Tag Archives: Madeira

One of the many pleasant aspects of visiting a new culture or area is that the ol’ taste buds can get excited about a new range of food items. Madeira may be a modestly sized island, ~36mls/60kms x 14mls/23kms, but it was a rich source of new flavours and textures to explore.

Just about the first meal anyone mentions when you announce that you are about to visit Madeira for the first time is their Scabbard Fish with Banana recipe. It sounds a little weird to us, I suppose, my mother certainly wrinkled her nose when I mentioned it, although we are quite used to serving fruit with meat so why not with fish meat? Interpretations seem to vary a little but its essence seemed to be a fillet of fried fish with a couple of halves of fried banana. The Scabbard Fish is a deep water fish (down below 800m/2500ft) and is most interesting in its unprepared state. I know I’ve shown it before but here it is again for the sake of completeness. Verdict: quite pleasant but I wouldn’t rave about it.

My first brush with traditional Portuguese fare, though, was Bacalhau a Brás,  a dish which resembles Kedgeree, really, It’s made with flaked Bacalau (salted Cod) in a mixture of egg, onion and grated potato (which replaces the rice in Kedgeree). There’s a few black olives thrown in as well for good measure. I loved it and chose it for both my Sunday lunches on the island.

Some while ago I watched limpets being prepared somewhat experimentally by a couple of our TV chefs, one being my hero, Mr. Stein. Enter one of my biggest irritations of the British people. Here we are, surrounded by a rich source of delicious food in our offshore waters, much of which our dullard population at best ignores or at worst refuses to try, such that our bounty is shipped of to the much more discerning foreigners. Mention snails or frogs’ legs to many a Brit and you’ll get a reaction along the lines of “yuk, that sounds ‘orrible!”. These are often the same folks that will happily stuff the lining of cows’ stomachs down their neck in the form of tripe. Limpets sounded exciting to me, why don’t we use them? They are really just a small version of the very highly prized abalone, after all? They encrust most of the rocks along our rocky shore and, though perhaps difficult to gather, should be plentiful. I’ve wanted to try them for some time. Bless Madeira! The Madeirans love ‘em and even have a special pan on which to cook and serve Grilled Limpets (or Grilled Limpeds, as I saw them advertised on one restaurant board). They tend to get the garlic butter treatment and I thought them utterly delicious.

For a bit of a blow-out on our last evening meal in Madeira, we finally bumped into a classic Portuguese dish called Cataplana. Actually, a cataplana is really the cooking pot from which the dish takes its name. The cataplana is a sort of symmetrical clam-shell shaped pan/pot, typically made of copper, in which all manner of combinations of mouth-watering delicacies are baked in the oven. Our version – they clearly vary tremendously – contained a mixture of pork and seafood including clams, prawns and mussels. We both loved it and it made a very fitting end to our enjoyable week on Madeira.

A final footnote. While waiting on Sunday to board our TAP flight back to a cold and potentially snowy England, we couldn’t help but be amused by the sight of this advertising hoarding in Funchal airport’s departure lounge. Recognizing that the spelling and particularly the pronunciation of the English language is tricky and must be a bear for a teacher to explain so we won’t laugh but this brought a smile to the face of a Brit who didn’t want to go home.

It was a nice stay on a very friendly island.

Madeira’s population is roughly 250,000 in round numbers. About 50% of these live in the capital, Funchal, with its buildings climbing up hills surrounding the harbour rather like the banked seats in an amphitheatre. Today was our last full day on Madeira and we were free to wander around and explore the town to our hearts’ content.

Target one was the market, which starts at 7:00 AM. Outside the hall we came across ladies selling flowers dressed in their traditional costumes o colourfully striped skirts and hats bearing contrasting side triangular shapes that looked to me like pixie ears. Cute! Such ladies, we were told, used to walk down the mountain side carrying their flowers to sell at the market, then walk back up the mountain side after their day at the office; distances of anything up to 10kms/7mls each way. That’d keep you fit.

