Day-by-day trail itinerary

GR 131 El Bastón (La Palma): 4-day itinerary

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.