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.
timharnesstravels 