Walking on Exmoor and the Quantock Hills

Walking on Exmoor and the Quantock Hills

Madeira has been my favourite walking location outside the UK for over 25 years. This Atlantic island is sometimes called 'the garden of the Atlantic' or 'God's floating flowerpot', but beyond the warm and flower-filled south coast it is an expanse of mountain and moorland. It is about the same size as the Exmoor and Quantocks region and there are some parallels - high moorland, deep valleys, ancient woods and steep sea-cliffs - but it rises nearly four times higher with some serious mountains and dramatic landscapes. Much of the walking is alongside levadas, channels built for irrigation and to transport water from the wet north and centre to the drier south. Some of these are bucolic and floriferous, a few cross moorland, but some cling to mountainsides and are only suitable for walkers with a good head for heights. There's also pleasant strolling around towns, villages and gardens, along with a very good bus service that makes it easy to plan linear walks.

An update

Since I first visited Madeira in 1998 it has become steadily busier with tourism. This is particularly noticeable on popular walking routes, such as those at Rabaçal, Queimadas and Pico do Aréeiro. On my first visit to Rabaçal we encountered only a few other people. Twenty-five years later we were squeezing past large groups of walkers on the narrow paths, and though the place is still magical it has lost much of its original atmosphere. Sadly, the amount of litter and general damage has also increased. As a result the Madeiran government has recently introduced a book-in-advance payment system for its waymarked trails, as well as charges for the most popular car parks. I’m of two minds about this, as on the one hand it creates a precedent of paying for access to the countryside, but on the other the trails are used heavily by visitors and it is unfair that the cost of maintaining them should all fall on local residents. I haven’t been to Madeira since the new system has been in place, but both the booking system (the charges are not large in themselves) and the crowds are discouraging me from revisiting some of the routes that I have enjoyed in the past.

Here's my mini-guide to the island, last updated in 2023 (we last visited Funchal in 2019, so please treat restaurant recommendations etc. with caution):

Notes from a Warm Island

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