The quarantine-free Portuguese island that's perfect for a tranquil autumn break
In many senses, Delicias da Bia is not the best of adverts for the idea of -social distancing. There is a queue of sorts in this café-bakery, but it sprawls and spills, shuffles and shifts; conversations bouncing back and forth around the room while people “wait” to be served.
It takes me 20 minutes to inch all the way to the counter. It is not that the -service is slow, nor that there is any overt favouritism towards locals over random strangers – more that half of -Madeira seems to be here on this -Sunday morning. Children scurry, groups of young men loiter over coffee, matriarchs stand still and unsmiling, eyeing the loaves of bread on rear shelves that are disappearing with every satisfied customer. At a corner table, a priest is forking at a slab of cake, still in uniform, even though his duties at the church up the lane have long been completed.
My own order – pasteis de nata with a bica of hot dark caffeine, is – when it arrives – worth the “delay”.
In other ways, though, Delicias da Bia is a definition of keeping oneself to oneself. It sits in one of Europe’s most remote locations – high on the north-east shoulder of Madeira in a hamlet, Santana, that is more than 20 miles from the island’s only real centre of population, the capital Funchal. As I step out of the café, a chill gust barges in off the Atlantic, grey-blue and sullen, down on my right. In terms of getting away from it all, this is a fine start.
Better still, it is possible. Portugal may be back on the UK’s quarantine naughty step, but its islands – Madeira and the Azores – are exempt, meaning no 14-day quarantine for Britons on their return home.
It seems strange – amusing, even – for the island to have recently been deemed a trouble-spot. Some might say it has the world’s least problematic image problem. It has often been damned with faint praise – soft-soaped as a hub for genteel weekends in pleasingly pretty Funchal; for afternoon tea at Reid’s Palace hotel; for the aroma of orchids at the Quinta da Boa Vista estate.
Not that this is an unfair portrait, but it misses a wider point. That this outcrop off the west edge of Africa – 450 miles beyond Morocco and its Saharan sands – is a beast, born of lava and tectonic seabed pressure. It rears and it rises, all serrated shards and raw basalt, braced against the ocean’s anger. Is it unknown? No. Misunderstood? Absolutely.
Then again, perhaps a hint of something more daring has always been there. In what other city, for example, can tourists launch themselves seaward on a wicker sledge – as they do on the exhilarating Monte toboggan run down the hill in Funchal?
Certainly, there is an air of the exhilarating about the path in front of me. I have driven up from Santana, along a cobra-coil of curves – and now the PR1.2 trail is signposted from the point where the road runs out. It will funnel me towards the island summit – a -distant place indeed.
True, in the context of the broader Atlantic, Pico Ruivo is no peerless -Everest – Mount Teide, the docile monster of Tenerife, raises the stakes to an incomparable 12,198ft; Pico, the most visibly volcanic piece of the Azorean jigsaw, jabs the sky at 7,713ft. But, at 6,106ft, Madeira’s penthouse suite still comes with a height and a gradient that snags the sinews. Jam, scones, Earl Grey? Not up here.
Striding ahead of me, Fabio Castro – a guide for activity specialists Madeira Adventure Kingdom – is confident that we will have crested the final foot within an hour. He is an optimist, and I am not a goat-limbed peak runner. But if he will be disappointed that our hike takes twice as long as he had expected, he does not show it. He is too busy being enamoured with his surroundings. “I was born here; I grew up here,” he says. “I lived in Lisbon for a while, for four years – I suppose a lot of young people on the island do. But as soon as my company opened an office on Madeira I knew that I wanted to come back.”
It is not difficult to comprehend this love of home. PR1.2 demands admiration. It ascends through a realm where humanity has struggled to bend rock to its will. Other trails cling to cliffs, barely there in their helter-skelter routes in all directions – the sweat-toil efforts, Fabio says, of labourers who clambered to these reaches in the 19th century to cut heather and broom for charcoal production.
Other proof of man’s incursion is less subtle. The fires which ravaged the -interior in 2016, the fruit of an errant spark, still cast a spell – trees and bushes turned to clawed hands. But there is a weird beauty to them, these silver ghosts. Fabio smiles. “They look even more dramatic when the mist comes around them.”
When PR1.2 hands over to PR1 for the last gasp upward, the show really starts. The west coast wobbles in the heat; the east holds a line of green against the ocean’s white-flecked vastness; the north revels in remoteness, villages Sao Jorge and Ponta Delgada perched above the abyss.
Only the south is a refusenik, Funchal lost to cloud and the obstacle of Pico das Torres, Madeira’s second tallest mountain (6,079ft). Fabio takes a breath that seems to go on forever. “I’ve seen this view many times,” he says. “I never tire of it.”
Our altitude is apparent, again, as we descend – the wind suddenly mean and persistent, as if attempting to throttle Pico Ruivo in a fit of jealousy, or dislodge us from its side in an act of petty violence.
But by the time I am back in Santana, summer has reasserted itself – the -terrace at hotel-restaurant Quinta do Furao dozing in warmth. A mushroom risotto and a poncha cocktail (rum, honey and lemon) appear; the property’s vineyard whispers -gently beyond.
Thirty miles to the north-east, Porto Santo waves hello. This vision in horizon-level haze is a rebuttal of a second popular misconception about Madeira – the belief that it is an island, not an -archipelago.
By the time I have finished lunch, I am back to the first misconception – its overlooked cragginess. Although it is not just visitors who fail to take note of this essential fact.
It seems remarkable that mountain-biking company Free Ride Madeira was only set up in 2011 – and, even then, only after three local riding aficionados realised they had tackled lots of biking trails in mainland Europe, but neglected the magnificent terrain to be found on their doorstep.
Riding with them – negotiating a tricky route which unravels below the hamlet of Poiso, 10 miles north of Funchal – is an exercise in bumps, bangs and bruises. When I fall off for the third time, I glance back up the slope, and console myself with the thought that it is easier to go down than it would be to go up. At least, it looks that way. I will be dissuaded of this notion the following morning.
Nuno Freitas reveals little when he picks me up just after breakfast. It quickly becomes evident that the day will present challenges.
The clues are there as we approach the north-west coast, where the island becomes almost entirely inhospitable to traffic – the road being forced through tunnels, and veering so close to the Atlantic near Seixal that spray splashes the camber.
But then, spray will be a dominant feature of the next five hours. “On -Madeira, people will walk many miles in the levadas [man-made irrigation channels] to see the waterfalls,” Nuno says, with a grin. “But today, we will walk in the waterfalls”.
He isn’t joking – although the key word is less “walk” than “abseil”. The walking comes as we set off, 40 minutes through the laurel forest of Madeira Natural Park (the biological reserve that covers almost two-thirds of the island), to a spot where the Ribeira das Voltas begins a crash course down 10 waterfalls of varying sizes but similar degrees of mossy treachery.
I have to learn fast; not just how to feed the rope through my harness, or where to put my boots as the river buffets my face and arms – but that peering at my feet for a preview of what is coming is something to be avoided.
In the case of the seventh drop – a 92ft giant – ignorance and denial are bliss. Each lurch for the bottom feels like it must be the last, only for flat ground to elude me for another few nervy seconds. By the time I am finally gazing up from the base of this colossal cascade, I am exhausted – but energised.
That, you would think, would be enough spray for one day. But the combination of water and adrenalin is addictive.
Having dried off and returned south, I spot the unheated pool – a basic bowl of concrete underneath the cliff – with which the Hotel Albatroz likes to “tempt” its guests. This property is a lonely soul – pitched, by itself, near the airport; planes bugging the heavens above.
But even the growl of a jet-engine cannot compete with the roar of the ocean as I dip into the shallow end – the Atlantic frothing on the other side of the barrier, as if my impudence at swimming just out of its reach has taunted it to fury. Due east, the -horizon is empty – and the sense of -isolation, again, feels gloriously -appropriate.
Getting there
British Airways (0344 4930787; ba.com) serves Madeira from Gatwick from ￡90 return, while easyJet (0330 365 5000; easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick, Manchester and Bristol.
Staying there
Hotel Albatroz (00351 291 520 290; albatrozhotel.com) offers double rooms from ￡114.
Quinta do Furao (00351 291 570 100; quintadofurao.com) has doubles from €160 (￡142).
Activities
Madeira Adventure Kingdom (00351 918 080 557; madeira-adventure-kingdom.com) offers a one-day guided hike up Pico Ruivo and Pico do Arieiro from €37 per person.
Free Ride Madeira (00351 925 977 046; freeridemadeira.com) runs full-day mountain-biking tours of the island from €65 per person (from €75 a head including bike hire).
Madeira Experience Tours (00351 968 272 187; madeiraexperiencetours.com) offers five-hour waterfall abseiling excursions from €75 per person, including hotel pick-up.
Further information at madeiraallyear.com; visitmadeira.pt; visitportugal.com.