17:36, back at the hotel, showered and ready to rock and roll. Hardly, but some food would be nice.

It’s been an odd sort of day. Ludicrously steep roads which really shouldn’t exist. The insanely profligate expenditure of oil and petrol to create and then maintain houses on vertiginous mountain slopes is breathtaking. Consequences include polluted air and a fat, unfit population who drive or are driven everywhere.

Mr angry person today I’m afraid.

The drive up to the car park at Rabaçal was seriously unpleasant. Apart from the initial ‘motorway’ section it was rare to get out of first gear. Today I’ve driven up slopes that I’m simply astonished that we got up. I would guess 1:1 or 45 degrees, though it’s hard to believe that’s even possible. If anyone wants to start a business on Madeira, it’s got to be replacement clutches. Everyone holds their car on the clutch repeatedly, the noise is awful. Most cars are badly scraped, drivers stop on a whim, they accelerate and decelerate aggressively and have little or no courtesy.

Rant over. Let’s talk about the walk instead.

Today’s little jaunt was along one of the levadas, the small 3’ wide concrete km long water troughs that bring water from the mountains to the coastal regions.

These run for many km and were initially constructed before the advent of petrol powered machinery which is incredibly impressive. They run along the side of the hills by which I really mean vertical cliffs. They must have been dug out of the volcanic rock with pick and shovels in the most inaccessible places. Genuinely astonishing.

It’s difficult to capture in a photograph just how steep a slope we’re walking on, but six inches or so from Dorothy’s feet, the earth plunges perhaps 200’ straight down. Not only must they have dug out the levada, they must also have somehow constructed an embankment on the solid face of the cliff to allow workers to walk and work.

What is also astonishing is the sheer effrontery of plants to somehow make a home on such a slope.

Every now and again there’s a sharper drop for the levada to negotiate and here we have some steps constructed alongside.

After a few km we came to a small pool and waterfall.

It took a short while to negotiate passage across only to find ourselves on the faintest of paths through bracken and gorse bushes for the next km or so.

We finally emerged onto a wide ridge.

We made our way through the bracken and up to the peak in the distance where we took our first selfie.

The air was warm, the sun was shining and in the far distance some paragliders were practising.

Slightly closer to us than the paragliders was the following construction.

The route description suggested a walk down to a lake before climbing again to our starting point. Not so.

We followed a new levada constructed in the last few months to the ‘lake’,

now to be seen in all its glory.

Ugh! Necessary I’m sure to keep the local population hydrated but still impressively ugly.

The remainder of the walk was across an industrial wasteland.

Thankfully, the paragliders had been flying only metres from the car.

I reckon it’s time to unpack Andrew’s paraglider from our attic and to get flying.

The return journey to Funchal was far more pleasant than the drive out. That said, my periformis was giving me the strangest sensations all the while down. The last time I really experienced that was sitting on the 10m board in the swimming pool willing myself to dive.

We picked up two hitchhikers en route, a late middle aged Swiss chap and his wife who had missed the last bus. We discussed Brexit and other uncontroversial topics. They very kindly gave us a bar of Swiss chocolate, which I can only assume they carry in vast quantities for just such occasions.

Time for dinner.

Bon voyage.

Addendum. We’ve just returned from dinner, superb food. Finalised with a gratis glass of Madeira wine each. (Dorothy drank both).

We chatted to the two ladies who served us. I particularly needed to ask why the bar was adorned with 818 tins of sardines in a random pattern.

Unfortunately the lady I asked hadn’t been working here at the time of installation so couldn’t tell me. We did however chat about conditions on Madeira and it seems that life is hard here. Average salaries are indeed around €600 per month out of which they have to cover food, fuel, housing and health costs. Health care isn’t free, operations etc have to be at least partially paid for. Children are in school from 8 am until 6:30 pm whilst both parents invariably have to work. Life is a continual grind with little or no time for family.

It’s the twenty first century and it’s time that every human being asserted their right to a dignified life with rights to food, accommodation and useful work. ‘From everyone according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. And those needs are universal and clear. To the barricades, comrades!