Maderia
 

Right folks

I fly out to Maderia in April 2009 for a week.
(Helping parentals with their retirement property hunt)

Looking to rent a little scoot or 125 while i'm out there.
Been to Maderia before, and did alot of the mainstream tourist stuff then

This time round i want to do something a bit different?
What are the must see spots?
Undiscovered beaches?
Fantastic stretches of road?
Sights to be seen? Etc

Any further info is muchly appreciated

Matthew

If you have a Garmin GPS, some kind soul has made a Mapsource compatible map.

Have a good trip,
Stephan

Undiscovered beaches? This is an easy one. There are no beaches. Full stop.

Actually thats not quite true ... there is a small pair of artificial beaches hemmed in my huge square concrete blocks at Calheta, but thats it. Madeira is characterised by huge rock cliffs that plunge to the sea pretty much all the way round. The only bit of even vaguely flat ground is a plateau 3500 feet above sea level in the western interior.

Think you are better off hiring a 400cc bike rather than a scooter due to the steep nature of the terrain.

Must sees ... hmmm the lookout high above Curral de Freiras, the road up to Arieiro (6000 feet) ... and theres a nice steep narrow road down from the plateau to Madalena do Mar.

viamichelin.co.uk has good road maps of Madeira.

one last thing ... I love the prawns you can get there (up to a foot long) and then there's the very tasty "scabbardfish" (espada).

I'm not sure if I'd rent a bike of any sort there. The roads are dangerous in my eyes and the locals are not used to bikes.

When I visited Madeira I planned to rent a bike aswell, but all the locals I spoke with before the trip adviced not to. I quickly understood why when I arrived... :angel: