Like a night out west of Skibbereen

THE intention on the Saturday afternoon, our second day back on the island, was simply to sample our friend’s 2007 wine, stay a few hours and then go back down to the sea, the banana plantations and the black sand beaches.

But even as we drove up the mountain to his home, 20 minutes of hairpin bends, cliff faces above and sheer drops below, we saw that the higher we went, the worse the weather became. We knew that in February, there were always a few days of unsettled weather before the full moon and even down at the beach it was cloudy.

Now, 10 minutes up the valley, mist was swirling over the road and wild showers of rain were flung at the windscreen. There were already rocks on the road that had fallen from above, lava scree, fist-sized or occasionally head-sized, for we’re on a volcanic island in the Canary Archipelago, although the volcano on La Gomera has been dead for 5,000 years.