GR 131 El Bastón (La Palma)

Two quite different walks joined at the summit. The first is a working hillside: steps up off the harbour, then farm tracks between the black block walls of the banana plantations, a few short stretches of asphalt on the El Time road and a steep paved lane, before the surface turns back to earth at the cliff edge above the Barranco de las Angustias. There is very little shade until the Canary pine closes in above the last houses, and the pull up to the Caldera rim at the Torre del Time is relentless rather than technical. From there the route climbs the rim itself on pine needles and loose grit, the trees bending and thinning as the ground opens out, until above the last of them it is bare high mountain scrub and rock to the top. Past the observatory the walking changes completely. A made path runs the lip of the Caldera, easy underfoot and almost level by the standards of what came before, with the Caldera dropping away on the right and the trade wind cloud usually banked somewhere below on the left. The difficulty in the second half is not the ground, it is altitude, exposure and the fact that once you are on the rim you stay on it. The Cabildo grades the climb to the summit extreme, and puts heat and dehydration ahead of the ascent as the reason.

Logistics: The Cabildo publishes this as two stages, not one: their stage 1 ends at Roque de los Muchachos near km 17 and their stage 2 starts there, so the rim walking in the second half of this section belongs to the following official day. Two official sources disagree about the first 4 km and only one of them is current. The Spanish ministry's caminosnaturales.es page for this trail still displays a closure of the start between Puerto de Tazacorte and El Time after a 2025 rockfall below the El Time cliff. The Cabildo de La Palma manages the footpaths and publishes a live open, partially open or closed status for every one of them, and it lists GR 131 Etapa 1 as open. The Cabildo is the operator and wins. Read its table, not the ministry page, and read it late: it also carries a closure-by-alert column, because these paths shut automatically when a weather alert is declared, which is the way a walker here is most likely to lose a day. Check the day of the week as well as the status, because this is where the 55 km with no shop begins. The last resupply on the line is at La Punta, a small supermarket and a bakery at km 4.1 to 4.4, with a Spar at the harbour behind them; the big shop near the start is the HiperDino on Plaza Enrique Noqueroles up in Tazacorte town, roughly 2 km off the route. That HiperDino is listed Monday to Saturday and closed on Sunday, and so are both supermarkets at the far end in Los Canarios. Nobody publishes hours for the harbour Spar or the two La Punta shops, so do not assume they open on a Sunday morning either. If day one falls on a Sunday, which is what an arrival-day plan tends to produce, buy on the Saturday, or buy at the farmers' market on Avenida Doctor Fleming in Los Llanos de Aridane, which runs on Sunday mornings. The shop hours here are directory listings rather than each shop's own published times, so read them as the shape of the week rather than a guarantee.

Navigation: Waymarked with GR red and white flashes and easy to follow in clear air. Two junctions are worth reading properly rather than glancing at. GR 130 comes in on the climb at around 600 m, and the two long distance routes are signposted together there, so check the number and not just the colours. At Roque de los Muchachos the route crosses the LP-4 and the observatory access roads, and the marked descents to Puntagorda, Tijarafe and Puntallana all start within a kilometre of each other. The real hazard is cloud: the Cabildo's own notes for the crest say mist causes navigation problems, and on the rim there is nothing to take a bearing from.

The long middle of the trail, on the spine of the island, and the part that cannot be shortened once started. It opens still on the Caldera rim, losing height in steps through returning Canary pine, and includes the most exposed walking on the route where the path runs the cliff edge along Lomo Corralejo. Below Pico de las Ovejas the character changes for the better: laurel begins to appear among the pines, and past El Reventón the route becomes a ridge path through a cutting in dense laurel forest on the Cumbre Nueva, shaded and cool, then a broad forest track. Those last kilometres into El Pilar are the easiest walking on the whole trail, and El Pilar is the one place on this section with a road, a car park and running water. Out of El Pilar the pines climb the flank of Birigoyo and then stop. What follows is the Ruta de los Volcanes, a line of cinder cones walked mostly on black lapilli that is loose and deep in places and gives under the foot on every climb. The 2021 vents lie below and to the west, so what you cross is their ash, not their lava; the craters the path actually threads, Hoyo Negro, Duraznero and Martín, are older. Between the last pines above El Pilar and the forest above Los Canarios there is no shade, no shelter and nothing built.

