Days 24-31 (22nd to 29th Sept)

Day 24 (22nd Sept) (7.61km) Sintra to Madeira: It is hard to understand how we walked so far on this day as almost all we did was catch a plane! It is amazing how far you walk in an airport though. My planes always seem to leave from the furthest gates.

Again we hired a Bolt (Uber) to get to the airport rather than lug out big bags to and from train stations and buses. With four people it was definitely the way to go. Our plane was about an hour late leaving Lisbon but it really didn't make much difference to our day.

We had been told that pilots need special training to land at Funchal airport on Madeira but our landing was so smooth it was hard to understand why it is meant to be so difficult. Apparently the crosswinds can be terrible.

Madeira is where we were doing our next supported self-guided hiking trip. A driver took us to our first hotel and after a little rest we went out and explored the town of Santa Cruz, where we were staying for a couple of nights.

Santa Cruz is on the coast but when we visited the beach we discovered that the beach consisted of large stones - definitely not pebbles. This made it quite difficult for people to get into the water via the beach and so the powers that be have erected jetties with ladders so you can access the water that way. By the time we got down to the beach it was too late and chill for a swim but it looked a good bet for the next day to cool off after our walk.

We walked for quite a way towards Funchal and had fun watching a few planes land. While the airport is called Funchal airport, it is actually in Santa Cruz. When the planes come in they do a u- turn just off the coast, come in very low near the town and land on this incredible runway that is just at the end of the beach.

We learned the next day that the other end of the runway is just supported by huge columns. The road actually passes beneath it. In the video, the huge white arches support a road, but also provide support to the runway above the road. In the second video, I am standing under one of the white arches.

Santa Cruz has some lovely gardens and has prettied up a large drain that runs down to the beach by planting bougainvilleas above it - trellised. The area is much more tropical than where we've been, even though it is about the same latitude north as Newcastle is south. The are lots of banana plants and hibiscus.

We ended up sharing a pizza at a cafe/bar down by the sea as it was such a pleasant evening that to go inside anywhere seemed wrong.

Day 25 (Sept 23) (14.9km) São Lourenço: Starting our hiking trip on Madeira was a hike across São Lourenço, the eastermost part of Madeira and a rocky, treeless peninsular. There are no trees because the climate here is harsh. The winds can be ferocious but on this day, there was just a nice breeze for the most part.

It is spectacular country and we were joined by thousands, much to our horror! There was a trail of human ants across the peninsular as it is one of Madeira's most popular attractions. And rightly so. Luckily the crowds didn't actually matter. The landscape overpowers them.

There were plenty of ups and downs but it was not a hard walk.

When we were about halfway through the walk we came across a swimming spot and a place where you could join an inflatable boat tour out to the lighthouse island which is beyond where we could walk to. We decided we'd like to do it after we'd got back from the furthest point of our walk.

The boat ride was great fun. Apparently it could have been quite different. We had the calmest seas and went around the lighthouse island, the north side noticeably choppier than the south (This is where the video was taken). According to a later taxi driver you often can't get even get to the island let alone go around it.

We were dropped off back where we boarded the boat and walked back to the start. Seeing things from a different perspective and in better light made them somehow new again.

Finish of the walk

Despite the barrenness of this place, we did find plenty of signs of life, a few birds, insects, skinks (who know the tourists will give them a feed) and flowers.

What a welcome to Madeira!

Day 26 (24th Sept) (17.43 km) Machico to Porto da Cruz: A completely different walk was on the agenda for this day. I really had little idea of what to expect other than that I knew we'd be walking some narrow paths near cliffs.

The walk began by following a 'levada' or irrigation channel up and up some more. The 'levadas' are everywhere in the island - in fact 3100 km of them! Most are public, some are private. They started to be built in the early 15th century when the island was first colonised and sugar cane was introduced. The farmers in the drier south somehow need to get water from the wetter north. Many believe the first levadas were probably built with slave labour. The sugar cane farms certainly used slave labour, but no one is 100% sure. It must have been hard labour for whoever built them - no power tools in those days to cut through the hard basalt. These days the levadas provide water for irrigation, domestic consumption and hydroelectricity.

The access to many of the fields around here is steep!

We encountered a few humorous decorations along paths

We saw what we believed was probably sugarcane. The colour is different to what we would find at home.

The rural landscape slowly gave way to a wilder one. I was delighted to see a few little birds, including a group of Madeira Firecrests, one of which posed for me, albeit too briefly.

Another little brown-headed bird peeked out through the bushes.

I think this one is a Madeira Chaffinch.

After a little while we reached a saddle over which we had views of the north side of the island and of the cliffs we were to walk along.

Once over the saddle, this was the view to the east.

To the west, the general direction we were headed, the view looked like this. Where on earth was the track?

The track was narrow, but not terrifyingly so. The views were wonderful. We were so lucky with the weather too. On this north side of the island, the winds can apparently be terrible but we had only a very light breeze. The ocean was very calm too.

This last photo is a closeup of the one above. If you look really closely at the right end of the path you can see a person.

There were a few insects and skinks about that I had to try and capture.

Occasionally, we walked through bush so it didn’t feel like you were on the edge. There were some patches with beautiful, if rather windswept, trees.

Other times you definitely felt more as if you were walking on the edge because well, you were.

Along the walk we saw lots of the cliffside plants. They are called ‘ensaião’ or Aeonium glanduçosum. Some were tiny, others quite large.

In the more sheltered areas there were lots of ferns and mosses.

The walk ended with quite a long downward trek as you would expect from those heights. We gradually came across signs of cultivation and other human activity.

The walk ended in a pretty spot called Porto da Cruz. We had time to have a drink, swim (Gill and Pete) and a wander around the village. I climbed up a hill to get an all round view of the place.

I saw what I think was a Roseate Tern.

Our hotel for the night was in Santana (actually quite a distance from the centre) and it was quite lovely. We had dinner overlooking the coast and watching the colour of the sea changing with sunset and moving clouds was fascinating.

Day 27 (25th Sept) (21.2 km) - Pico das Pedras to Ilha along Levada do Caldeiro Verde: This walk was obviously another of the very popular walks on Madeira. It began with a very quiet walk along an easy path. Autumn is on its way on the northern side of the island.

In addition to the many leaves sprinkled on the paths were thousands of white petals. It took me a while to find the plant that they came from. It is Madeira native known as the Lily-of-the-valley tree, or Clethra arbórea.

We were surprised to see quite a lot of hydrangea on the walk, straggly ones (unlike the amazing specimens we have seen in gardens) that almost looked as if they were in their natural habitat. There are introduced from Japan.

There were quite a few flowers along the way until we hit quite dense rainforest.

About 2 km into the walk we hit a carpark in a hamlet known for its colourful A-frame houses which we did not find! There were lots of cars and lots of people, indicative of the numbers of people on this popular walk.

The duck houses were as close as we got.

At this point we diverged from our route to go to a bird-watching lagoon, but that was a waste of time since grounds people were working around the lagoon and there were no birds with cooee distance. The only saving grace was that there were two information boards about plants and birds that one might see in the area.

Once back on the main track we found ourselves walking along a levada, often on the edge of a precipice (fortunately at those times there was a handrail of sorts). Passing people going the other way or letting faster groups (or noisy groups) pass was interesting. Sometimes you had to find a ledge on the other side of the levada, sometimes you had to lean on the rocks and sort of straddle the levada.

This is what I mean by a steep drop on the side of these levadas. How they were ever built, I don't know.

The vegetation was often lush with ferns and mosses everywhere. Occasionally we rounded a southern facing slope and all of a sudden the vegetation opened out and things were drier.

