Madeira Our second visit to Madeira to try out the Holiday Property Bond resort there. This trip was also notable in that we only booked it the day before we travelled!
Gatwick Saturday - We were off to a bad start. The bag drop queue at Gatwick must have had four hundred people in it. They were blaming a combination of a lot of people travelling (it was the weekend before Easter) and a few people not turning up for work. Either way, we had to queue for 75 minutes just to deposit our bags.
Flying At least the plane got away more or less on time. Here we are flying over the coast of France and out into the Bay of Biscay.
Ilhas Desertas A couple of hours later and we were approaching Madeira. Here's a view of the Ilhas Desertas on the way in.
Villa We picked up our hire car and drove the 15 miles or so to the Holiday Property Bond resort at Cabo Girao. Here's a view down the "street" that our villa was on. Our villa is the yellow one on the left of the photo. Funchal is visible in the distance. Despite being pretty much right on the coast, the resort is around 500m (about 1,640 feet) above sea level.
Resort The resort, like everything else on Madeira, is built on a slope. This was the view from the resort's main building. The villas are on the right at the bottom of the resort. There are a few dozen apartments just out of sight on the left.
Resort View From the road at the top of the resort you can see the apartment blocks and the view to Funchal in the distance.
Night View This is pretty much the same view as in the previous photo, but from a bit lower down. And it's night time obviously.
Villa View Sunday - This was the view that we awoke to on Sunday morning. Very nice.
Villa Pool After breakfast we decided to have a bit of a wander around the resort. This is the semi-private pool reserved for the use of the people staying in the villas.
Resort View This is the view of the resort from the villas' pool.
Stairs If you want to go virtually anywhere on Madeira there will be stairs involved. We would become very familiar with these particular stairs as they were the ones that went from the villas up to the resort's main building.
Cabo Girao View A couple of hundred meters up the road from the resort is the Cabo Girao view point, which at the time of writing, is the second highest rated thing-to-do on Madeira on Trip Advisor. Consequently it gets really, really busy during the day.As well as being highly rated and offering amazing views, at 580m (1,900 feet), it's also one of (if not the) tallest sea cliffs in Europe.This was the view looking towards Funchal, with the Holiday Property Bond resort visible in the bottom left.
Cabo Girao View This was the view of the cliffs to the east of Cabo Girao.
Pirate Ship A pirate ship sailing past Cabo Girao. I think you can rent day trips on this.
Cabo Girao View This was the view looking straigth down from the view point.
Raining We went back to the resort for some lunch, then got caught in a heavy downpour whilst walking back down to our villa.Much to Judith's disappointment, the heavy rain also interfered with the TV signal, which meant that she missed the opening race of the F1 season.
Levada View The rain didn't last long, so I decided to go for a short walk along one of the levadas near the resort (a levada is basicaly a small canal and they're used very extensively on Madeira to move water from the wet areas to irrigate the farmland).This was the view of Funchal from the levada.
Tunnel After about a mile the levada went through this tunnel, which would be why the trail guide said that it was essential to bring a torch. I reckon the tunnel was about 400m long.
Levada View On the other side of the tunnel I followed the levada for another couple of miles before tuning around and retracing my steps. Having to retrace your steps is one of the two main downsides to walking along levadas, the other being that the walks are almost certainly going to be very, very flat indeed. Personally I prefer my walks to be bonkers hilly.
Cruise Ship Back at the resort later and I caught a glimpse of a cruise ship leaving Funchal.
Ponta de Sao Lourenco Monday - It was generally sunny out again so we thought we'd go for a walk along the Ponta do Sao Lourenco, the peninsula that sticks out of the eastern end of Madeira. What you can't see in this photo are a) the million or so cars that were already there when we arrived, and b) the fact that it's nearly windy enough to take you off your feet. Not ideal for a walk along an exposed peninsula.
Ponta de Sao Lourenco Still, as we'd spent ages driving there (because it takes ages to drive anywhere on Madeira) we thought we'd be as well to at least check out a couple of the accessible view points. The view to the east along the length of the peninsula looked pretty good.
Ponta de Sao Lourenco Looking to the west we could see the whole eastern end of Madeira.
Mountain View Anyway, as it was still early we decided to have a drive up to the highest point on the island (that you can drive to) - Pico do Arieiro - hoping to get above the clouds and into the sunshine.
