When a few months ago my regular travelling companion Martin Founds announced that he fancied going to the Azores wherever they were, I became  very excited.  Here at last was a chance to find out a lot more detail about the poem that I’d read out to the whole school all those years ago.

When I asked in my local travel agents where exactly The Azores were, she grinned at me oddly and said “it’s easy really, turn right at the Canaries and if you get to New York you have missed it!”.

Very helpful, I thought but in reality she’s right.  The beautiful Azores are out in the mid Atlantic, a couple of hours flight from Portugal and far from being the burnt black rock that I rather expected, they are in fact one of the lushest and most beautiful groups of islands that I’ve ever visited.  They’re about a thousand miles from Lisbon and about 3,000 miles from the East coast of the USA. They are roughly on a line between Lisbon and New York and comprise of 9 volcanic islands.  The population is about a quarter of a million and Portugese is the national and local language.  Having said that, we did get by speaking English but then that’s an arrogance we English get away with Whether wed still get away with it if the USA the most powerful nation on earth didn’t just happen to also speak English  I rather doubt.

Most visitors  are like me, surprised to discover how very green the islands are.  It’s not the place for sun worshippers, although in the height of summer it can get very hot but because you are out in mid Atlantic, heavy  mists often appear out of a cloudless sky   If  you are walking in the hills or forests make sure you take a bit of warm clothing  or least a light coat with you and double check that you know exactly where you are as even on the sunniest day the arrival of a  thick sea mist can be very disorientating.

Most of the vegetation is dense evergreen forest and there is a tremendous variety of wild flowers and shrubs.  The place really is stunning and the air is filled with birdsong The azores  host a fantastic range of birdlife and twitchers come from all over the world to view such all to rare creatures as black caps, canaries which we saw everywhere flying in and out of the pineapple groves, and a strange predator called the Azorean buzzard that was so numerous when the first settlers came to the island and so tame that they came to hand like a hunting goshawk.  They don’t come to hand any more, but certainly we saw them everywhere soaring over the countryside and perching on telegraph poles and fences.

The other form of wildlife that the Azores are famous for are the large fish that swim in the waters all around the nine islands.  There are huge blue marlin weighing a thousand pounds or more, many world records have been caught in these waters, and the main season for the big fish runs  from July through to mid October.  Fishing for monster marlin  can be  an expensive day out but there are a whole range of other fish available to the sportsman on a budget.  White marlin, all sorts of tuna and several different species of shark.and cheaper day or half day boats are readily booked through most of the hotels  It’s an absolute heaven for the deep sea fisherman and also very popular with divers. The seabed, being volcanic, offers a massive range of tunnels, vertical cliffs, volcanic caves etc.  There have also been numerous shipwrecks over the centuries which are there to be explored by the experienced diver.

Most popular of all, and the reason for my visit, was the fact that the Azores are a centre for some of the best whale and dolphin watching in the world.  There are now more than 20 whale watching operators with boats based in the Azores and we got close enough to both whales and dolphins to touch them with an oar.Not that we did any such thing.  We could watch the whales a few hundred yards off the shoreline every morning from the garden of our hotel and when we went out into the Atlantic to get a closer look  they were clearly out there in large numbers.

Dolphins followed our inflatable boat for a couple of hours, diving all around us, plunging underneath our boat and doing breathtaking leaps into mid air as we sat there.  They appeared to have no fear of us at all.  The local skippers are very protective of these animals, never spending too long among them before moving away,and they have a mutually agreed policy allowing only one boat at a time to approach a  minimum distance of 50 metres from the whales They also  deliberately kept  the engine on very low revs so as not to spook them and any whales with young calves were  never approached closer than 100 metres.  We did cut engines for a while and swim amongst the dolphins who, far from being wary of us, seemed to positively enjoy our arrival.  It was a breathtaking experience.

One of the strangest local customs and one which I d never ever heard of was an Azorean version of bullfighting.  However its nothing like the bloody spectacle that many of us will have seen in Spain.  It’s basically a bull fight on a rope.  The bulls themselves aren’t killed or hurt in anyway  and the only blood spilled is that of humans who get too close.  No bull  is used  for more than 30 minutes  bull fighters red cloaks are allowed but  anything else that could cause an injury to a bull is strictly banned.  These are very popular events, usually held in the late afternoon,or early evening, and there are over 200 meetings a year on the islands.

There are refreshment stalls and it’s a real evening out for the whole family.   The bull is at the end of a long rope held by several men to try and control it as best they can and the sport consists of getting as close to the bull as possible and yet somehow keeping clear of the horns.  Sometimes men  hurl themselves  into the harbours as the only place to get out of the way and it’s not unknown for the bull to take off into the  water after them then seeming to rather  enjoy a nice, cooling swim.  It sounds a strange sport, but frankly that’s because it is.  However it’s extremely harmless and strictly controlled.

We travelled all over the islands and the scenery seemed to change with each corner that we rounded.  Beautiful quiet beaches, thick jungle and a real canopy of wild flowers all along the road and in the distance tall volcanic rocks.  This is a real paradise  for the hiker, the horseback rider and for the hardier there s great rock climbing.  The views across the Atlantic from the top of some of the bigger volcanoes is breathtaking.  Everybody seemed very friendly, there is very little crime on the island at all and they seem genuinely pleased to see us        It is still one of the last remaining, barely discovered corners of the earth.  While the beaches in Torremolenos and Lanzarotte only probably an hour away were guaranteed to be packed with burning Brits, on one very hot day we  had  a beach on the main island of San Miguel  all day entirely to ourselves .

We were made very welcome in all the little bars we explored which doesn’t happen to us  very often and we tried all sorts of local delicacies.  I’m not sure I would try too hard to sell you  the delights of the ferve-douro [boiled cabbage] or the torresmos de molho de figado [hogs fat] but I would absolutely recommend the sausage with yam, slow roasted mixed  meats, roast octopus, fish stew and strange though it sounds black pudding with pineapple.  It was absolutely delicious   In fact  pineapple seemed to be a must at the end of every meal.  They grow in abundance all over the Azores.  There is also a really great range of local cheeses using cow’s or goat’s milk and a big choice  of local wine.and strangest sounding of all there  is a pineapple based liqueur   well there just would be wouldn’t there ? but ghastly though it sounds its actually  a great drink, makes you think you can conquer the world but doesn’t wake you up with a pounding headache. 

For someone who wants to find a place not a million miles away from the UK, but with still an unspoilt and really friendly laid back  atmosphere  I would heartily recommend the Azores, I absolutely loved it and intend to go back again this summer to explore some of the islands that we missed last time around.

Incidentally, I did visit Flores in the Azores and I did find out all about Sir Richard Grenville.  He was a wealthy landowner and cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh and in the year 1591 his ship ‘The Revenge’ took on the entire Spanish fleet  for more than 15 hours destroying several of the Spanish ships before finally being boarded and forced to surrender.  Sir Richard himself was mortally wounded and buried somewhere on the island, but because he was a protestant he was not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground and the grave was lost to obscurity.  Seems a little harsh doesn’t it after his heroic fighting for Queen and country ?  But then luckily more than four hundred years later  towards the end of World War II a storm lashed the shore off the coast of Flores and exposed the skeletal remains of a man much, much taller than the rather short local islanders.  He was also found to be clutching a large sword.  It is generally believed that this is the final resting place of Sir Richard Grenville.