Explore the Azores, islands on the edge of Europe

The Portuguese islands of the Azores blow apart the notion of a Europe with no more surprises, writes Chris Leadbeater

Europe is the forgotten continent of intrepid travel. South America, Africa, Asia - each is seen as being wrapped in a cloak of adventure that the former cannot match.

And yet the idea of Europe being a known concept falls away when you journey to its western edge.

No, not Ireland but those Atlantic mysteries, the Azores.

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Last summer, Ryanair launched flights from London to the largest of the Portuguese island group, Sao Miguel.

Though this made the archipelago a little more accessible, it did nothing to harm its mystique.

From 1,400-2,000km west of the Iberian Peninsula, the Azores have long been "hidden".

They were uninhabited until the 15th century, claimed by Portuguese settlers in 1432, only 60 years before Columbus found the New World.

In some ways, the islands have developed little since. Even now they lack the mass-tourism hot spots of the Canary Islands. But they share something crucial with their Atlantic siblings.

They are visibly volcanic, born of tectonic frustration at the point where three continental plates - the Eurasian, the African and the North American - meet.

They are, effectively, the Hawaii of the Atlantic, lost in deep seas; steep-sided, beautiful, wild. Though cloud and rain dog the Azores as much as sunshine, this only adds to the aesthetic. Every day is different.

There are nine main outcrops, divided into three separate clusters - the easterly duo of Sao Miguel (with the capital Ponta Delgada on its south coast) and Santa Maria; the tiny westerly shards of Flores and Corvo; the "Central Group" of Terceira, Graciosa, Sao Jorge, Pico and Faial.

With ferries and internal flights, it is not difficult to jump around the whole archipelago. And it is worth doing so, as each of the nine has a distinct character and charm.

Pico - an Atlantic giant

As I take the road that stretches east out of Madalena, my mind drifts back to another summer. On a transatlantic flight, I glimpsed Pico below, framed by sun-sparkling sea and made a resolution to one day clamber up to its jagged roof.

Three years on, I have kept my vow, even if the vista I saw that day has vanished. Cloud has descended with such force that the biggest mountain in Portugal - all 2,350m of it - is invisible.

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When I reach the Casa da Montanha - the visitor centre, halfway up the west flank - Noel Lesbiosotis is shaking his head. "It is bad," he says. "Do you still want to try?"

I do. The ascent to Pico's pinnacle is Europe's westernmost uphill hike, its final challenge. And it is a challenge.

The last eruption here was in 1718 and this is a comforting thought as my guide and I set off - though a little fire and fury would at least mean that we could see the trail. It is 4.8km from "base" station to summit, all slanted.

The trail is loosely delineated by a series of numbered posts. I will not know it for three hours, but the highest marker says "45".

By the time I see it, I will have inched slowly up rippled folds of solidified lava, congealed like candle wax, melted then cooled.

It is a tough process, sapping my legs, although the problem is the energy required, not the difficulty of the climb.

When we reach Pico Pequeno, the volcano's crown , the wind howling, we are met by a fog of impenetrable thickness.

It is as I am eating my packed lunch that the miracle occurs. The wind changes direction and a world appears.

Suddenly there is sunshine and half the Azorian archipelago dozing in it. "It is worth it, I think," Lesbiosotis says. It is indeed.

Terceira - A cosmopolitan comeback

Doze Ribeiras village is a novelty. Even as I hit its outskirts, I can see that it is different. Where Raminho, its near-neighbour, wears the whitewash and orange tiles of Portuguese postcards, Doze Ribeiras has a fresher hue.

The homes are brighter, more colourful, recently painted, as if the village has been born anew.

But, then, it has. In the New Year's Day earthquake of 1980, Terceira (the "third" island to be discovered) lost 61 people, killed by a tremor that measured 7.2 on the Richter Scale.

Doze Ribeiras, the closest settlement to the epicentre, bore the brunt, its streets cracked, its houses tumbled down.

But Terceira has bloomed in the subsequent 36 years. Though smaller than Sao Miguel, it revels in a confidence and a chicness that play out most noticeably in its south-coast capital, Angra do Heroismo.

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Here, landscaped gardens - in particular the manicured Jardim Duque de Terceira, all lawns, fountains and ornate bandstand - spread their arms. Intriguing shops dot the cobbled avenues Rua Direita and Rua da Se, and the little Teatro Angrense, with its pastel-pink facade, strikes a cultural pose on narrow Rua de Esperanca.

Saturday morning is a merry flurry of motion. I stroll uphill to the Mercado Duque de Braganca, where fresh fish is being disembowelled on marble slabs, and citrus fruits are gathered in baskets.

I amble past sunbathers snoozing on the town beach of Prainha. And I halt for lunch at Cais d'Angra, a sophisticated restaurant on the harbour, where the menu offers parrotfish, and chilled bottles of white Magma wine sourced from Terceira's vines.

