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Walking on
Exmoor and the Quantock Hills |
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Madeira The Janela valley 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): All
text, photographs and maps © Stan Lester 2019-2025 |