The market hall itself, on two levels, were mainly the fruit and vegetable stalls with the buzz and bustle I’ve come to expect of non-UK European food markets. I hadn’t, however, come across anything approaching high-pressure fruit selling before but here, they were particularly keen on offering tasters of mangoes, passion fruits and the like followed by a pre-emptive close. We tasted – everything was excellent – but resisted signing a contract.

At the rear of the market hall was the fish market where we were able to come face to face with a Madeiran speciality, the black scabbard fish. Being essentially an old volcano in the Atlantic ocean, the land shelves away rapidly and the surrounding waters get very deep very quickly. The scabbard fish is a deep water fish that is, well, frankly bitch ugly; it’s very long and thin with a black skin, large eyes and fearsome looking teeth – most unappetizing in appearance. However, once prepared it makes damn good eating and is traditional served with another popular commodity on Madeira, bananas. Fried fish and bananas – yum! It sounds odd but it’s a curiously interesting combination – exactly what I jump at on a menu.

After the market, target two was one of Funchal’s two main gardens. Both require a climb and one way to achieve the climb is via a cable car which, though it struck us as a little on the expensive side, looked the most fun. Actually, there are two separate cable car runs linked by a short walk. The first takes you up to the higher of the two gardens, the tropical garden. The second brings you about half-way back down again to the lower botanical garden. To return, you have to reverse your journey and go back up before descending all the way back to sea level again. This seemed a slightly curious arrangement to me but I’m sure there was some logic to it somewhere. One of our party had already visited the tropical garden and pronounced it “very green” so Carol fancied the botanical garden instead. The combined ticket for both cable cars and entrance to the tropical garden was ~€28.00 each.

Our choice turned out to be a good one. Firstly, it most certainly wasn’t just green:

Secondly, while Carol was in her element and I was wandering around pretending to be interested in nature without a pulse, up popped a very unexpected visitor and landed beside me posing cooperatively for my first dragonfly encounter of 2012. It even waited long enough for me to purloin Carol’s proper camera. New species are always a thrill and, though this looked basically like a Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum), it was actually a related species, an Island Darter (Sympetrum nigrifemur). By itself, this would have made my day but then I spotted a new entry for the butterfly collection, too, a Macaronesian Red Admiral (Vanessa volcania). Big grins all round.

Our wildlife thrills were not yet over. Having retraced our cable car route back to sea level and whilst investigating Funchal itself, we spotted a few large butterflies flitting about the small but charming Municipal Garden in the middle of town. I knew that the Canary Islands and Madeira were two of the very few places in Europe that were home to populations of Monarch/Milkweed butterflies and, though I might have secretly held hopes that I’d see one, I really didn’t expect to. Here they were, another new species for the collection. They weren’t alone, either. A very small blue was flitting about the grass and, though we really needed our wildlife lenses, we did manage to catch it on pixels and identify it as Lang’s Short-tailed Blue. (A publishable view of the topside proved impossible to get.)

All in all, a pretty successful day.

Our week seemed to have been leading up to today’s outing, the grand finale of the tour, the so-called balcony walk between Pico do Ariero, Madeira’s third highest peak at 1818 m/5965 ft, and Pico Ruivo,  the highest point at 1862 m/6107 ft. This has the reputation of being Madeira’s must-do walk. We couldn’t believe our luck; once again the morning dawned clear and bright – it looked as if we’d be in for a perfect day for mountain walking.

Pico do Ariero may be Madeira’s third highest point but it is accessible by road and good ol’ Messrs Ford, Mercedes and Benz once again ferried us up to the start point. It may have been bright but at these altitudes the air is a bit cool so we were equipped with a few layers of clothing to make adjustments as necessary. After making last minute preparations and making the obligatory “ooh, ahh” noises at the scenery, we set off. Surprisingly, the walk began on what I can only describe as a paved footpath. I couldn’t believe the locals had put so much effort into their walking routes. It is a busy route so I suppose it helps with erosion control.

As we progressed we came across areas that weren’t quite so groomed but, nonetheless, there was a lot of effort involved in maintaining the route, especially regarding handrails. On some of the narrower sections, the handrails may not actually be used but I think one would feel decidedly more nervous were they not actually there. The term balcony walk perhaps seems a little odd so here’s a few shots that should go some way towards explaining the name.

