Fuerteventura by motorcycle: Betancuria, Pájara and the Ajuy caves

The FV-30 is Fuerteventura's mountain road. It leaves the plain in the middle of the island behind, climbs the Betancuria massif and zigzags down towards Pájara. At the top, the Morro Velosa viewpoint, designed by César Manrique, takes in the island's interior, a landscape of bare ridges and open valleys.

Betancuria was founded in 1404, during the Norman conquest led by Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de La Salle, and takes its name from the former; it was the capital of Fuerteventura until 1834. The church of Santa María presides over the village. A few kilometres south, at Vega de Río Palmas, stands the sanctuary of the Virgen de la Peña, the island's patron saint: an alabaster figure barely 21 centimetres tall.

In Pájara, the church of Nuestra Señora de Regla has a doorway carved with suns, serpents and big cats that many historians link to the art of the Americas. From the village the FV-621 runs down to Ajuy on the west coast. There, beside the beach, are the sea caves and, according to the Canary Islands tourist board, the oldest rocks in the archipelago: ocean-floor sediments between 100 and 150 million years old.

Back up on the FV-30, the route returns to Puerto del Rosario via Antigua, where a restored windmill beside the FV-20 recalls that gofio was once ground on this plain. It is the driest route in the series, with less winter rain than any of the other eight; what you need to watch is the wind.