Trails and tales from the Atlantic: writing and walking on Pico Island
"Sempre nuvens, sempre vento e em cada ano dois meses de Verão."
— Raul Brandão, As Ilhas Desconhecidas (1926)Mountain peaks, hidden caves, coastal lava fajas and swimming pocas — walks on Pico as secular pilgrimage, to inspire creativity and reflection.
Explore the trails →Short essays on the literature of the Azores, island living, and the connection between walking and writing. From Donne to Nemésio and beyond.
Read the tales →Walking as reflection, exploration, and creative practice
Pico is a young island bursting with life and ready to explore. Mountain peaks, hidden caves and craters, coastal lava fajas and countless swimming pocas make this island a joy to discover. These are not simply walks — they are mini pilgrimages in a secular sense, routes chosen to inspire creativity and reflection as much as to cover ground.
Essays on writing, walking, and island life
This site is built on the combination of walking and writing — the idea that moving through a landscape and reading about it are not such different activities. This section is a space for short essays on literature connected to the Azores, to island living, and to the broader questions that walking tends to raise.
Pico Paths is a site about walking and writing on Pico Island in the Azores — and about the ideas that emerge when you do both seriously. The trails section maps walks on Pico as secular pilgrimages: routes chosen not just for scenery but for what they do to the thinking mind. The tales section is a space for essays on the literature of the Azores, island life, and the relationship between moving through a landscape and writing about it.
Pico is the youngest and tallest island in the Azores archipelago, dominated by the volcano that shares its name — at 2,351 metres, the highest point in Portugal. It is a young island in geological terms, still forming itself, which gives it a particular quality of rawness and abundance. The UNESCO-protected vineyards, the lava fields running to the sea, the calderas and fajas and pocas — this is a landscape that rewards attention.
The site is edited by Piers Haben, a writer and researcher who divides his time between Porto, the Azores, and various other places. He can be found most reliably on a coastal path somewhere between Madalena and Lajes, or reading Nemésio.