At 6.5 mls/10kms, this walk wasn’t particularly long but there was certainly more climbing. I guess you can’t get up to an island’s highest peak without putting in a little effort. The final assault on the highest point, Pico Ruivo, certainly got the heart pumping but, with our gradual build-up to it throughout the week, it felt reasonably comfortable assisted by a pair of Leki walking poles. To avoid indigestion, we climbed first and ate second.

The weather gods continued to smile on us and the sun shone right through our lunch at Pico Ruivo and on into our eventual short descent on yet another paved pedestrian highway to our faithful vans and drivers. This was a spectacular and very enjoyable walk. A delightful finish to our walking in Madeira, though we still had a free day in Funchal to look forward to.

Feeling perhaps a little self satisfied at completing the walks and most certainly feeling very lucky that our time in the mountains had been blessed with such good weather, our last walking day finished with a return journey to Funchal where we were just in time to invade the Blandy’s Madeira lodge for a guided tour: interesting stuff and good value (€4.50) despite their free taster being very meagre. Well, it had to be done.

[Here's a link to a Google Earth plot of this walk. You'll need to save it to your computer before double-clicking it to open in Google Earth. This one’s a bit weird in that Mr Garmin seems to have thrown a fit. Despite appearances, we definitely did not suddenly dive off left down into a deep valley only to double back and run immediately up the hill again. Curious. Note to self: buy a decent walkers’ GPS.]

After two days investigating the levadas of Madeira, today we were due to head up into the mountains of Madeira to walk from Boca Corrida to Encumeada. We we very lucky on two counts. First, this walk had been closed for about two years following heavy rains and now it was re-opened. Secondly, the weather was absolutely stunning and perfect for walking in the mountains.

Messrs Ford, Mercedes and Benz once again drove us up to the start point. This time, though, we actually had to walk up from there before heading down the other side. There’s something a little disturbing when the first thing you notice at the beginning of a mountain track is a chapel – it makes me wonder what they know that I don’t. I say mountain track but for a chunk of the way it was effectively paved. This differs wildly from our experiences in Spain where the footpaths we’ve seen have been really quite rugged. The Portuguese, at least those on Madeira, don’t seem to want walkers damaging themselves.

We began with our uphill climb, something that we weren’t really used to on this trip but the exercise made it seem pretty comfortable. One of the “sights” to be seen here was the Curral das Freiras, the Nuns’ Refuge.  Nuns from the Santa Clara convent fled to this secluded valley when the island was attacked by those aforementioned parrots pirates. We love mountains when the weather is right and this time the weather was right. The levadas were pleasant and interesting but this was nature in the raw and quite stunning. We were in our element.

From our picnic high point on this walk we began descending and were soon tromping through woodland, a very different landscape compared to the start point. We’d crossed the Exodus group walking in the opposite direction before plunging into the trees, followed by which we had to cross a rickety bridge.

After some more serious exercise than we’d had hitherto, Messrs Ford, Mercedes and Benz were waiting as usual at our finishing point to take us to a well deserved and very welcome Coral beer. We felt extremely lucky, this was a newly re-instated 8 mls/13 kms walk  through some very refreshing scenery. Brilliant!

[Here's a link to a Google Earth plot of this walk. You'll need to save it to your computer before double-clicking it to up in Google Earth.]

After spending a pleasant evening in Porto Moniz on the north-western tip of Madeira, our Feb 29th was to be spent going up into the mountains, crossing the central high ground’s so-called “Desert Plain” to wander along few more levadas and down towards the south coast again. Happily, the up component was courtesy of Messrs Ford, Mercedes and Benz in the forms of our two minibuses, leaving us with the 9mls/14.5kms of down on the other side.

We were tipped out right beside our first levada and began with the remnants of last night’s frost clinging on in the shady hollows. We were out in the open with views across swathes of gorse bushes to the distant and much lower south coast of the island. Other than the facts that we were still some way away from the coast and considerably higher, it felt reminiscent of the Cornish coastal path. This was much more my style than yesterday’s excursion into the cloud forest. Of course, the blue sky helped tremendously. Come to think of it, that bit may not resemble Cornwall much, either.