There were fish swimming upstream in the levada. I think they were rainbow trout. Apparently these again are another ring-in on Madeira, the waterways on the island having been stocked with rainbow and brown trout in the 1950s. Only the rainbow survived to breed naturally. Now, apparently, fly-fishing is quite popular here.

We were heading for a famous waterfall, but we first had to go through a number of tunnels. The ground was uneven and wet underfoot and three of the four tunnels pitch black so torches were essential.

After many kilometres of levada walking, we reached the famous Caldeiro do Verde, a waterfall that tumbles into a cavernous space in the mountains. No photo of mine can do this place justice. It would be amazing to see it after heavy rains but I doubt that it would be accessible. As it was parts of the cobbles along the levada were a little slippery.

Once we left the waterfall and travelled back through the tunnels we took a different route from the majority of people and had the quiet forest to ourselves. Almost all this part of the walk was on the north side of the hills and so it was quite wet, with plenty of ferns and fungi.

Another few hundred steps and more downhill trekking and we reached inhabited lands again. I even found Oxalis.

The village of Ilha, which was our destination, we reached was full of the most beautiful hydrangeas.

There were some lovely colourful houses here too.

After our walk we returned to our luxurious hotel, well luxurious compared to any of the others we'd been to. At 6:15 in the evening there was a cute little ceremony where any guest that came was given a free cocktail and then introduced to the staff members.

Before dinner, Pete and I basically circumnavigated the hotel estate - about 5 hectares. We did come to a rather scary drop-off down to the ocean below and decided not to continue further.

Despite all our walking, we are not losing any weight here - we are being too well fed!

DAY 28 (26th Sept) (18.25 km) - Fanal Lookout to Curral Falso: This walk was meant to start elsewhere and included an 800m climb over 2 kilometres. We all decided to give our joints a break and start our walk at the top of this climb. We arranged for our taxi to take us there - quite a distance further but I am very glad we did.

The weather threatened to close in on us but it never did. The clouds came and went, sometimes obstructing views and sometimes letting us glimpse them and then hiding them away again. The clouds move so quickly over here. One minute it can look like rain, the next you have a bright sunny day. Our luck with the wind had continued. We have been blessed with light breezes only.

The first part of the walk was interesting in that it was going through montane woodland heath. There were few flowers at this time of the year.

I was wondering whether the last blue berries were edible. I suspect that they are very tart. I have since found that they are locally called Uva-de-serra or Madeira Blueberry and are used in preserves.

Butterflies and bees were around to sample the few flowers, including those of the ubiquitous Farmers’ Friend!

The highlight of this walk though was definitely at Fanal. Many people drive here but many miss the magical forest where many-centuries old laurel trees, locally known as 'til' grow. They are just beautiful. I could have spent more time just doing in this part of the walk. Again, photos do this sort of place no justice.

The branches support entire ecosystems.

The fruit are rather acorn-like.

Not much further on, the land opened out to one of the rare flattish parts and this was where we met cows and lots of people. The view was sporadically wonderful and the people didn't really matter, again. It is amazing watching how the clouds come and go. The sky can be thick with them and a couple of minutes later, clear. The weather of a volcanic outcrop in the middle of the Atlantic.

There were 'til' trees, many centuries old, in this cleared area. The trees were beautiful, but I fear they are being loved to death. I wonder how long they will survive thousands of people trampling the soil around their roots. I acknowledge that I was one of those people, and wandering around the trees was lovely.

The whole area is a designated 'rest and quiet' reserve and it does feel peaceful despite the people.

The rest of the walk involved a lot of stairs and paths heading down and down again, along levadas and past a pretty waterfall where we enjoyed lunch.

At one stage, Gill and I raced leaves down a levada. We gave up after a while because they were travelling slower than we wanted, but just as we’d given up, there were rapids. We had to see what would happen! Mine was ahead, but Gill’s passed mine just before the rapids. Then … we lost them both. Mine is the green leaf to the right of the photo, Gill’s the orange one on the left.

