Funchal Travel Guide:
First of all, let’s dispel the biggest myth about this group of Portuguese islands sat out in the Atlantic…Madeira cake doesn’t come from Madeira.
Madeira cake hasn’t even got Maderia wine in it, which I wouldn’t describe as wine anyway. It tastes more like sherry.
The only connection Madeira cake has to Madeira is that the Victorians invented it to be something less sweet to go with their very sweet Madeira wine. In the mid-1800s this tipple was all the rage in the UK. Indeed, it was the Aperol Spritz of its day. That’s not the case now because, as I say, Madeira wine tastes like sherry. The only people that still buy sherry are those in the SAGA demographic that can’t taste proper wine anymore.
Admittedly, I am a little biased against sherry as I have a long-standing dislike of the stuff. As a fourteen-year-old I got very drunk on it. It was the only bottle in my parents’ drinks cabinet that was up for stealing by me and my mates. It burnt like hell when it inevitably came right back up.
I can still recall it coming out my nose, as well as my mouth. I think I lost my sense of smell for weeks after that. My nasal passages were haunted by the lingering stench of sherry. When a complimentary glass of Madeira wine was presented to me after a meal in Madeira, I thought it was just a normal wine and I knocked it back. That’s when I found out it tastes like sherry. My gagging could be heard half way across the Atlantic.
Anyway, that is how Madeira cake came about. It was a Victorian concoction to make their Madeira wine taste less foul. However, not everyone knows their cakey history like I do. The Madeirans probably get fed up with cruise-ship passengers asking where they can buy Madeira cake.
For one thing, the Madeirans have their own national cake of which they are rightly proud of. It has been around a lot longer than Maderia cake, five hundred years or so, and it’s called Bolo de mel. Rather than being an insipid spongey affair, this is a very dark and dense cake made with molasses or honey. It’s more like a hard-baked brownie.
I had some Bolo de mel at a café in Maderia, with vanilla ice-cream, and it is quite delicious. It’s very chewy though, and not advised for wearers of dental plates. Fishing your false teeth out of a pool of melted ice cream with a spoon is not a good look.
Madeira comprises a number of islands, although only two of them are inhabited. One of these is the main island, confusingly called ‘Madeira’, and the other one, Porto Santo, is just north east of Madeira. The remaining uninhabited islands are called the Desertas Islands and the Savagery Islands. Neither of which sound particularly appealing, so I suggest you give them a wide berth.
Although, having said that, these names do sound very much like they’ve been created to be deliberately off-putting. If you ask me this is suspicious. Maybe you should insist on a visit, just to see what the Madeirans are hiding.
I rented an apartment in Funchal, the capital of Madeira, which is situated on the south of the main island. I wasn’t the only one there, half the population of Madeira live in Funchal. It is also the most popular place for tourists to stay. Therefore, the permanent population of Funchal is swollen by holidaymakers, predominantly British or German, plus a daytime influx of multinational cruise ship passengers. The latter tend to have a fairly fast turnaround as there appears to be a different gargantuan ship in the harbour every day. I think Madeira acts as a bus-stop for the cruise business.
The island’s holiday trade benefits from Madeira having a relatively pleasant temperature all year round. Highs in the summer are an un-sweltering 28 degrees and lows in the winter are a clement 19 degrees. This comfortable temperature range is due to temperate seas, cooling breezes and the islands being on a level with Morocco in Africa.
So, unlike Blackpool, there’s no need for Madeira to put on a gaudy lightshow from September onwards to compensate for blizzards, freezing winds and eyefuls of sand whipped up from the beach. So, Madeira sounds like an ideal place to visit at any time of year.
However, the main island would probably trade all of the next century’s Bolo de mel production for some of that gloriously golden Blackpool sand. This is because there are hardly any beaches on Maderia. Something that might be viewed as a handicap for an economy reliant on tourism. The small beaches that do exist are either black volcanic sand, black volcanic pebbles or black volcanic rocks. All very black and volcanic.
The reason for this is that Madeira is indeed a volcano, a massive one. Don’t worry though, you will be quite safe when visiting, it hasn’t gone pop for 6,500 years. If you were to look at this Madeiran volcano from the seabed it is a very steep-sided mountain that is over two and a half miles high. The very top peaks are Maderia and its islands.
This means you don’t have to go far off the coast for the sea to plummet into an abyss. It actually goes down to the same depth as the resting place of the Titanic. By that, I mean the few fragments that are still on the sea-bed and not touring the world in lucrative exhibitions.
Having only recently discovered this bathymetric fact about Madeira puts a different light on the rather pleasant whale-watching trip I did in an inflatable speed-boat. If one of those whales had got a bit miffed at us disturbing its lunch, and took a bite out of the boat, we’d have been in big trouble. It wasn’t going to be a case of me rolling my trousers up and paddling back to dry land. We’d all have been sucked down into the deep, never to be seen again.