As with yesterday, the levada fell very gradually such that the water ran gently and silently. I was back marker armed with a whistle so I had time to play around a little. Out of curiosity, I decided to use my Garmin GPS to try and estimate the gradient of the levada. I plotted a waypoint at the beginning of the walk (altitude: 4310 ft/1314 mtrs) and another when we hit the two mile mark (altitude: 4262 ft/1299 mtrs). In two miles the levada had dropped a mere 48 feet. Rounding to make life easy, that’s ~50 ft in ~10000 ft, a gradient of roughly 0.5%. Well, it keeps me amused.

Lunch was my highlight of the day, not because of the food which was a basic supermarket picnic of bread, chorizo and Babybell cheese-alike (light – I didn’t do the purchasing!), but because we were in the company of a small flock of chaffinches. The chaffinches, it transpired, were quite partial to small pieces of bread and were particularly keen on torn off pieces of Babybell light. I was over the moon when I held scraps out on my upturned palm and the chaffinches fluttered in to feed from my hand. A female settled for a couple of seconds before flying off with her prize. Great stuff! (I know, I can’t help it, I just love being in touch with wildlife.)

A theme developed concerning wildlife on Madeira. Many of its species exhibit minor differences compared to their mainland counterparts and are Madeiran subspecies. This is true of the Chaffinch. Our Chaffinch is Fringilla coelebs whereas the Madeiran Chaffinch is Fringilla coelebs maderensis. I think describing the differences would be a bit challenging but it certainly looked noticeably different. Just for fun, here’s a composite picture of both, including one from our lunch party, in similar poses to compare – the Madeiran Chaffinch is above.

We needed our pathetic torches again on this walk to get through the longest tunnel of ~1km. Our leader, Donal, noted that the weather at the opposite end of the tunnel (the south side of the mountain) could often be quite different. We plunged in to darkness dimly illuminated by our CSI-style Maglites. About 12 minutes later we emerged into blazing cloudlight. Shortly after wards it began spitting with rain. A little later we were walking through steady and persistent rain. Donal had been quite right. Eventually, however, the rain subsided to reveal Messrs Ford, Mercedes and Benz waiting to complete our journey to the south coast and ferry us to our hotel at Ponta do Sol, where our 15 pairs of soiled walking boots managed to make short work of the hotel reception’s unserviceably white doormat. [Ed: Bloody tourists!]

Two things really impressed us about the Enotel at Ponta do Sol. Firstly, the architecture was noteworthy in that a relatively large hotel was designed outwardly to look like several smaller buildings. The multiple colours reminded me of Villajoyosa in Spain where they are similarly bold with colour, in a pleasing way. Check out the picture; that’s all one hotel – clever! Secondly, when we returned downstairs having showered and changed, the doormat had already been returned to its original virginal white state. Bravo Enotel!

The rooms were very spacious and comfortable, too. When we eventually retired, we propped open our Juliette balcony door and fell asleep to the sound of the Atlantic surf breaking on the stony shore literally just across the road. Very restful!

Having survived our leg loosening walk on day one and stayed overnight in Santana on the northern side of Madeira, today was to to be a walk from Queimadas via a waterfall at Caldeira Verde to Ilha which would introduce us to the esteemed levadas.

Madeira was once completely covered in woodland. Indeed, madeira means wood in Portuguese. The ancient woodland, the laurisilva [laurel forest], is more of a cloud forest in places and acts like a giant sponge soaking up water which filters through the ground and vegetation. The levadas are small manmade drainage channels – mini canals – designed to catch the water as it seeps through and to channel it into reservoirs/tanks where it is used to irrigate the crops. The network of levadas which criss-crosses and winds around Madeira is huge; there are 2500kms/1500mls of the things.

Having seen La Rigole, the canal that feeds water into the Canal di Midi in France, I was expecting canals on a similar scale but the levadas are narrow, only about 45cms/1½ft wide. Here’s our first view of one flowing beside a sizeable track. The gradient is very carefully controlled such that the water flows very gently and, we noted, almost completely silently. Small they may be but, even like this, constructing 2500kms of them manually would have been a huge task.

