More La Palma Sun: Pico Bejenado

And so we come to the last post of this series of walks on La Palma. We look forward to returning to this amazing island again and picking up from where we left off!

The conditions were perfect for us on this walk. Although there were clouds swirling around some of the nearby mountains and over the volcanoes in the southern half of the island, Pico Bejenado was surrounded by clear skies. This mountains is fairly unique on La Palma, whereas others tend to form part of a chain, Pico Bejenado stands proud on its own, at the southern end of the La Caldera de Taburiente national park.

There are only a couple of good starting points from the south, mainly due to the inaccessibility of the terrain to the north. We chose the El Barrial route, taking a long walk up a dirt track before arriving at the starting point at the start of the national park. From here the route was signposted really well, with directions at every junction helping us along the way, so we barely needed the map and occasionally dipped into the guide book to read about the attractions such as the lava tubes as we went past.

We gained height very quickly, and had some fantastic views back towards the mountains of the volcano route. The path was nice and varied, using a forest track through the pine forest before giving way to sparser scrubland and then towards to the end getting much steeper with sharp drops.

When we reached the point at which the path meets up with the other recommended walk, we found ourselves on the edge of a massive cliff as we could look deep into the heart of the Caldera de Taburiente.

Although we felt like we were near the top we still had several hundred metres of ascent ahead of us, but the panoramic views meant it was a pleasure all the way.

One on the pretty small summit we enjoyed our sandwiches and a bit of banter with a handful of other walkers before retracing our route back down.

This walk was fairly hard work, made a lot easier by the excellent waymarking and the great idea of going up the mountain gradually with long hairpin footpaths instead of just heading straight up.

As with the other walks, we rewarded ourselves with a bit of relaxation and swimming on the beautiful beach at Puerto Naos to finish the day.

Overall, La Palma was a brilliant holiday, we will be back!

More Walking on La Palma: Jedey Walk

I've never seen quite so much variety in the weather as on La Palma. And that's coming from a frequent visitor to the Lake District where we have had walks starting off in glorious sunshine ending up in a snowstorm a couple of miles later and several hundred metres higher.

Our strategy for picking where to walk was pretty straightforward, get up off the coastal strip onto higher ground, look at where the clouds were and then head off in the other direction.

We chose a walk starting from the village of Jedey as this meant only a short drive for us from Puerto Naos, meaning we could park up, enjoy the walk and be back in time for a swim and lie on the beach by mid afternoon.

The main footpath we set off along was the PR LP 15 that would have taken us back onto the GR131 and the volcano route, but to shorten the walk, after a short while we headed off the path and onto a forest track that was headed upwards.
Although the slopes were steep the path - as we found is the case with many of the paths on La Palma - they comprise of long straight sections and hairpin bends, meaning they take you gradually up into the mountains.

Once again this was a walk with varied scenery, as we headed up from the village we passed through volcanic slopes and the occasional vineyard before entering the pine forest. As it was cloudy more or less everywhere around us the views around us were pretty hazy.

After a couple of hours heading upwards we unfortunately found the path we planned to use on our descent appeared to be closed for maintenance - and in this volcanic terrain going off the established paths isn't an option.

So we took the same path back down and before we knew it we were back in Jedey and at the car ready for a couple of hours of seaside Atlantic bliss.