El Toston Castle

From the roof the view runs west across the bay and out over the Atlantic, with the waves breaking on the rocks below. Around 1700 the military engineer Claudio de L'Isle built this two-storey stone tower on the ruins of an older fort that Jean de Bethencourt had raised in the first years of the conquest. Three iron cannons once covered the coast and the boats moored in El Cotillo's port, against pirates sailing from France, England and North Africa.

The rooms inside now hang work by local artists, with a display on the island's coastal defences. The design was repeated across the archipelago: near-identical towers stand on Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote, and at the Castillo de San Buenaventura elsewhere on Fuerteventura.

• There are no toilets at the castle; free public toilets stand about 200 m away.
• No drinking water nearby — bring your own.
• The shore here catches the wind, so bring a layer even on a warm day.
• The entrance is not wheelchair accessible.
• The doors close mid-afternoon, well before sunset: see the inside and the roof first, then wait outside for the light.

The castle stands on the shore in El Cotillo. A free car park lies about 90 m away, with a second parking area about 190 m off, and from either you walk straight across to the tower.

Two bus stops sit about 220 m away, and the tower is in plain view from them. Restaurants and pizzerias with outdoor terraces fill the streets around it, which makes it easy to pair the visit with a meal facing the sea.

Best: morning, for the rooms and the roof, then come back in the evening for the sun going down over the bay to the west.

Avoid: leaving the whole visit for sunset, when the doors are already shut and the roof is out of reach.

The tower faces the open Atlantic, so the best light arrives hours after closing time and the view from the roof belongs to the morning.