Madeira ...

We've just returned from a holiday on the island of Madeira, which is a place we'd never visited before. 

As keen gardeners, we'd heard about its ideal conditions for growing just about anything, and so we came here to see for ourselves and also maybe to identify another potential location for our longer winter breaks in the future.

Madeira's quite upmarket compared to some of the holiday destinations we've visited.  There's not much in the way of sandy beaches, and access to the sea can be difficult to find since there are high cliffs around much of the coastline.  And there's a lot of steep hills to negotiate if you're on foot, so some form of motorised transport is a must if you want to explore places off the beaten track.

There's an extensive modern road system linking the major settlements via dual-carriageways with long tunnels and bridges to cut through the mountains and cross the deep valleys between, although we generally travelled more leisurely on the older roads which wind around the mountains with spectacular views but greatly extended journey times.

the Via Rapide from the Funchal botanical gardens

There are also several cable cars in operation around the island, ranging from a long and gentle climb from Funchal harbour up to the Monte botanical gardens ...

... to terrifying near-vertical descents from high clifftops down to remote beaches.

There are many fine parks, botanical & formal gardens and wild woodlands to visit, all with a fair share of the more exotic species of flora, although a lot of the colour we saw actually came from plants which will be very familiar to northern European gardeners, such as roses, dahlias and marigolds.  Hydrangeas are especially common within the gardens and agapanthus (African lily) in both blue and white seems to grow wild everywhere along the mountain roadsides.

In the towns and villages along the southern coastline, many small spaces available between buildings tend to be given over to growing bananas, whereas in the cooler north of the island grape vines are more prevalent on the spare land around houses.

All in all, Madeira was a very green and pleasant place to spend a few weeks.

In the time available, we didn't manage to travel all around the island even though it's quite small, but I suppose we've saved some new sights to see for the next time we visit.