Madeira

A little earlier in the year, Beryl & Ian Niven, some friends from Scotland who we had met on a previous holiday, invited us to stay in their apartment in Madeira. We jumped at the chance because it is an island that I have always wanted to visit and so, on the 26 August we flew out from Bristol to Funchal for a week. Very early on I found that my camera would not work and so I bought a 35mm disposable to try and record our stay. The results were not very good and so I apologise for the standard reproduced for this post.

Hotel Regency Palace Pool

Hotel Regency Palace from the Pool

We spent quite a lot of time around the pool, relaxing and chatting and in the evenings went out and ate in different cafes/restaurants, some good, some not, some quick and one, very very slow.
I was not feeling very well one day so the others went off to Funchal to have a look around, but we did manage another trip on which I was present. During this visit, we managed a coffee in a floating restaurant as shown.

On the Sunday that we were there, we hired a taxi and went on a seven hour tour of the west of the island. This was a very instructive trip after we had stopped looking at the inside of churches! As most people know, Madeira is very mountainous and the cliffs rise almost vertically as shown in the photograph below.

Towards the top of the mountains sits the famous Madeira mist, which provides the island with its water supply. It is very difficult to photograph but the accompanying photo might give some idea.

The mist is the very white patch above Ian & Maria's heads.

We toured the North West of the island and visited a couple of very pleasant villages, in one of which we had some lunch. We then headed back via that part of the North coast where there are loads of waterfalls that must be almost a thousand feet in height in places.

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole of our visit and think that we would like to go again and do some more touring. Only time will tell.