Pico do Arieiro Terrible plan as it turned out. It was 2C and blowing a freezing gale up there. As you can see from the photo, there was only one other car apart from ours in the car park (the dark grey one was ours).
Pico do Arieiro We walked up to the view point, but a) there wasn't much view, and b) it was even more exposed and freezing cold there than it had been in the car park. And yes, that's snow on the ground behind Judith.So we stopped for a nice bowl of soup in there deserted restaurant (the staff looked glad of the temporary company) before heading back down.
Cruise Ships On the way back to our resort we skirted the edge of Funchal and got a nice view of two cruise ships moored in the harbour.
Tunnel View As it was still fairly early when we got back to the resort, I managed to talk Judith into coming out for a reprise of part of the levada walk I did on Sunday. Here she is walking through the tunnel.The picture looks likely low-res because it's actually a still from a 360-degree video that I took of the walk through the tunnel. It turns out that my Ricoh Theta S performs surprisingly well in low light conditions (like being in a massive long tunnel).
Flower A lovely flower that we walked past on our levada walk.
Resort View Tuesday - My GPS indicated that there was a cablecar down to the sea shore a mere half a mile (as the crow flies) from the resort, so we thought it might be interesting to go and have a look at that. This was the view of the Holiday Property Bond resort as we departed.
Cable Car? This was the view ahead after we'd walked about a quarter of a mile (as the crow flies). It seemed unlikely that we were going to encounter a cable car in the next quarter of a mile. In fact, as best as I could estimate, I reckoned that the cable car must be behind the large peak on the right side of the photo, which looked a bit more than a quarter of a mile away.
Fields Still, it was pleasant (and downhill) walking through the cultivated terraces.
Houses After a while the fields gave way to houses as we wound continually downward.
Teleferico do Rancho After what seemed like a surprisingly long time (considering it was only supposed to be half a mile as the crow flies), we arrived at the cable car.
Teleferico do Rancho It didn't seem to operate to any sort of schedule, preferring to just set off more or less at random intervals when it felt like it.
Teleferico do Rancho Looking to the west, here's Judith checking out the view from the cable car's viewing platform.
Teleferico do Rancho Considering that we'd been walking downhill from our resort for the best part of an hour to get here, it was still an impressively long way down to the bottom.
Teleferico do Rancho This was the best animal photo I got all week, mainly because this was pretty much the only animal that didn't leg it as soon as I got within ten feet.
Teleferico do Rancho Looking to the east, here's Judith on the viewing platform again.
Flowers Some flowers at the Teleferico do Rancho.
Camara do Lobos Rather than walk back uphill to the resort, Judith thought it sounded more appealing to keep walking downhill until she came across some sort of transport that could convey her back up with no personal effort other than getting some cash out to pay for the ride. So we carried on walking until we got to the pretty town/port of Camara do Lobos.
Camara do Lobos A pretty view of the cliffs at Camara do Lobos.
Camara do Lobos The harbour at Camara do Lobos.
Camara do Lobos On the cliffs in Camara do Lobos, looking west.After a while Judith found The Little Green Train, which would take her all the way back to our resort for EUR5, but not for another two hours. So we had a leisurely lunch to pass the time.
Camara do Lobos After lunch Judith boarded The Little Green Train (I should really have had a photo of that, but you can probably Google it if you're that interested), while I decided to walk back up. It was only 1.3 Edelweisses (see Zermatt), so hardly any effort at all really.Our resort is somewhere just out of sight over the top of that hill in the distance.
Door This was the only photo I took on the way up. I thought it looked interesting.As it turned out The Little Green Train was quite slow and meandering, so I only got back to our villa a few minutes after Judith.
Fontes Wednesday - I had decided to go for a "proper" walk, which started in the tiny mountain village of Fontes. Despite being only 3.8 miles from our villa as the crow flies, it was a 12 mile drive to Fontes that took nearly 40 minutes!Here's our car parked up in Fontes.
Fontes View I'd arrived in shorts and a shirt, but it became apparent within seconds of getting out of the car that more insulation was needed, so I added an insulating top and windproof top layer before heading off.The views were quite good, but even as I set off I was already disturbingly close to the bottom of the clouds.
