Lanzarote

Timanfaya's eruptions ran from 1730 to 1736, and parts of Lanzarote still look as though they finished last week. Black ash covers the south and the interior, and the Route of the Volcanoes takes a coach 14 kilometres through the national park in about 45 minutes. At El Diablo, the park's restaurant, the grill runs on heat drawn up from the fumaroles, so the volcano is still doing some of the cooking.

What stands on top is largely one man's doing. César Manrique, an artist from the island, came home in 1966 as tourism was starting and pushed through building codes that still hold: nothing over two or three storeys, no billboards, and every house whitewashed with green, blue or brown trim. He built the sights too. Jameos del Agua is a lava tube he turned into a concert hall and a pool, which it shares with a blind albino crab found nowhere else. Mirador del Río looks straight down on La Graciosa from 474 metres, and a free viewpoint about 50 metres away tests anyone's loyalty to architecture.

The north is the green part, and earns a day. Haría sits in a valley of century-old palms, with Manrique's house among them, now a museum. Below the cliffs at Famara, about five kilometres of beach is zoned to keep the surfers and the kitesurfers apart. From Órzola the ferry takes 25 to 30 minutes to reach La Graciosa, the island from the Mirador's view, close up and car-free.

Where to sleep depends on how much beach the trip needs. Puerto del Carmen, 10 to 15 minutes from the airport by taxi, has most of the hotels and the nightlife; Playa Blanca, up to 40 minutes south, is newer, built round sheltered white sand near the coves of Papagayo. For the island rather than the beach, stay inland among the vines of La Geria, where the bodegas pour Malvasía Volcánica from plants that each get a wall of their own, or in the north. Arrecife, the working capital, is for anyone who needs connections more than a beach.

October is the month: around 25C, the driest part of the year, and past the worst of the summer wind. July is the windiest, bad news on a sunbed and good news at Famara, and August the hottest, regularly over 30C. December and January are the wettest, which on an island with fewer than 16 days of rain a year is not much of a threat.