Phew! Today was intended to be a gentle stroll along the levadas from Camacha to Monte. Monte as its name suggests, is a village on the slope of the mountain overlooking Funchal. It’s the end point of the gondola from Funchal and the starting point of the gondola to the botanical gardens. We took both gondolas last Monday.

We left the car in a parking space near to the hotel last night so took a bus to Camacha, a small town some 20km from Funchal and the end point of a walk earlier this week.

After coffee we headed towards the start of our first levada. The huge advantage of walking alongside the levadas is that by definition you’re always walking on level or nearly level ground. The disadvantage is that to do so you have to follow the contour of the mountains wherever they go and boy do they meander. Furthermore, since they’re built on the side of what are often sheer rock faces, they’re very definitely not for those of a nervous disposition. Today’s walk was a 3 on the vertigo scale according to our guide book, interesting.

Let’s allow the photographs to tell the story.

There were many places where large trees had fallen, usually burned, across the path. There was always room to pass, though sometimes a little awkwardly.

The weather was glorious, the temperature was hovering around 23 degrees and the sky was absolutely clear.

There’s a lot of evidence of deforestation over this last section. I’m not sure whether it’s deliberate feeling of trees or clearing those that has been burned in the fire of 2016.

I suspect the former, not terribly pretty.

According to the guide book whose waypoints we were following carefully, there was an attractive but precipitous section shortly before arriving in Monte. There was a shorter alternative route but the longer route seemed more scenic.

As it turned out this was a dreadful mistake, especially on behalf of the guide book’s authors. The route was extremely precipitous, with little or no protection from 600’ drops inches from our feet. On this section, the levada had been cut into into rock face and a very narrow, no more than two feet wide path made alongside. There were long sections when we simply had to balance carefully on crumbling stonework as the cliff face dropped away. I’m no stranger to high places but this was worse than I’ve had experience of.

We arrived at the point where the levada disappeared into the mountain, apparently only to emerge over a km later. The guide book told us to take the path down into the valley that we’d find immediately adjacent to the tunnel.

Except that there was no path. We learned later that the authorities had closed this whole section due to the deaths of two walkers somewhere along the last km or so. Apparently unlike us, they hadn’t kept their balance and had plunged into the valley.

We had no choice other than to retrace our steps.

Dorothy was incredible. She looked straight ahead, moved carefully and 20 minutes later we were able to choose the lower, alternative route where we found this sign telling us that the route we had taken had indeed been closed. Unfortunately, the route we had taken had bypassed these steps some three hundred feet higher otherwise we would have avoided my piriformis somersaulting through my pelvis.

Once on the alternative path, we quickly made our way to Monte.

There’s little at Monte apart from a couple of restaurants and one dwelling. We arrived around 3 o’clock so managed to have a late lunch, a prawn salad each, a glass of red wine, some coffee and excellent it was too.

We were somewhat tired and could have taken a taxi or a bus or even the gondola back to Funchal but there was a well designated walk back down through the valley which came out close to our hotel. Which we took.

Again, not such a good idea. The descent was very steep, not unsafe, but hard on the knees.

We lost height very quickly.

Before the path levelled out some 250m above Funchal where although the drop was still very unpleasant, the path was wide enough not to warrant any concern.

The final descent into Funchal was along steps past houses perched on the hillside. According to the data we dropped 220m in roughly the same distance, typical for Madeira.

We came out close to the carpark where a lovely mural of a whale is to be seen (see earlier post). This mural was on the opposite side.

We spent much of our final evening sitting in the hotel bar chatting to the lady bartender and looking towards the marina.

Whilst waiting for the bus next morning I noticed more of the odd mural that I’d seen from the bar.

I really do like these little touches. You find these everywhere in Spain and Portugal.

Bon voyage