Madeira Islands Region Guide

Madeira is a volcanic peak in the Atlantic with a laurel forest on top, and it is one of the best walking destinations in Europe.

The island rises from sea level to 1,862 metres in about fifteen kilometres, which produces cliffs, gorges and a genuinely dramatic interior. The ridge walk between the high peaks is as good as anything in the Alps and can be done in a morning.

The levadas — a network of irrigation channels cut into the mountainsides from the fifteenth century onward — carry footpaths beside them for some 2,000 kilometres, contouring through terrain nobody could otherwise cross.

The laurisilva is a UNESCO-listed remnant of the subtropical forest that covered southern Europe before the ice ages.

And Funchal is a handsome, subtropical capital with a wine that made the island’s fortune.

The peaks

The ridge walk from Pico do Arieiro to Pico Ruivo — about seven kilometres of stairs, tunnels and exposed ridge between the two highest points on the island, often above the cloud. It is the single best thing to do here. Start at dawn, carry a torch for the tunnels, and check the path is open.

Levadas

The 25 Fontes and Risco falls at Rabacal, the Caldeirao Verde from Queimadas through the laurel forest, and the Levada do Furado. Many involve tunnels and unfenced drops.

Funchal

The Mercado dos Lavradores; the old town’s painted doors; the cable car up to Monte and the wicker toboggan ride back down, steered by two men in straw hats; the botanical gardens; and a wine lodge tasting.

Around the island

Sao Vicente and Porto Moniz on the north coast with natural volcanic rock pools; the Ponta de Sao Lourenco, a bare red peninsula unlike the rest of the island; and Curral das Freiras in a crater-like valley.

Porto Santo

Nine kilometres of golden sand, two and a half hours by ferry.

Madeira is Portuguese, autonomous, and conscious of being a long way from everywhere.

Atlantic island

Nearly a thousand kilometres from Lisbon and closer to Africa than to Europe, the archipelago has its own government, its own accent and a strong local identity. It has also been an emigration society for two centuries — Madeirans went to Venezuela, South Africa, Brazil and the Channel Islands in large numbers, and the returnees brought money, houses and Spanish loanwords back with them.

Terraces

Almost every cultivable slope is terraced into poios, narrow stone-walled strips built by hand, growing bananas, vines and vegetables. The labour embodied in the landscape is extraordinary and it is being lost as farming declines.

The British connection

Madeira was a British wintering resort and wine market for two centuries, with a permanent merchant community whose names are still on the wine lodges, and the island has a lingering Anglophile streak.

Religion and festa

Village arraiais — saint’s day parties with food stalls, bands and fireworks — run through the summer and are the real social calendar.

The laurisilva is irreplaceable. It is the largest surviving fragment of a forest type that has otherwise vanished from Europe, and it holds species found nowhere else. Stay on the paths, take nothing, and do not light anything — the 2016 fires reached the edges of it.

Levada paths are infrastructure, not trails: the water still irrigates farms downhill. Do not swim in the channels, block them or foul them.

Whale and dolphin watching is well developed here. Choose operators accredited under the regional code, which sets distances and approach rules; there are more than twenty cetacean species in these waters and harassment is a real problem.

Water on Porto Santo is scarce and desalinated.

Buy local: the terraced smallholdings that make the landscape survive on selling bananas, wine and vegetables, and they are being abandoned.

Cruise days overwhelm Funchal; walk the island instead.

April to June and September to October are the best periods: warm, stable, good visibility on the peaks, and fewer people.

Late April or early May is the Flower Festival, when Funchal is carpeted and paraded through.

February or March brings Carnival, which Madeira does seriously.

July and August are warm rather than hot and busy with Portuguese and mainland European visitors; the sea is at its warmest.

December is high season: Funchal is decorated from early in the month and the New Year fireworks over the amphitheatre of the bay were once a world record and remain a genuine spectacle.

November to March is mildest in Europe — around 19°C — with more cloud on the north coast and the best whale watching.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Madeira is good value by western European standards, with cheap eating out and inexpensive wine. Car hire and the New Year period are the exceptions.