That first sight of a levada is very deceiving though; the levadas do not always look that tame. In fact, they rarely do. More often, the levadas look as though they are clinging to the side of a near vertical mountain face which, in some cases, they are. Walking along them can cause the ol’ teeth to be gritted just a tad, particularly if there is no hand rail. Fortunately, in the more precipitous places, there are hand rails. Check out the drop beside the levada in the picture here. Given that the walkway shown did not exist before this levada was built, one wonders how they actually built it. To me, that turns the construction effort into something quite staggering. In some places, construction workers were lowered in baskets, apparently.

So, we have a channel with a consistently gentle fall winding its way around and occasionally going through mountains; there are tunnels which also had to be manually built. We were told we’d need decent torches and now we could clearly see why. [That’s a flash picture, BTW, not daylight.] Sadly our CSI-style Maglite torches didn’t quite seem up to the task so we didn’t see clearly. Poor choice! [Ed: How do those CSI guys get a decent beam in broad Las Vegas daylight, I wonder?] Anyway, walking along some stretches of the levadas is most like being a child again walking along the top of a brick wall but with a bigger drop on one side. Get the picture? You get used to it, though.

Now imagine trying to pass streams of other tourists tromping towards you from the opposite direction. This is where the hand rail really comes into play: one turns sideways ensuring that their rucksack is hanging over the fence into space rather than obstructing the narrow path whilst the other turns sideways with their rucksack to the mountain, and shuffle sideways past each other. Simples!

The laurisilva is often quite dense though there are breaks which offer you a decent view down the valley.

We stopped at a waterfall at the head of a there-and-back valley for lunch but didn’t hang about too long because the altitude was making stationary life a little cool. We retraced our steps before hanging a left and descending to Ilha where our transport took us for a reviving coffee before ferrying us to our next hotel at Porto Moniz.

[Here's a link to a Google Earth plot of this walk. You'll need to save it to your computer before double-clicking it to up in Google Earth.]

OK, so we’re not actually on Madeira to dance the lambada. We are actually here with Explore! to walk, amongst other things, some of the famous levadas. Levadas are irrigation channels but more of these later. Madeira is essentially a large, formerly volcanic mountain and the main “other thing” that we are targeting is the high ground (~1800m/5500ft) in the centre. Explore! runs small group holidays, some cultural, some more active, and this is our sixth with them.

Our group on this trip is 14 strong, plus the leader, Donal, who unsurprisingly hails from the Emerald Isle. As well as trying to get our ears tuned in to Portuguese for our first time – it sounded to us a bit like Spanish with a Russian accent – we had to tune our ears in to Donal’s lilting brogue. Yesterday, we became convinced he was telling us that, at some time in its early history, Madeira had been invaded by parrots until we finally realized he was saying pirates. Duh!

Today we were heading out to the eastern point of the island for what seemed like a modest limb loosening walk of 4½mls/7kms. Actually, I suspect that relatively gentle start is designed mostly for the tour leader, giving them a chance to assess the abilities of their new set of charges. To get to our start point at São Laurenço, we drove past Madeira’s other engineering highlight (other than its levadas): the airport runway extension which is a large flyover (no pun intended) supported on huge concrete pillars. They are clearly very proud of their runway, on Madeira.

This walk was a there-and-back affair, winding its way in an undulating fashion through an almost desert-type landscape with the Atlantic Ocean on both sides – more dramatic than picturesque. I personally find rocks a little on the dull side, preferring animate objects, but for those with the correct interest I’m sure the geology would prove fascinating. Courtesy of Donal’s instruction, I now know that things called intrusions exist in formerly volcanic regions. An example is shown in the picture on the right; just to the left of centre (Natalie Imbruglia?) are a couple of lighter strata stretching vertically from the shore to the top of the cliff.

