A different view of Lanzarote

Whilst Lanzarote is perhaps best known as a sunny beach holiday destination, there's much more to it than this. However, even in late October, this required a fairly early start, in order to complete a strenuous walk before the sun is too high in the sky. This was definitely the case with the climb of Atalanta de Femes, one of the island's highest peaks at 611m.

The start of the walk should have been easy to find but, as so often, proved not to be. Hence the walk began with an uncomfortable and embarrassed skulking through a farmyard which, as well as many tethered dogs, had some pretty scary looking untethered  turkeys.








Once on the path itself, the scene was pretty barren.

Yet even here, there were plants, like the spindly tree above,  trying to find a way to grow in the almost total absence of any water apart from dew. These survivors (right)  gained a little respite from the sun by growing close to the bank where the track had been cut from the rock.












Views from the mast field at the top were breathtakingly far reaching:

It seems that a local tradition is to write one's name in pebbles on the floor of a caldera, or extinct volcano crater. hard work in the heat, it seemed to me.