Phoenix rises from the fire-ravaged land of La Gomera

Seen from above, or from the middle distance, there is something apocalyptic about a scattering of palm trees 50 feet tall standing stark in a vast swathe of blackened landscape.

With smoke-stained rock faces rising 300 feet above, they seem like the burnt columns of an ancient temple found in some lost valley, relics of a civilisation time left behind long ago. Trees would have lost their branches, been reduced to stumps, if in fact anything was left. But Canarian palms have no branches, and are fire-resistant. Most will survive.

The inferno that swept into the huge, green crucible of the Valle Gran Rey on the small island of La Gomera last August burned all before it. In homes destroyed in the inferno, bottles were found fused together into molten glass. Water pipes melted and the scorched air, further fanned by a notorious warm wind, carried burning cane aloft for most of a mile down the valley before it cooled and fell onto the houses by the sea.