Santo da Serra to Camacha

Yesterday we were trying to decide whether to continue using buses or to switch to a hire car. After today’s jaunt the decision was so, so easy.

We left after an early breakfast and walked down to the beachfront to pick up the number 20 SAM bus which would take us to the start of the walk. It was scheduled for 9:45 and arrived pretty much on the dot. It was fairly full so we ended up somewhere around the middle of the bus, usually the most stable position.

The slightly quizzical look soon changed.

It was horrendous. The bus service in Madeira is, quite correctly, aimed at the local population which means that tourists aiming to actually get somewhere have to put up with a fair number of stops en route. In yesterday’s return journey there were 66 stops in roughly 20km of travel. Today there were more like 100 in what turned out to be over 90 minutes of bone shaking, vomit inducing nightmare.

An hour after starting we arrived in Machico where everyone apart from us got off. Machico is 20 km to the east of Funchal which suggests an average speed of 20km per hour. Nope. Half the time we were actually stationary, with the remainder split equally between accelerating, decelerating and swerving violently. It took a further 30 minutes to creep up furtively on Santo de Serra, never actually heading for it, always pretending to be going somewhere else until pouncing when two km north.

So decision made. We’ll book a car this evening.

So let’s talk about the walk.

Not terribly interesting as it turned out. 14km of relatively flat forest walks alongside the levadas, ie man made cuts in the landscape intended to facilitate water flow from the highlands to the coast.

The one we followed today was empty and full of leaves and in many cases larger objects such as boulders and uprooted trees.

Walking through a forest is always delightful and recent research suggests that blood pressure and anxiety levels generally benefit from a sojourn amongst trees. I agree so here are a couple of photos of trees.

There are often tunnels to be navigated when following the levadas and walkers are advised to carry torches. There was one small example on today’s route.

Surprisingly, given the warm weather there were quite long sections of mud, churned up by forestry vehicles harvesting the occasional dead tree but in the main the route was dry and pleasant underfoot. I’m using a brand new pair of supernova trainers with white soles and I’m desperately trying to keep them clean.

Here’s another woodland image to keep the anxiety levels down.

We left the forest earlier than I’d have liked and spent the remainder of the walk on relatively quiet B roads interspersed with the screech of brakes as one by one, a numerous series of buses swerved past.

Despite yesterday’s experience we took a couple of shortcuts down and later up a very steep series of steps cut into the mountainside.

We got to Camacha sooner than I’d expected, looked at the only restaurant in the visit, declined, got gently relieved of €20 by a local down and out and caught a bus back to Funchal.

This journey really put the final nail in the bus taker’s coffin. The driver had urgent business in Funchal and took us there as rapidly as gravity would permit. God only knows how he made it through turn after turn without losing ground contact with his inner wheels. We got off earlier than scheduled, walked to the hotel and demanded a car. A Fiat panda will duly arrive at the hotel at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning. Alleluia.

Dorothy looked up best places to eat on trip advisor and we ate a stunning tuna loin with fries washed down with a really nice glass of wine in a small tapas restaurant outside the marketplace.