Logistics: El Pilar, near km 43, is where the Cabildo's stage 2 ends and stage 3 begins, so this section spans the join. It is also the only point between Roque de los Muchachos and Los Canarios that a vehicle can reach. The escapes named above are marked paths whose status changes. The Cabildo publishes each one as open, partially open or closed in the same table it uses for the GR 131 stages, keyed on the trail code, and post-eruption closures on the Cumbre Vieja side have been moving since 2021: on the day this was checked PR LP 01 at El Reventon, SL VM 125, SL FU 110 and SL FU 111 were all open, while PR LP 13.1 and SL EP 103 on the same ground were closed, the latter because it lies in an exclusion zone. On the one 32 km stretch of this trail with no settlement, check the escapes in the same look as the stages rather than assuming a marked path is a way out.

Navigation: Red and white flashes throughout, and the line is obvious in clear weather. Cloud is not a nuisance here but the main navigational problem, and the Cabildo says so for this crest: on the Cumbre Nueva and again on the open cinder there is little to take a bearing from and the lapilli holds no trodden line. El Pilar is the junction to be careful at, because four other marked routes leave the recreation area besides the GR: PR LP 14 west to El Paso, PR LP 16 and PR LP 17 east to Playa del Hoyo, and PR LP 18 to Los Guinchos. On the volcanoes, short marked paths drop east off the ridge at intervals, so if the ground is falling away steadily and you are no longer on the crest line, you are on one of them.

A short, hot finish that is nothing like the rest of the trail. The route leaves Los Canarios on village streets, picks up the road towards the volcanoes and then drops down the cinder flank of San Antonio in zigzags on loose picón that rolls underfoot. Below that it is vineyard country, low vines set in pits of black grit, walls and irrigation channels, with the paved road cutting across the line several times. Past the Roque de Teneguía the path doubles back on itself and crosses Teneguía's 1971 lava between the cone and Montaña del Mago, and the surface becomes broken malpaís with tabaibas growing out of the clinker. The last stretch runs down through it to the salt pans and the lighthouse with the sea ahead the whole way. It reads as an easy hour on paper and is not one: the descent is continuous, the ground is unstable, there is no shade on any of it, and most people arrive here at the end of a long day off the volcanoes.

Logistics: This is the tail of the Cabildo's 23.7 km stage 3 from El Pilar, which is why their notes for it recommend an early start. Walkers reach this ground in the afternoon heat rather than fresh. There is nothing at the lighthouse but the salt pans, and what is there stops earlier than a late finisher expects. The Salinas de Fuencaliente's own site gives El Jardin de la Sal restaurant 13:00 to 18:00 and its cafeteria and salt shop 11:00 to 19:00, every day, and the restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for 2026, so it is somewhere people book rather than walk into off the volcanoes. Some listings show it closed on Wednesdays, which the operator's own page does not, so ring if a Wednesday finish or a table matters. Behind that there is only Los Canarios, 6 km back and over 500 m above you, and both of its supermarkets are listed Monday to Saturday with no Sunday opening. The official advice for stage 3 is to start about nine, and the reason to take it is not only the heat.

Navigation: The weakest waymarking on the trail, and it is the road that causes it rather than the mountain. The line runs through Los Canarios on streets, then on and beside the LP-209, and crosses the paved road several times going down, so the flashes move onto walls and kerbs. Below the visitor centre the marked paths around San Antonio and Teneguía are dense and several are day visitors' circuits. The GR passes between Teneguía's cone and Montaña del Mago rather than over the summit; the popular summit path is a there and back off the route.