It is only as I stride back up Rua da Se that I find a sign of the cataclysm. The first stones of Angra's Catedral de Sao Salvador were laid in 1570. They stood firm until 1980, when the quake toppled the left tower.

This scar, though, is faded, rebuilt, another shard of self-assurance on an isle that has learnt not to fret, whatever mischief the ground may make.

The not-so-famous four

If Terceira and Pico are the stars of the Central Group, Sao Jorge is a quiet counterpoint. An oceanic blade, 55km long from east to west, but never more than 6km wide from north to south, it keeps any hint of urban life clipped to its south coast - picturesque Calheta in the east; Velas, and the 17th-century church of Sao Jorge, in the west.

Neither could be mistaken for a city, though they are London and New York combined compared with tiny Graciosa, 50km to the north - a rural outsider where the Grand Caldeira bears stark witness to the island's volcanic genesis.

Corvo, the smallest island, is home to just 430 isolated souls. You can find a faint babble of modernity, though, in Vila do Corvo, where you can grab dinner and cocktails at BBC Bar. And if this feels too busy, Flores, the westernmost island, brings Europe to a full stop - its west coast is not just a majestic Hawaii-esque slab of cliffs and 20 waterfalls, but the wave-struck line where a continent concludes its business.

Sao Miguel - Marine marvel

There is nothing in the water. The morning is sullen, the horizon a smudge, the Atlantic listless. Standing on the dock in Ponta Delgada, I am not sure the day will bring much of note.

But we pile on board, we band of modern whalers - all rustle of waterproof clothing and rain-splattered sunglasses. And off we go, the boat banging on rigid ripples.

Half a mile away, Sao Miguel's colonial heritage is unmistakable in the Portas das Cidade (city gates), a three-arch gateway, built in 1783, flanking the mosaic square of the Praca de Goncalo Velho; and the Forte de Sao Bras, the isle's squat 16th-century watchdog.

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As I am gazing at the past, the present asserts itself. A cry goes up at the front. Dolphins. One, two, six. In a flash, the Atlantic is alive with them, soaring and dipping on each side of our boat.

The engine kicks, we ebb forward, and a blur of fins and flippers fights a duel with the bow, wet torsos almost clipping the paintwork as they arch.

Another shout . There, ahead, is the tail of a sperm whale - midway through its dive.

These behemoths are year-round residents of these waves. The apparition is gone in a moment. But the boat retreats into harbour with a happy set of passengers, this momentary Moby-Dick enough to slake our curiosity.

Faial - Pompeii of the Azores

Such is the location of the Capelinhos lighthouse that no matter where on Faial you start your journey in search of it, you approach from the east.

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It sits fixed to the westernmost point of the island - and as I flit towards it along the south coast, the yachts in the pretty capital Horta receding in my mirrors, I am driving into the afternoon.

By the time I reach it, the sun has slipped into position behind it, redefining its tower as a silhouette.

The Farol dos Capelinhos is to the Azores what Pompeii is to Italy. It may not have been an ancient landmark, but its manner of destruction was the same - a volcanic eruption choking it in a shroud of ash.

The firestorm raged from September 1957 to October 1958, so ferocious that it made a new nugget of land on Faial's farthest flank. But 58 years look like five months as I near its victim. Dust still surrounds the lighthouse - the murder weapon left at the crime scene.

While it no longer serves its original purpose, the structure has been rescued. Pulled from the dirt grave which had buried its two-storey base, it reopened in 2008 as a museum to its own demise.

Within, exhibits chart those 13 mad months - a seismology reading from May 1958, all scratchy heart-monitor lines; pictures of tourists watching the blaze at worryingly close quarters; photos of lighthouse keeper Tomaz Pacheco de Rosa, who held his position until the flames almost engulfed him; a copy of the "Azorian Refugee Act" rubber-stamped by US Congress on September 2 1958 - a life-raft that cost Faial half its population.

Those who stayed live on an island that has retreated to calm, whose blind guardian still monitors the ocean.

Santa Maria - A storm in a port

It is a lonely place to be proved right. I am on the north coast of Santa Maria, the Atlantic crashing in earshot, wondering if the scene before me is much removed from that seen by Christopher Columbus 523 years ago. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The statue of the Genoese explorer would not, of course, have been here. But this aside, Anjos cannot have changed.

It was in this village that the discoverer of continents re-emerged into the known world, bringing tidings of land over the sea. Not that the bulletin impressed the locals.

Columbus arrived in February 1493, on the return leg of his first voyage, to a hostile reception - a sailor under Spanish flag seeking refuge in a Portuguese port.

Tempers were roused and crew members taken prisoner, but the kernel of these troublesome hours is still here, the village church where he gave thanks for his fortune. Nossa Senhora dos Anjos still salutes the 15th century, a triptych of the Holy Family within, the bronze figure of Columbus outside - a belated tribute to him installed in 1993.

I depart to the south, seeking warmth on the soft beach of Praia Formosa, leaving the ghosts of the 15th century to their old enmity.

- The Daily Telegraph