Funcahl; Monday, 05 March, 2018

Todays tour started a little later with the minibus not arriving until just gone 9am, which was a pain as I’d gotten up at 7am to have breakfast!

The tour started by heading out of Funchal into the hills around the city and the small town of Camacha where one of the last wickerwork factories on the island still operates – wickerwork had been a major industry on Madeira for a long while but is now just a small craft industry. The factory houses a large gift shop and a museum showing examples of the wicker workers art, but the most interesting part was being able to go down onto the factory floor to watch the people working with the wicker from initially splitting the wood into its strips through to building baskets and other products.

From Camacha we headed back into the bus and climbed up into the mountains – seeing quite a lot of damage from the previous weeks storms with rockfalls on the road and lots of downed trees. The road took us up to the third highest peak on the island, and the highest that can be reached by road – Pico Areeiro.

On the way up the weather had been quite good, but near the summit the cloud had rolled in, so it wasn’t possible to get particularly good views, but it was still possible to walk to the very summit of the mountain – an ascent of at least 20 meters from the car park!

Coming back down the mountain the skies cleared to leave amazing views over the North coast and down into the valleys into which we now headed stopping for a while in Riberio Frio for a coffee, a look at the stunning scenery and a quick look round the trout hatchery.

We continued down the valley to the North coast and then headed back up slight to the town of Santana. Here there are several examples of the small thatched houses that used to be common dwellings on the island – today housing craft shops. We had a lengthy stop in Santana, enough time to have a pleasant lunch in a café near the traditional houses, before it was time to head back to the bus and continue our journey east.

We drove to almost the eastern most point on the island at Ponta do Rosto, from where it’s possible to look back down the island along both the North and South coasts at the same time. After spending a little while here in the beautiful warm sunshine we headed down to the final stop of the day at Machico and one of only two golden sand beaches on the island – loving imported every couple of years from the Sahara only to have the sea wash it all away again over the next 24 months.

After looking round Machico we headed back east towards Funchal, taking the main coast road that weaves its way under the impressive airport runway – built on stilts over the road and the over the sea – reconfirming in my mind the decision to cancel flights when the weather isn’t great here is a very good idea.

Back in Funchal I headed over to the old town and picked up the cable car up to Monte – originally to have a wander around up there, but by the time the cable car reached the top station the weather had spectacularly deteriorated to the point where I just sought shelter in the café of the cable car station until the worst of the rain had passed and then headed back to get the cable car back down into town before the last departures of the night. Back at sea level I walked back to the hotel and in a repeat of the previous evening got in with minutes to spare before the rain settled in for the night – making the decision on where to have dinner an easy one, just heading down to the hotel restaurant and not leaving the building again until the rain stopped.