São Jorge

The ridge falls away on both sides. To the left, Atlantic. To the right, Atlantic. Between them, a spine of green pasture so narrow it feels like walking the edge of something unfinished. Below, flat green platforms — fajãs — jut from the cliff base where ancient rockfalls met the sea and decided to stay.

São Jorge is the narrowest of the central Azores, a 54-kilometre ridge rarely eight kilometres wide, its spine topping a thousand metres. Its defining possessions are the fajãs — dozens of coastal platforms built by landslides and lava deltas, most reached only by steep cliff trails where the signal fades on the way down. Fajã dos Cubres, a Ramsar-listed wetland, and Fajã de Santo Cristo with its clam-famous saltwater lagoon are the celebrated pair on the north coast, the latter connected to the world by a single path. The island's other export is Queijo São Jorge, the pungent DOP cheese aged months in damp volcanic cellars from a tradition the fifteenth-century Flemish settlers began — and the ridge trail running the island's spine end to end is among the Azores' most demanding long walks, weather owning the high ground as it pleases.