Like the Titanic, the wreck of our boat could have become the subject of a deep-sea recovery mission in a hundred years’ time. Although I doubt whether my barnacle-encrusted phone, wallet or emergency tube of Anusol would fetch the same price as a Titanic violin.
This steep-sided volcano-mountain possibly explains why there are no substantial beaches on the main island. There’s nothing for the sand to sit on, with the coastline falling away so quickly. However, there is always a silver lining and the lack of beaches does tend to deter the bucket and spade brigade. The holidaymakers you get in Madeira tend to be older, child-free and more middle-class.
If you want a proper sandy beach then the smaller island of Porto Santo has one of the best in Europe. It’s 9km long, and no doubt full of noisy kids. So, best avoided.
I did get to see some of the main island’s meagre black beaches on a six-mile walk along the coast from Funchal to the bay of Camara de Lobos. To make up for the shortage of beaches a number of resort-hotels have attempted to create their own. They’ve done this by building lidos with sunbeds and swimming pools right next to the sea. The lidos integrate white painted concrete with the natural black rocks and boulders. The lidos are also surrounded by railings, to keep the riff-raff out. This makes them look even more like penguin enclosures at zoos.
Rather than seeing any pleasing beaches, the coastal walk was more notable for the spectacular views from the top of some steep climbs along the way. It was also notable for me forgetting to bring some sun cream and a hat. As a result, I was struggling with a spot of sunburn as there was bugger-all shade on this permanently south-facing hike.
I did find a local shop but sun-cream was retailing at an outrageous 25 Euros. I could have bought three beers and a sandwich for that, and I already had a bottle of it back in my apartment, so I went for a cheaper option.
My sensible budget-buy was a 6 Euro sun-block intended for children. It looked somewhat like a glue-stick, presumably to enable easy application onto a squawking and wriggling child. The boxes came in different colours and I thought they all said ‘transparent’ on them. However, my Portuguese isn’t that good. I probably know more Swahili than I do Portuguese. Labda najua Kiswahili zaidi kuliko Kireno…if you don’t believe me.
I plumped for a blue box of this kiddy sun-block and I applied it to every inch of my burning face, with some gusto. It seemed to work and I continued my walk. It was only when I went into a toilet and saw my face in a mirror that I realised why there had been so much sniggering from passers-by. Transparent my arse, Papa Smurf was staring back at me.
It could have been worse; I could have chosen an orange one. Some of the more MAGA orientated Americans from the cruise-ships might have thought I was taking the piss out of their president. The green one would have come in handy for St Patrick’s Day though. As for the black one, that would have got me into all sorts of trouble, possibly even deported.
When I’d started out on this mammoth walk, back in Funchal’s harbour, I’d spotted a museum called ‘CR7’. As I used to work in Croydon, I was quite familiar with this postcode. Croydon is one of the UK’s biggest shit-holes, and the CR7 part is buried deep within the bowels of the hole. CR7 can be a bit rough to say the least.
Quite why there would be a museum dedicated to it was a bit of a mystery. Perhaps it was to remind all the British ex-pats in Madeira as to why they’d made the made the move from the UK?
It transpired that this museum was not a celebration of shit-holery, but an exhibition dedicated to Madeira’s most famous son, Cristiano Ronaldo.
For those of you that call it ‘soccer’, he is a half-decent footballer who famously wears/wore the number seven shirt for Portugal. I have used the present and past tense because, at the time or writing, he’s thrown his toys out of the pram after a souring of relations with the international team manager.
The name of the CR7 museum in Funchal is, therefore, formed from his initials and his present/past shirt number. The connection between ‘CR7’ and Ronaldo and had totally passed me by, even though I consider myself a football fan. Although, if I was a buyer of designer goods, I would have known that CR7 is also Ronaldo’s own merchandising brand. It appears on everything from after-shave to underpants. Or both at the same time, I suppose, if you wanted your crotch to smell nice for a prospective sexual partner. Be careful though, squirting perfume down there might sting a bit.
That’s as much as I am going to say about the pants and pong peddler Cristiano Ronaldo. I have my opinions, but I’ll keep them to myself. He has godlike status in Madeira and I’d like to go back there one day. I certainly had to be very careful about making any heretical comments when I went to a football match in Funchal. I would have been hanged from the grandstand if I’d mooted that I thought he was nought but a petulant prima donna.
Oops, I didn’t mean to do that. That’s me either banned from Madeira or, if I am allowed in, I’ll be marked down for an internal search at Funchal airport.
The football game I went to see in Madeira was Funchal’s C.S. Maritimo against FC Porto. The visiting team were unbeaten and riding high at the top of the table, so it was a sell-out game. Thousands of Porto fans had come over from the Portuguese mainland, which is 700 miles away. Madeira really is that far from Portugal. Therefore, it’s not as if the fans could get a supporters’ coach or a train, they all had to fly in. That requires some dedication. I moan about a ten-minute walk to see my local non-league team, especially if it’s raining.
