Detour #143: The Mad Mountains of Madeira, Portugal
If you’re a Detourist and not just a tourist then avoid the crowded coast and head for the hills of Madeira reckons Simon Heptinstall.
For those who’ve never been, Madeira may seem to be something to do with cake, wine and Ronaldo. In fact the Portuguese island off North Africa is actually a favourite winter-sun destination for mature European travellers. It’s sunny but hardly has a beach. So it’s more golf clubs than nightclubs, more swaying palms than swaying hips.
Classic visits involve tea on the terrace at Reid’s Hotel or browsing souvenir straw hats in Funchal’s tourist market. As usual I was bored within an hour of landing.
A chat to a local photographer revealed there was an easy two-pronged solution to my Madeira madness: (a) hire a car and (b) head inland. Rental is cheap but my advice is: spend extra for a couple of notches up from the smallest category. Where we’re going, you’re going to need a bit more power. I opted for ‘compact elite’ category and got a 115bhp 1.6 Golf.
Plenty of visitors realise there’s not much to do, so they hire cars. Most of them take the easiest drive – around the coastline. Admittedly there are some very scenic bits along the north coast but generally too much time is spent dawdling between rows of hotels stuck behind tour buses.
Instead, with local guide Eduado’s help, I found that the very best routes all leave the coast and enter the wild Planet of the Apes-type world in the middle of the island. I don’t mean that Helena Bonham Carter will jump out of the bushes in a gorilla suit but that the volcanic scenery is amazingly alien and other-worldly.
Even among these cloud-filled canyons of steep red rock draped with exotic vegetation and fringed by jagged pinnacles of sediment, you need a bit of savvy to discover the best bits. You can accidentally find yourself on shiny new coast-to-coast roads with long impressive tunnels straight under the most wiggly, challenging mountains. For us dedicated Detourists that kind of defeats the object.
So beware that the main north-to-south coast-to-coast route, the VE4 from Ribeira Brava to Sao Vicente, is now mostly flat tarmac and tunnel. Look instead for the old road, ER228, then roll up your sleeves and get ready for serious arm twirling.
To some locals it must be an annoying old-fashioned road slaloming round the some of the craziest mountains you’ll see outside of Star Trek Series One, but to me it’s an amazing road.
Expect a non-stop battle of you against the road, braking and accelerating, changing up and down, twisting and turning the wheels. You soon abandon any attempt to find the best line through corners, there’s just too much else to do. And all the time you’re surrounded by lush green spikes of ancient volcanos sliced by gorges no-one has ever explored leading to distant triangles of sparkling sea.
The ER228 was once the main cross-island route, so the width and surface are decent and there are plenty of laybys for pre-tunnel tourists to stop and snap landscapes on their Instamatics and Box Brownies. It may all be those young folk with smartphones and Insta now but if you don’t stop and take some sort of shots at the best layby, The Mirador de Terre Grande, there’s something seriously wrong with you.
After a day on these winding hairpins, precipitous drops and wow-worthy views, Madeira suddenly doesn’t seem like your worst holiday mistake.
But is that your lot? Do you have to spend the next six days driving to and fro on the ER228? No, don’t worry, I found that the old winding trunk road is just the start of it…
To go further into the nether reaches of the island you need to find a decent road map. The good old Michelin one is great. Or, if you must be digital, really, really zoom in on Google maps, although it’s still hard to see all the tiny tracks twisting through the mountains.
For starters try the ER103 from Funchal, turning through the dank laurel forests of Ribeiro Frio Natural Park to the whitewashed village of Faial, perched on steep green cliffs around a tiny semi-circular harbour facing into the Atlantic.
Then tackle the ridiculous wiggly line that marks the route of the Via Ruivo Pico Antonio Fernandes from Santana up to the spectacular mountain of Pico Ruivo. Enjoy the views from the road and if you are energetic the walking trail from here still haunts me. It’s the most spectacular and scary path cut into cliffs and mountain faces.
Probably best of all, take the road to the highest point on the island, the 1820m/6,000ft Pico do Areeiro. Find the ER107 from Funchal, corkscrewing through lush forest gorges, up into deep green canyons, then curving between mountainsides and up onto a high rocky plateau. Most days you’ll be above the clouds here, peering down like an airline passenger on a cottonwool sea punctuated by dark mountainous teeth.
The last stretch across the dry, sunny plateau is an excellent driving road, smooth and wide with great sweeping corners and amazing views.
At this point, Detour drivers will be very glad I advised them to pay a bit more at the car hire desk – and are not gasping up these high-altitude inclines and chugging around the hairpins in a tiny asthmatic Picanto, Aygo or Smart ForTwo.
Words Simon Heptinstall Twitter | Instagram
Photography Shutterstock