After we’d finished the walk, we moved to a new hotel in a wonderful part of Madeira called Porto Moniz. Here there is a lot of volcanic rock near the coast and the local authorities have used this to their advantage in creating 'natural' swimming pools. The base of the 'pool' is almost all the natural seabed, except for the kiddies pool, and concrete has been put around the edges to enable people to get in and out safely. The rocks outside the pool area seem to form a natural safety barrier from the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. The strength of the waves is dispersed and little water reaches the pools. I'm sure during big seas this would be different.

We were warm enough at the end of our walk to make swimming in the pools very attractive!

DAY 29 (27th Sept) (12.26 km) - Achadas da Cruz to Porto Moniz then to Funchal: Unfortunately, Pete didn't have a great night and woke up in the morning with a cold so he opted to not go on the walk today but to have a bit of a rest at the hotel then go on a shorter and easier walk to the next town around the water.

Gill, Rod and I were driven up and up to the top of our walk from where we had a choice of walking down a cliff or catching a cable car. There was no choice - we caught the cable car. And what a cable car! It descends 450m to close to sea level and very steeply. Our knees thanked us for this choice. The weather threatened, we had been advised to take raincoats, but from the bottom of the cable car to the end there was nothing - just humidity.

At the bottom is a hamlet of maybe 10 houses and their fields on perhaps the flattest bit of Madeira we've seen. This place looks as if it hasn't changed in all time, except for the cable car and a second cable that they must use to bring down supplies. The cable cars were only built in 2001 so before that, just visiting the next village would have taken half a day at best, if laden with produce with which to trade.

A dry levada!

This is the sort of house around here (the one in the centre of the photo).

The real hike began with a short work along the coast.

Then began a 400 m climb up, at least after a silly wrong turn that ended up a dead-end gully!

Our dead-end gully below

We had to cross a small bridge to get from one side of the valley to the other. There would otherwise have been many more kilometres to traverse .

There were lots of these millipedes around, dead and alive.

There were a a few plants flowering on the way up.

We were in the shade most of the time and all of us were dripping with sweat before we were halfway up. We were climbing up and around the edge of a valley/canyon of sorts. Halfway up there were abandoned terraces. Whoever would have wanted to farm here - I guess those that needed to. Just before we reached another lookout, we passed more terraces. These were still abandoned despite being close to a reasonably sized town. I guess tourism pays better, tourism being the largest industry now in Madeira.

After a long hot climb we arrived at a lookout.

After having a good rest, we walked through the town of Santa Maria Madalena. Such a pretty town. Fields were well kept - lots of vegetables being grown, including sweet potato, pumpkin, and cabbages. and many of the houses had lovely flowers in their front yards.

We saw great doer-uppers and stone very new, modern houses. Santa, as it is known locally, looks like a thriving village.

Finally we began our many-stepped descent back into Porto Moniz, to end with another swim in a different set of natural seawater pools. These were less obviously man-made with only the necessary stairs and safety walls. You were swimming with fish, which apparently often come in with waves. The swim was a perfect end to the walk.

The day finished off with a 50 minute drive to Funchal, the capital of Madeira. Before the tunnels were built with the help of EU funding, the same trip to Funchal used to take three and a half hours along some very hairy roads, according to our driver who was brought up in Porto Moniz.

We passed through the area where this year's fires were on Madeira. So sad, and of course in country this steep, fires inevitably result in erosion. Our driver was convinced that this year's fires were ignited by firecrackers in a mid-summer festival in the area.

Funchal was a big surprise. It is a city of more than 100,000 residents. There is a lot of building going on including a huge new hospital and university complex.

We wandered the streets a little after arriving but did nothing much other than dinner and bed.

Day 30 (28th Sept) (15.4 km) - Cabo Girão to Câmara de Lobos and Funchal: This day saw the last of our planned walks on Madeira. It had been shortened to allow us more time to look at things in Funchal itself. A good call.