With so many away fans there was a feisty atmosphere in the ground with drums banging, non-stop chanting and huge flags being waved. These are the types of flags that are so big they block the view for anybody in the thirty rows of seats behind them. Nobody seemed too bothered though. Portuguese football seems to be much more about the crowd having a good time rather than what’s happening on the pitch. I have to say it was all quite jolly, and a distinct improvement on the rather tepid atmosphere at most UK games.
As was expected, the in-form visiting team won the game. So, I presume the streets of Funchal were spared any angry rampaging by drunken hooligans, intent on rioting and inflicting grievous bodily harm. For that, you need to pay a visit to CR7 (the Croydon one).
Another highlight of my trip was taking a cable-car up a hill. There are a lot of very steep hills in Funchal and if you can avoid walking up one of them then all the better. The ride is also very scenic, so despite dangling precariously off a wire you can sit back and enjoy the view.
Well, you could if there weren’t six of you crammed into the car and you’ve drawn the short straw with some of them being English. If they were all foreigners then I’d have had the language barrier to enable me to enjoy the ride in peace. Nope, once they’d clocked that I was also English, they felt obliged to start a conversation. By the end of the ride, I knew where they lived, what jobs they did, what their names were, and even the names of their extended family and pets. Still, it came in handy for a spot of identity fraud when I got home.
Most of the tourists that take the cable ride up the hill are going to come straight back down in one the famous Monte sledges. These are wicker-work toboggans with wooden runners. They are piloted down the steep streets by a combination of gravity and two men wearing straw boater hats. As gondolas are to Venice, then these are the tourist-magnet transports of Funchal.
They’ve been around since the 19th century, apparently starting out as a quick way down the hill for commuters into the centre of town. I’d take that with a pinch of salt, I think they’ve always been for tourists. Don’t forget that these cumbersome things have to make their way back up that 2km hill. On the return leg of the journey gravity is going to become the enemy. In the days before stacking them on a truck they were carried up the hill, one by one, on the backs of the sledge-drivers. The whole exercise would have been a lot of hard work just to transport a local clutching a briefcase, a packed lunch and a cheap day-ticket.
Those tourists that aren’t going to hurtle back down the hill in a sledge are probably going to the Madeira Botanical Garden. Getting there requires another trip in a different cable-car. This ride is a lot more scenic than the first and thankfully much quieter. I just had a Swedish couple not to talk to. The garden sits at 300m and has over 2,500 plants from all over the world. The elevation and the favourable temperatures allowing everything from bananas to cacti to grow there.
Such gardens may not be to everyone’s taste. However, as you get older, they start to weave their spell on you. It will be a few years before I have to start drinking sherry, but I already enjoy a good botanical garden. If you are younger than me, then there are two other reasons for visiting.
Firstly, there are the views. From way up here you can look down on the João Gomes Bridge, the tallest bridge in Madeira at 140m above the valley floor. It carries the busy ER101 coastal road and it is not somewhere you’d want to go over the edge in an accident, unless you were driving Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
The same perils apply to most of the roads in Madeira. They all tend to be high altitude, very winding and definitely not suitable for English drivers. We Brits would be constantly fuming at the locals beeping their horns and driving too fast on these dangerous roads. Especially as we are pootling along at a safe and sensible five miles per hour.
The second reason to visit this lofty garden are the lizards, the friendliest I have ever come across. There were quite a few of them scuttling around in the garden’s café. I discovered that you could tempt them closer with a few custard tart crumbs. It was all quite entertaining, until word got around. The early visitors quickly told their mates that the tourist at Table 14 was being generous with his Pastel de nata (the lizards only speak Portuguese). Before long every lizard in Madeira had come to say hello (olá) and the café had to be closed.
Becoming the Lizard Man of Madeira was the highlight of my short break, but I’m sure there is plenty more to see in Madeira that I didn’t have time for. It is a lovely island and should Brexit ever get overturned it is somewhere I could retire to.
Madeira has comfortable temperatures, football, nice cake, no wasps, amazing scenery, very few noisy kids, convivial people (and convivial lizards) and the whole island has only got one authorised cockroach. I got to see the latter just the once, at a seafront bar, but I presume in his official capacity he is obliged to get around a bit.
As my brief visit to Madeira neared its end, the vivid blue sun-block on my face had started to fade to a lighter hue. I was no longer being mistaken for a member of the Blue Man Group, but I was still attracting attention. I couldn’t sit down in public places for very long without concerned locals asking me if I needed an ambulance calling.
I was also lucky to make it home. As I boarded the Easyjet plane a steward said that I not only appeared to contravene their ‘fitness to travel’ policy but I also clashed dreadfully with their orange colour scheme.
The situation was resolved when I promised not to have a heart attack on the flight. Should I go back on my word, and to avoid the plane being diverted, I was also happy to sign a waiver for no resuscitation and my body to be stored in a toilet until we got to Gatwick.