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Walking on La Gomera and El Hierro

Looking back to the Roque de Agando after leaving a high-level road (Walk 2)

These are the two smallest Canary Islands, at the western end of the archipelago. La Gomera is heavily eroded, scored by dozens of steep-sided rocky barrancos. As a result, walks that lead in and out of them are often very rugged, but that shouldn’t suggest that the walking is going to be too difficult for ‘ordinary’ walkers. In fact, almost all the routes in this guidebook follow waymarked trails, made up of narrow paths and broad tracks that often zigzag to ease the gradient.

Access to the coast is often limited to the mouths of the barrancos, as there are sheer cliffs elsewhere. By contrast, the highest parts of the island are much gentler and are covered in extensive laurisilva forest, encircled by pines. On El Hierro the laurisilva forest is less extensive and there are more pines. Barrancos are not as deep and rugged, and instead there are extensive slopes of volcanic ash and dozens of well-defined volcanic cones.