Cabo Girão prides itself on being the site of ' One of the highest cliffs in the world' at 589 metres above sea level. That is high. Fortunately, we were just ahead of a number of large bus groups so we were able to peruse and enjoy the view. We left when they arrived.

Then began another long descent into Câmara de Lobos. We have climbed up and down so many stairs!

This walk was interesting because we saw life in a much more heavily populated area that is still quite rural.

There were a few roadside flowers and critters.

Not far out of Funchal there are still many houses that have no road access close by. If you own a car you have to park it on a street somewhere then walk up or down flights of stairs to get to the house. Any appliances or furniture you may want have to get to your house the same way - you have to lug them up or down stairs. Ugh!

There were also periodic views of the coast and of a replica sailing boat. We later found out it was built in 1998 and is a replica of Christopher Columbus' flagship. It looks so small that it is hard to believe that such ships sailed the high seas.

Finally we reached Câmara de Lobos famous apparently because of a Churchill connection. He came here in the 1950s and painted a view of the harbour that 'he never forgot'.

The harbour is pretty with many colourful boats but the decorated streets won the day. There is some environmental push going in there and most of the street decorations related in some way to this. It was a good day to be there.

After catching a taxi back to Funchal we walked for a while along the coast. It was a Saturday, so there were a lot of food vans around and a lot of people.

We walked to where a cable car ascends the hills of Funchal to the Botanic Gardens. However a taxi driver convinced us that it would be a lot cheaper for the four of us to be driven up there so we took him at his word (he was right) and caught the taxi up. The gardens were lovely and we wandered around them for close to an hour.

At the other end of the gardens from where we had entered was a different cable car which we caught to a place called Monte where another Funchal-famous garden is, that of the Monte Palace. The actual house was built in the last few years as a palatial mansion, modelled on palaces along the Rhine. It was then used, by its original owner as a luxury hotel up until his death in 1943. In 1987, the property was bought by a businessman who has transformed the place into the Monte Palace Madeira - Tropical Garden.

The place is eclectic to say the least with an oriental garden running down the spine of the property, a Zimbabwean sculpture walk, an arched walkway filled with early 20th century china, a Romanesque water garden and flamingos! In my opinion, while many of the plants are incredible (there was a wonderful collection of cycads), the feel is nowhere near as tasteful as at Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra.

We were hoping to ride on traditional toboggans that area now used as a tourist attraction for two downhill kilometres from Monte. However, by the time we arrived there, the queue was one hour long so we did the next best thing. We rode in a taxi behind two of the toboggans. It was a bit disappointing not to have the experience ourselves, but some things just aren't meant to happen.

Day 31 (29th Sept) (11.18 km): My day started off a little earlier than the others when I came down for a walk to Funchal harbour to see a cruise ship come in. Of course it already had but it was good to see anyway, all lit up, and good to see the early morning lights off Funchal. The sun had not yet risen. Because of daylight saving, sunrise is not until after 8 am here and there is still a month to go!

I'm sure everyone knows the size of these cruise ships but it still always amazes me that they can float. Look at the comparison with a local fishing boat and quite a large cruise boat that is taking people to Porto Santo, on an island to the north that is part of Madeira.

I watched the very late sunrise (8:01am and still a month of daylight saving to go) then returned for a very late breakfast (for me).

I went out wandering the streets again. I met Cristiano Ronaldo's statue, walked a long way to find I couldn't climb the fort on the harbour that I had wanted to, then looked around the centre of town.

I found the town hall. I found a very full church and a very full ssupermarket. I saw the tiny garbage truck going about its business. I found a lot of people eating icecream at 10 in the morning. I found that petrol stations here are much cheaper places to buy chips than the airport. I found quite a few homeless people going for a few cents to go in their little takeaway coffee cups. Tourism always has its darker side. Real estate and rental prices are going up here too.