Month: May 2017

I worked up and read the terrible news on ththe BBC on my iPad, a bomb had gone off at a pop concert in Manchester. I felt the same feelings of grief, horror and helplessness as everyone else. Why? How can killing so many innocents make sense? 

Two cruise liners had arrived in Funchal harbour overnight, unloading more tourists into central Funchal. In the old town the streets are lined with restaurants, and each of them has a waiter or waitress trying to ensnare passing peckish visitors. On Sunday I got away from a cheerful waiter by pretending I would go back later on. On Monday I saw him again, and had to face up to my lie! So I literally sprinted past him like I was running for a bus, luckily he didn’t give chase and try to rope me in.

So far today we have mostly done not much at all. I didn’t fancy the museum this morning in the Quinta da Cruzes, I knew it would be lots of dull religious pictures and pottery. The central market turned out to be a tourist trap selling ludicrously overpriced comestibles. Some peculiar tropical fruit were going for almost €20 a kilo, they have got to be ‘avin’a larf! The fish market was more interesting, with huge pieces of tuna and trays of deflated octopuses.  There were plenty of the local delicacy of Espada or Scabbard Fish. They are like a fishy version of Dementors, long and black with ugly pointed teeth. But they do taste very good in a light batter.

Most of the afternoon has been spent at lunch (grilled sardines) and in a bar at the  Marina slowly drinking a beer and watching cruise ships leaving and arriving. The weather is overcast, the sun has barely made an appearance today. I can see the Islas Desertas about twenty miles away in the distance, and they are bathed in sunshine. It feels like Madeira is an island of cloud sitting is a sea of sunshine, reflecting my mood.

But you know what, beer is a great mood enhancer! I hiked back to the flat, got changed and we went back to Taberna Madeira for dinner. I tried Pigs Trotters tonight because I haven’t eaten them before. Unfortunately they tasted as good as they sound.

I didn’t know before I arrived in Madeira, but it is a good place for walking. Not just ordinary Going from A to B style walking, but proper boots and telescopic walking sticks style walking. We joined a coach load of people in proper boots and rucksacks with lots of pointless straps on them, to travel to a tiny village called Ribeiro do Frio, which is Cold River in English. Getting there involved climbing and climbing and climbing and lots of hairpin bends. Madeira is the land of hairpin bends and tunnels through mountains. There are very few flat bits to the island, and many mountains and ravines that need to be bridged or cut through. 

Our guide was a genial local man in his late sixties called Ali (that’s an abbreviation) who could speak several languages. He lead the walk along an irrigation channel or levada, which  winds around  the contours to take water from the wet northern part of the island to farmers fields in the drier south of the island. The levada is a concrete channel with a footpath along side it, and there are 2,000 kilometres of them on the island  which move water around very efficiently and provide excellent walking routes for tourists. 

The route we took is through the ancient laurisilva, which literally means laurel woods. This type of forest covered much of Southern Europe before the last ice age, but is now only found in Madeira, the Canary Islands, the Azores,  Cape Verde islands. These archipelagos are jointly known as Macronesia, I bet you didn’t know that did you? The main trees are bay (a type of laurel) and heather, which grows into big trees with trunks up to 18 inches thick! There is also types of giant Dandelions and Lily of the Valley, both growing up to two metres high. It must be something in the water.

The levadas are cut by hand on the side of cliff, so often there is a wall of rock to the right and sheer drop to the left. There is a wire fence to stop you from plummeting to your death, but my buttocks were tightly clenched like a choirboy at vicars conference. 

The walk was supposed to be eleven kilometres longs, but our Fitbits and phones said it was sixteen, and that’s how far it felt. 

Returning to our flat we rested for a while and then walked down to a restaurant called Taberna Madeira that we had read about on Tripadvisor. It was really, seriously good.

• Nice vibe and modern decor
• Charming waitress and engaging funny owner
• Delicious house wine that was also very good value
• The best tuna steak I have ever eaten. Ever.

If you go to Funchal go to Taberna Madeira, you won’t be disappointed.

But the walk back to the flat from the city centre is up a very steep hill, like the Hard Knot pass in Cumbria. Julie complained about having to walk up it AGAIN and that she had walked thirteen miles today. I congratulated her for completing a Half Marathon, and she told me to Go Forth and Multiply.

Last night there was a party in Funchal somewhere, and there was lots of party music booming over the city until the wee hours. Julie tells me that it went on until 1.20, when I was snoring. So I was up a little before her, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Once she had showered away the sleep, we walked a few hundred yards up hill to a pastelaria for breakfast. We had the breakfast of champions, custard doughnuts and milky coffee, (galao). I think that all the hiking up hills will wear off the calories (possibly). 

It felt like time to get into the middle of Madeira, so we caught a number 81 bus from the sea front towards Curral de Freiras, the Valley of the Nuns. In the 16th century, Funchal had a serious pirate problem. I’m not talking annoying blokes in striped shirts at stag parties, these pirates were very mean and deadly. So the Nuns of Funchal took sanctuary in a secluded valley high up in the centre of  the island.

The bus ascended a winding road out of the city, and went up and up and up! I have never been on such a circuitous and precipitous road. A crash barrier separated the bus from a thousand foot drop to the valley below, and the bus driver honked his horn in warning as he went round blind bends. Before we reached our intended destination, the bus stopped at Eira do Serrado and most people stood up to get off. Some English people told us that there was a walk from there to the Nuns Valley, so we got off as well. The views from there were amazing, steep side valleys clothed in Eucalytus trees and mountains topped with yellow flowering broom.  The strata on the mountains showed how they had been built up from many volcanic eruptions over millions of years.

