Cloud Walking

last time we left you in Porto Santo. In this post we will tell you about our last couple of weeks in Madeira. We left Porto Santo as the wind turned west and had a run in with a French boat that had dropped his anchor over the top of ours! Not a great start to the day and were both a bit stressed as we sailed out in to some pretty big seas and headed south for the island of Madeira. The incident was soon forgotten after a few hours especially as we got to the spectacular headland off the East of Madeira and dropped the hook in the Baia d’Abra.

What a spectacular and remote place. This bay left you in no doubt of the volcanic nature of these islands with all the tortured rocks on display. It was a very peaceful anchorage and we spent a few nights there relaxing in the glorious scenery. Here’s a flavour of the place in pictures

We had some tricky winds coming to the Islands again, blowing from the South West, so we had to move round the corner to the lovely town of Machico which had the only anchorage in Madeira that could provide any protection. Even so, it was a very rolly anchorage, and we ended up staying there for a couple of weeks. A great place to go an visit a little bit of Madeira, and oh what a wonderful place!

We took the bus to Funchal, the capitol of the Island and spent the day having a look around. Its certainly a busy place, and the bus journey was interesting along the steep mountain roads.

One of the features of Madeira is the Levada’s. These are man made water channels that weave through the mountains and syphon water from the wet side of the Island to drier parts to be used for farming. We took a taxi to walk the Levada do Furudo and this turned out to be one of the most spectacular walks I have ever done. Right up in the mountains at 800m we were walking through ancient forest, clinging to the side of precipitous cliffs and walking in the clouds. An amazing experience, and worth visiting Madeira just for this

A lot of pictures I know. its hard to capture the feeling of walking in the clouds along the edge of a precipice! Its also amazing to me how anyone managed to build these? We got to the end of the walk and came on a main road which mysteriously been roped off. We walked down the road a little towards a town and then the police started waving at us to get out of the road! It seems we had stumbled across a major event in Madeira, the legend rally. We spent the next two hours watching classic cars screaming round a hairpin!

Not long after we arrived in Machico, we were walking down the path by the river and met a couple Doug and Maria. Doug is from the UK and Maria is from Madeira. They live 6 months of the year in Madeira and 6 months in the UK. Seems like a perfect setup to me. We went for a quick drink and then Doug and Maria very kindly offered to take us out on the following Sunday to visit a local market. We had a fantastic day out! Doug and Maria were lovely hosts and really looked after us. On arriving at the market we went to the stall of their freinds, and sampled a glass of Poncha, a local homemade white rum with a serious kick drunk with honey and lemon. We were all feeling pretty good after a single glass!

We took a walk round the market and had a coffee at the local cafe. Then we all went for lunch for local delicacy and several more poncha’s & beers!

After a fantastic lunch Doug drove us to Maria’s home town of Porto Cruz on the North coast of the Island, not far from Machico and showed us around. What a spectacular place…