Madeira is a popular walking destination as there are paths all over the country called levadas which are basically irrigation channels. Although there is a very good network of buses over the island, working out where to get the bus to a particular walk is quite complicated so we opted for a coastal walk from the hotel to Camara de Lobos, the Madeira equivalent of Port Isaac.
It was a cloudy start and quite windy morning . We tried to get up early to be first in the swimming pool but failed, however the breast stroke brigade all got out when we got in, we have that effect on breaststrokers.

We packed our waterproofs, but the weather improved as we made our way along the pleasant coastal path with a few geocache diversions. We met another English geocacher who saw us hunting at a particular location but could not help us, as he too had to failed at this location. Our destination village was a bit of a tourist spot with the usual shops cafes and bars. We wondered along the coast a bit further but as the coastal path disappeared we decided to get a bus back to Funchal.

The bus dropped us in the centre of Funchal outside the covered market. Most of the stalls were selling fruit and flowers and were a riot of colour. . All of them were trying to get our custom by giving us samples of passion fruit and other exotics. When we saw that passion fruit was 17 euros a kilo we realised why they were pushing their sale, but we escaped without a purchase.

We wandered through the main streets, past the cathedral and palaces along attractive paved streets. We popped into the tourist information to see if they could recommend how to see a bit more of the island on our last day. The assistant gave us an option using local buses but one bus went in the morning to the north coast and came back at 5 pm so there wasn't a lot of choice.

Next door we found the building of Blandys wine museum . We were going to book a tour but while we were waiting we did the Madeira wine tasting and ended up buying a couple of bottles instead of a tour.
We again got diverted to do some geocaching on the way back to the hotel and a visit to a Quinta , (the name of an old estate which often have beautiful gardens ) and another diversion took us to see if we could find a levada. We eventually got back to the hotel having stopped to book an organised tour for tomorrow. The local bus journey wasn't very appealing so we found a tour which will allow us to see the mountains, the north and east coast and not get diverted too much although Graham has downloaded all the geocaches! From observations of the tourists here, we will probably be the youngsters on the tour ! People we have spoken to so far seem to be here for several weeks (every year) but we are beginning to see why especially when looking at the UK weather forecast.......