After a coffee in the tourist trap cafe, we deccended down a path. It was about a metre to two metres wide and was paved in stones. The stones are flattish and laid edge up, so they form a serrated grippy path. We zig zagged down through wild flowers and saw tiny lizards on the rocks. It was gorgeous in the warm sun and fragrance from the grass and flowers. Halfway down we stopped to eat the ham rolls we  purchased at breakfast, it was a fantastic location for a picnic.

At Curral de Frieras we had a small beer in the cafe, and got the bus back to Funchal. Madeiran buses are not designed for men over six feet tall, I sat with my legs spread like a lout on a park bench.

Back in Funchal we took a walk down the seafront, which is a bit utilitarian. There is no beach, and a big dual carriage way runs along the front cutting it off from the old and quaint town centre. There are no nice bars or cafes overlooking the sea, unless you are in one of the big hotels on the seafront.

All the restaurants have waiters posted outside to persuade you to eat in their place. It was like avoiding chuggers on Kingston High Street, so we pretended we had eaten already and went to the same place as last night. Wanting to fit in with the locals, we tried a Maderian speciality, Picador. It was a sort of tomatoey beef casserole served with chip and salad. The waiter said the traditional way to eat it is with a toothpick, so I did! It was bloody lovely.

The only blot on the days copybook was that I LOST MY PHONE! 

OMFG.

It got taken by leprechauns somewhere between the walk down the mountain and eating in the restaurant. I hope the little buggers have fun with it.

C’est la vie, shit happens.



I worked up this morning dreaming that my teeth had fallen out, perhaps I shouldn’t have eaten the dessert last night at dinner. We found a local cafe up the hill for a ham roll and coffee for breakfast, and then walked down some steep roads into the city centre. Most of the roads are Hills, and often steep. The drivers are very adept at tearing around at steeep angles. Funchal is a very neat, clean city with whitewashed houses and red Roman-tiled roofs. The old centre by the harbour is quite small, and the twentyth century part of the city spreads for miles up the surrounding hills. Everyone gets a great view of the sea, and probably have strong hearts, if they haven’t expired hiking up a hill.

The cable car station is near the big indoor market on the front by the sea. Since we are here out of season, the queue for the cars was short and mostly retired people from Northern Europe. The trip is delightful, travelling a hundred feet over the rooftops up hill to Monte. The ticketing system is a bit confusing, since there are multiple gardens at the top, and various combination tickets that you can buy.

Below us we coiled hear the chickens and dogs, and saw plantations of the local bananas, which are only about 5 inches long (the bananas, not the trees). Monte is where the famous sledge rides start, wood and wicker sliding sofas that are guided by two men with ropes.  It’s fun to watch but as a means of public transport it has severe limitations.

Monte has some lovely views over the city, and I had a swift half of Coral, the local lager. I reckon that all continental lager is made in one giant brewery in Düsseldorf and is then shipped to all the EU and stuck in bottles with a local label, it all tastes the same to me.

There was a choice between th sun tropical gardens or the Botanical Gardens, so I decided on the Botanical Gardens, since I love reading small signs in Latin. Getting there required another cable car across a massive ravine and entry charge  to the gardens, €13.50 combined. 

Kew Gardens, it ain’t. It’s a nice place to spend a couple of hours, but there are no greenhouses and very few little Latin signs. The cactus and succulent garden is impressive, with lots of big mean looking spiny plants. The museum takes the award for The Crappest Natural History Museum I Have Ever Seen. The tatty stuffed fish and birds are even crapper than those in the museum in Prague, my previous award winner.  But I do have to bear in mind that Madeira has the same population as Plymouth, which doesn’t have a Botanic Garden at all!

I needed another small beer and a bit of cake, all that vegetation exhausted me. Being mad and English we decided to walk back to the flat, it didn’t look far on Google maps. In actuality the road was steep, twisty and without a footpath all the way down to the city centre. Once we got to the bottom, we then had to walk up a hill to get back to the flat. Man we wuz knackered when we got back.

After a rest we examined a heap of leaflets to decide what we are doing on Sunday. It’s going to be a journey into the mysterious Nuns Valley, I’ll bet you’ve never seen one!

Dinner was enjoyed at a restaurant called Trigal. I had Espada, a delicious fish with a banana on top. Wierd I know, but that’s the way they eat them here.

It’s my birthday, I’m 61 today. It doesn’t feel as exciting at last year when I was retiring and recovering from My Operation (more about that one day), but it still feels good to be fit and well and on holiday.

We flew from Gatport Airwick with Monarch, my first experience with this package airline. The flight was no frills, no leg room and instant coffee, but it was cheap. I’m a man that loves a bargain, so having cramp in my left leg was all part of the “fun”. 

Madeira is out in the Atlantic 500 miles off the coast of Morocco, and has been Portuguese for almost 500 years. It’s a volcanic island poking up from the depths of the Atlantic! With peaks that rise up to 6,000 feet above sea level. The top of the island gets lots of rain, which is channeled down to the fertile sunnier parts of the island using irrigation channels.

Our Air b’n’b is in Funchal, the busy capitol of Madeira. It’s a city spread along the side of the central mountain, so there are lots of steep hills. Our place overalls the historic centre of the city and the harbour. It’s only took 10 minutes to walk down hill to the old town and tourist centre. A waitress charmed us into the Spotlight restaurant and I had a steak, it is my birthday after all! 

Now we need to plan what to do tomorrow, which means engaging our brains, not so easy after a 3 course does none and a bottle of very good vino tinto. I think we will find our way round town and get properly oriented. I would discuss it with Julie, but she has fallen asleep!