Playa de Vallehermoso

Playa de Vallehermoso lies at the mouth of a valley on the northern coast of La Gomera, the second smallest of the main Canary Islands, a couple of kilometres below the town it takes its name from. It is a short black-sand beach beneath the Roque Cano, a volcanic plug standing six hundred metres above the valley.

It is included here as the ordinary version of a volcanic shore, which most of them are. La Gomera has almost no tourism infrastructure by Canarian standards — no airport of consequence, no resort strip — and its beaches are used by the people who live there. The terracing on the valley sides is agricultural and centuries old, and the water in the valley is what made the town possible.

The beach is coarse black volcanic sand and pebble, exposed to the Atlantic on a coast with real swell. Swimming in the sea here is frequently unsafe and the red flag flies often. The answer, and the reason the beach works at all, is a seawater pool built into the rock at one end — filled by the sea, sheltered from it, and open when the beach is not.

Development is minimal: the pool complex, a bar, a car park and the town up the valley. There is no hotel on the beach. La Gomera's other coast, at Valle Gran Rey in the south-west, has the black beaches with sun on them and most of the island's visitors; the north stays wet, green and largely to itself.

The sea here is usually flagged red and the seawater pool cut into the rock is the answer — filled by the Atlantic, sheltered from it, and open when the beach is not. La Gomera has no resorts, an hour's ferry from Tenerife, and the best walking in the Canaries above the valley.