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Algarve - a different bit of Portugal | Tenerife - a similar island in the Atlantic | Fuerteventura - a different island in the Atlantic
Algarve - a different bit of Portugal | Tenerife - a similar island in the Atlantic | Fuerteventura - a different island in the Atlantic
 | The key words for Madeira are
vertiginous
The man in this photo (sadly not mine) is walking along a path little more than 30cm (1 ft) wide.
If he were to step to his left, he would go into
the 40 cm deep, cold water of the
levada.
If he were foolish enough to climb over the railing on his right,
he would fall down the vertiginous hillside which looks like a
sheer drop of about 20 metres.
++++ link to link and levada.  |  | The farmer who tilled this field (by hand!) has done so within inches
of a 500 metre sheer drop! See also these images. |
 | ++++ 095502 095218 Caminho Lombo do Doutor |
|
Festa da Flor de 2009 -
the Flower Festival held in Funchal, Madeira on 2009 April 26
The background music is the Tango do Remango, the first track on Encontros da Eira's cd
Meia Volta.
According to the sleeve notes: "the espression tango de remango,
although rarely used these days in everyday language,
means to die or pass away". A bit like the Irish idea of a wake!
The tune was collected in Camacha.
See also Encontros da Eira on Myspace.
Watch the video if the above does not work. More videos of the Flower Festival The images are all ours - see this gallery for the full collection. |
 | Imagine what the English Lake District would be like if it had never been glaciated. Or imagine the Isle of Wight with a mountain the height of Ben Nevis in the middle of it. (The Isle of Wight is about 36 km long. Madeira is about 49 km long. The highest point in Madeira, the Pico Ruivo is 1862 metres. If we scale that down by 36/49 we get 1378 metres - a bit higher than Ben Nevis.) |
| The islanders worship a pantheon of Ladies - Nossa Senhora … | |||||
 do Bom Sucesso [Good Fortune] |  da Conceição |  de Fátima |  de Fátima |  de Fátima |  da Graça [Grace] |
 do Guadalupe |  do Livramento |  do Loreto |  do Monte |  da Natividade aka do Faial |  da Paz [Peace] |
 da Piedade [Mercy] |  da Piedade [Mercy] and Santiago |  dos Remédios |  da Saúde | and even of Good Roads | |
| Work through the directory of parishes in the Diocese do Funchal to see how many more Ladies there are. | |||||
| At first sight it looks like a normal motorway but you soon realise that it has … | ||
steeper gradients … | tighter curves … | shorter entry and exit lanes … |
| than any motorway you have ever been on before. But despite that, it is no exaggeration to say that in many cases the new roads on Madeira have shortened journey times by a factor of ten. | ||
I carefully found a location perpendicular to this bit of motorway. I make that a gradient of 1 in 9 ! These views  | The tunnel portal on the right of this picture leads through to the motorway in the background on the left. |  |
| make it look even steeper but that is due to foreshortening. | ||
 The Parque Temático in Santana does not have the scary white-knuckle rides of Alton Park or Thorpe Towers. On the other hand it does not have the queues that those places have. Indeed on the day we were there, it seemed as though the staff outnumbered the visitors. |
Dotted around the park are these fake stones which hold loudspeakers and play relentlessly jolly Madeiran folk music. |
 All our photos of the Parque. |