Playa de Famara

Playa de Famara runs along the north-western coast of Lanzarote, six kilometres of golden sand beneath the Risco de Famara, a cliff wall rising some six hundred metres directly behind it.

Lanzarote is the driest of the Canary Islands and among the driest inhabited places in the Atlantic — barely a hundred millimetres of rain a year, no rivers, almost no trees, and a landscape of lava fields from the eruptions of 1730 to 1736 that buried a quarter of the island. The whole island is a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and its appearance is also the work of one person: César Manrique, whose campaign from the 1960s produced building rules that prohibit high-rise, advertising hoardings and most colours other than white.

The beach faces the open Atlantic with consistent swell, which makes it the island's surf beach and a poor swimming one — there are strong rips, the water is cool, and lifeguard cover is limited. The village of Caleta de Famara sits at the southern end, low and whitewashed, with the island of La Graciosa visible offshore. The cliff behind catches cloud that the rest of the island never sees, which is why the northern end is greener than anywhere else on Lanzarote.

Development is almost nothing: the village, a few surf schools and a car park. Those rules are why nothing stands on this beach. Papagayo and Playa Blanca in the south are the calm resort beaches, and La Graciosa offshore has sand roads, almost no cars and beaches with nothing on them.

Six kilometres of sand under a six-hundred-metre cliff on an island with no trees. This is Lanzarote's surf coast and not its swimming one — the rips are strong and the cover is thin. What it does have is the clearest view of what Manrique's building rules did to an island, and La Graciosa on the horizon with sand roads and no cars.