visited most of the must do sites without rushing about.

The only negative was that almost all the places to eat in the town we were in were pizza cafes. I like pizza but not every night and it hardly seems very adventurous, mind you the fried eel I had at the awful Manrique restaurant has put me off food adventures for a while.

It was interesting seeing the effects of the recent volcano eruption in La Palma although I don’t suppose the locals would see it like that, we have taken hundreds of photos of larva patterns and rock formations, both islands are a geologists paradise.