Inclement After about a mile of walking in the howling wind and intermittent rain it became apparent that I would either need a) more insulation (the termperature was down to around 4C), or b) to turn back. So I stashed my camera in my rucksack and broke out my contingency gear - an additional layer of insulation and my wind/waterproof over trousers, as shown in the photo.So attired I felt ready for most things that the Madeira weather was likely to throw at me on this day and pressed on. All things considered it was a pretty rubbish walk. There was very little visiblity for most of the way (like less than 100m) and it wasn't steep enough to be interestingly challenging.
GPS Towards the end of the walk I left the trail and joined "unnamed road", as shown in the screenshot from my phone.
Unnamed Road This is what "unnamed road" looked like in real life. I think the people that did the map have a very optimistic view of what constitutes a road.
Unnamed Road A bit later on, still on "unnamed road"...
Unnamed Road ...and now I think they're just having a laugh. I actually had to climb down bits of this "road".
Madalena do Mar Anyway, having made it safely back to our villa, we decided to head out for a drive along the south coast of the island. This lovely view was in one of the rare places on Madeira where the road runs at sea level, right along the beach.
Ponta do Fargo After about an hour we made it all the way to the western tip of Madeira, to the lighthouse at Ponta do Fargo. Here's Judith in front of the lighthouse.
Ponta do Fargo Awesome views to the south/east.
Ponta do Fargo Awesome views to the north/east too. What this photo isn't capturing though is the absolute gale that was blowing across the cliffs. Given that we were on the top of cliffs several hundred feet tall, Judith was a bit concerned that I might get blown over/off in my attempts to try to get a good photo. I didn't though, which was nice.Just up the road from the lighthouse was a lovely little restaurant, where we had a very nice lunch while we sheltered from the gales for an hour.
Another View Point This was just a few hundred yards from the lighthouse. Strangely, just where Judith was standing there was not a breath of wind, whilst I was nearly getting blown off my feet taking the photo. Weird.
ER110 We thought we might head back to our own end of the island along the ER110, which runs across the high plateau in the middle of Madeira, around 1,400m (4,600 feet) above sea level. Boy oh boy was that a mistake. It was absolutely mental up there. We were in the clouds so visibility was poor, it was pouring with rain most of the time and the wind frequently felt like it might actually manage to blow our car right off the road.Eventually we crossed the plateau and the road descended out of the clouds, at which point I felt safe enough to stop and take a couple of photos.
ER110 Our car again on the ER110.
Sao Vicente Thursday - After breakfast we drove across the island to the caves at Sao Vicente. This is Judith in the gardens outside of the caves.
Caves On the one hand the caves themselves are a bit of a disappointment as they're just a few hundred meters of relatively narrow lava tubes. There are no vast cathedral spaces or rock formations. On the other hand, they've tried really hard to make the tour interesting and informative and value for money, with the cave tour supplemented by an exhibition and film about the volcanic history and creation of Madeira. So all in all, definitely worth a look.
VE2 near Seixal After leaving Sao Vicente we drove west along the island's north coast on the excellent and wide new road (the VE2), which goes through a lot of tunnels. However, the old road is still visible clinging to the cliff face.You don't appear to be able to drive on the old road any longer, but in places they don't appear to want people to even wander onto the old road on foot, having resorted to building a six foot brick wall across the entire road!
Old Road Here you can just about make out the old road clinging to the cliff face.
Old Road If I zoom in on the bit of the road to the right of the waterfall, it's clear to see why this section of the road has been walled off altogether - a massive section of the cliff face appears to have sheared off and completely obliterated the road, making it completely impassable. That would have been a major blow in the days when that was the only way to get along the north coast.
Porto Moniz We carried on west until we got to the (almost) most northerly point on Madeira - the town of Porto Moniz. Porto Moniz has a lovely, dramatic seafront, with lots of restaurants.
Port Moniz Right at the western end of the seafront is this structure that contains a hotel, restaurant (in the hotel) and salt water swimming pools. The swimming pools were closed on this day, which was just as well as the waves were crashing over them in a very non-swimming pool friendly sort of way. But I can well imagine that they're very popular when the weather is a bit calmer.