We didn’t give Donal any concerns, everyone making it to the easternmost tip of Madeira without mishap where most of us chose to scale the 200m highpoint for the view (or just because it was there) before settling down to a packed lunch. There was also a wildlife highlight for those of us who prefer nature with a pulse. At our lunch spot a few LBJs (Little Brown Jobs) were hopping and flittering about. They looked a bit like Spotted Flycatchers but were more strongly flecked and behaving very differently. The birds turned out to be Berthelot’s Pipits (Anthus berthelotii), according to an information board (and Donal). They are resident to the Canary Islands and Madeira. Well done Carol for snagging a recognisable shot.

Chalk up a new one for our bird page – eventually.

We returned to our transport and noticed we had happily missed a rain shower as we were driven to Santana on the north side of the island for our second night followed by our first encounter with a levada the next day.

[Here's a link to a Google Earth plot of this walk. You'll need to save it to your computer before opening it up in Google Earth.]

4:40 AM is not a very friendly time for check-in desks to open at London’s Heathrow airport. I started investigating my travel options and discovered, according to one friendly parking service lady, that “they” had only recently begun opening check-in desks before 5:00 AM and that, consequently, their regular shuttle bus services and didn’t begin before 5:00 AM. Neither did the “meet and greet” services, effectively valet parking where one drives to the terminal and is met by a man who zooms off to undeclared destinations with ones car, begin until 5:00 AM. So, we seem to have adjusted early morning flight times without adjusting the support services. Sound familiar? Regular long-term parking still works but you have to summon the bus rather than having a regular circuit being performed. We opted for a taxi, which was to be £65.00 plus, of course, a decent tip for the poor sleep-deprived driver.

3:30 AM is not a very friendly time for a taxi to come calling. [Ed: it’s about an hour’s ride from home to Heathrow, to be safe.] An hour or so earlier and it would be worth toughing it out by staying up and not bothering with bed. Naturally, going to bed early doesn’t work ‘cos you just lie there awake until you’d normally have hit the sack. So, bed it was with our beauty sleep rudely curtailed at 2:40 AM by a very gentle alarm courtesy of Nokia.

All our bags were packed and ready to go …

[Ed: O Hell, did you have to?]

… and, sure enough, our sleep-deprived driver arrived on the dot of 3:30 AM to collect his two sleep-deprived but excited passengers, one of whom almost left his bag in the porch, complete with dancing shoes. Dancing shoes? Yes, well, Carol did say we were off to Madeira to do the levadas. Dreadful Portuguese puns aside, mercifully the driver was awake enough to notice and retrieved my bag for me.

With Heathrow just beginning to wake-up, check-in was a breeze. Luck continued when we were handed an exit row and, with the TAP plane only about 50% full, we had a very comfortable 3hr 15min flight to Funchal, Madeira, where we were greeted by Donal, our tour leader, and sunshine. Funchal is pretty much an amphitheatre of buildings clinging to a steep, curved mountainside surrounding  a harbour where cruise ships frequently call. Actually, Madeira being little more than a 50-mile wide collection of volcanic mountains, all it’s settlements are really amphitheatres of buildings clinging to steep mountainsides.

Madeira is on the same time zone as the UK [Ed: sensible people.] so we were settled in our hotel room by 11:30 AM in plenty of time to try something local for lunch. We found an appealing restaurant with street tables and I couldn’t resist what is apparently a popular Portuguese rendition of salt cod called Bacalhau a Brás. Not being keen on salt cod, Carol chose some very tasty grilled squid and, since the home team had named their beer Coral, Carol also fancied a glass with her name on it, albeit misspelled. I kept her company. Well, you can’t let a lady drink alone. And very good it all was, too.

You may notice the patterning on the street in the above picture. Most of the streets and paths/sidewalks in Funchal sport patterns made from a mosaic of black and white tile pieces. As far as I could tell, the pattern in each street was also unique. Laying the mosaics must have been very painstaking work but it was well worth it and makes for an attractive finish. Being a quiet Sunday, I managed a snag a sample picture of one of the more ornate side streets, unimpeded by pedestrians or cars attempting to flatten tourists standing in the middle of the road and armed with snappy cameras.

An enjoyable if painfully early start. The walking begins tomorrow.