Sea View Restaurant Here's Judith on the terrace of the Sea View restaurant, where we had a very nice lunch. I highly recommend popping in to this place for lunch or dinner if you get the chance. The views were awesome and I could happily have sat and watched the massive waves crashing over the salt water swimming pools all day.
Fanal Eventually it was time to head back to our villa, so we thought we'd try driving across the top again in the hope/expectation that the weather was unlikely to be worse than when we'd been up there the previous day. And we were right. The weather was lovely. So we parked near Fanal and went for a bit of a walk. Here's Judith admiring teh view.
Savanna It was easy to forget that we were standing on the top of a rocky and extremely hilly island.
Scenic I just thought this was a nice view.
Top Judith at the top of a hill.
Coast View A view along the north coast of the island.
Bica da Cana Back in the car we drove a few miles further along the ER110 before coming across this interesting view point. It almost looked like we were on a sea shore and not 4,600 feet above sea level.Also notable is the straight and relatively flat bit of road on the left of the picture. That's one of the straightest and flattest stretches of road on the entire island.
Clouds A couple of minutes later and the clouds that had been lapping at the hillside spilled over and started to engulf the wind turbines.
Clouds Seconds later and only the tops of the wind turbines were visible.
View A miscellaneous view on the way back to the villa.
Funchal View Back at our villa, the almost full moon almost looks like the Sun in this photo. It's only the fact that Funchal is illuminated that gives the game away.
Cabo Girao Friday - I got up early to pop up to the Cabo Girao view point just after what I thought might be it's openng time (8am). Cunningly they don't post any opening/closing times, which presumably gives them the option of opening and closing more or less when they feel like it. As you can see, I was the only person there.
Cabo Girao Considering how rammed out this place is all day, it was a bit weird being there all on my own. Weird but very peaceful.
Cabo Girao Awesome view through the glass floor 580m (1,900 feet) down to the shore.
Cabo Girao Tricky shot into the rising Sun looking towards Funchal. I took this photo with my SLR and my phone and my phone did a much better job of dealing with the tricky light.
Cabo Girao Same with this one - phone beats SLR again!
Curral das Freiras It was our last fully day on Madeira and pretty much the only major tourist attraction (outside of Funchal) that we'd not visited was the Curral das Freiras - the Nuns' Valley. It's a pretty arduous drive up there, particularly if you meet anything bigger than a motorbike coming the other way along the narrow, winding road. But once we got up there the weather was lovely. Here's Judith at the main view point that's a ten minute walk from the car park.
Curral das Freiras Judith looking down into the Curral das Freiras.
Curral das Freiras A mini phone panorama of the Curral das Freiras. We were planning to drive down into the village in the photo, but it didn't look that interesting from the view point so we didn't bother and headed back to our resort instead.
Snooker We decided to spend the afternoon just hanging around in the resort, as we hadn't spent very much time there during the week. So we had a game of pool (which I didn't get a photo of) and a game of snooker (which took ages and ages and ages!).
Draughts Then we had a game of draughts, which also took a surprisingly long time (although I think that might have been partly because it's probably twenty years or more since either of us had played).
Resting Then we had a bit of a rest. A thoroughly pleasant way to finish our last full day on holiday.
Pico do Arieiro Saturday - We had a few hours to pass before we needed to be at the airport so we thought we'd pop up to Pico do Arieiro again. We drove through a lot of cloud on the way up, but the weather was lovely at the top, so about a million other people had also turned up. It was a bit of a contrast to when we were up here the other day and there were only two cars in the car park.
Pico do Arieiro That's the military radar station at Pico do Arieiro
Pico do Arieiro There's a very highly rated and popular walk from Pico do Arieiro to a neaby peak. I didn't have time to undertake that on this day, but decided to walk the first mile or so up the trail to a view point.
Pico do Arieiro That's the view point making a brief appearance through the clouds.
Pico do Arieiro Unfortunately the trail was shrouded in cloud pretty much all of the way there, so I didn't get to see much of anything at all. Doh!
Pico do Arieiro However, I did get to see this really interesting rainbow halo effect at one point for a few seconds, which the camera has just about managed to pick up.After this we drove to the airport for our flight home (which was delayed by almost two hours due to an engine sensor going a bit bonkers before fixing itself!). We had a great time at the Holiday Property Bond resort and very much look forward to visiting again.