Rare Adventures

Tag: travel

Adventures with the Widey Tech sailing club
My first near experience of dicing with death

Over my lifetime I have had many close encounters with disasters that could have ended much worse than they did. Most normal people don’t get themselves into these situations in the way that I seem to. This story is about the first of those close encounters and includes a bit of history about a very unique school I was privileged to attend.

Born and bred in Plymouth, I grew up loving the sea and still do. My dad was a shipwright in the dockyard and worked on boats all his life. Even though he was an accomplished student at school he wasn’t interested in following my grandad into the city council treasury, he wanted to work on boats and by the time he was 16 he had built his own canoe that he used for fishing.

A different era

This story is from an era where education was bigger than just books, and value wasn’t simply based on whether the school talked you into going to university, so some readers may find the fact that a school had its own sailing club is a bit odd. But then again, my school was a bit unusual, it was called Widey Technical Secondary School, this was an experiment from the early 1960s when educational visionaries recognised that not all bright kids were destined for jobs in banks.

The school focused on given bright kids who had passed their 11 plus a route to develop craft and engineering skills, not just academic skills. Consequently, the school had a fully equipped metalwork lab with lathes and lethal equipment nobody would dream of putting near kids (or most adults) nowadays. It also had a woodwork lab and by the time he was 15, my mate Paddy McDermott had built a boat for his CSE project and happily rowed it down the Tamar River with his mates.

In hindsight, this was all genius, because the major employer in the city was the Royal Naval dockyard and it enjoyed the benefits of a grammar level school churning out pupils ready to go into the dockyard as high performing apprentices in engineering. If only education and industry were as joined up now.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the school successes. I didn’t seem to have much in the way of talents for woodwork or metalwork. The first project in woodwork was to make a dovetail joint which never seemed to fit properly and went on for months, and metalwork seemed to involve hours of filing which was very boring.

It wasn’t helped by my old man taking the mickey out of everything (he was a very good craftsman) I created and was assertive that I should never go into the dockyard. Generally, and unlike any of the other boys, I lost interest in these craft topics and by the time options selection came along I chose History and French.

Widey School Sailing Club

However, I still loved the sea and was very excited to be able to join the Sailing Club when I was old enough (there was a minimum age, 13 I think). The school had a little flotilla of boats for us to learn on. So, at the start of the summer, we all had to head to the Barbican and do our share of sanding and rubbing down to get the boats ready for the summer season, all under the watchful eye of the teachers, Max Wall and Paddy Padfield, we had 4 different types of boats.
1. A GP14, this is the big boat with 3 people, a helm and 2 crew and normally had a teacher in charge
2. A Mirror, this was much more modern than the others but only 2 people, I was never one of them.
3. Cadets, a little research has unearthed that these are designed as training boats for youths, and we seemed to have a few of these.
4. Safety boat with an outboard motor that pottered around following the flotilla rescuing people.
3 times a week we would look forward to going sailing, Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday morning. One of the first things I learned was that we only went out when the wind was below force 4 as a safety precaution, I also learned that force 4 winds cause the tops of the trees to move. Every sailing day I’d be checking the tops of trees as we moved between classrooms keeping my fingers crossed, we’d be going out that night, but it often ended in disappointment. At the end of the day Plymouth is a windy city on the ocean, and I was amazed how many days were lost from high winds.

It’s fair to say that I didn’t turn out to be a brilliant sailor. Maybe it was lack of attention to detail or in fact attention to anything I was told, the boats were a bit uncomfortable and when I did go out in a Cadet they seemed to have a habit of capsizing for some reason, so more and more time was spent in the GP14 with the teachers or in the safety boat. It was almost as if the capsizing was my fault and I couldn’t be trusted.

The safety boat could be more fun as my love of the sea had got me into fishing, if Paddy was driving, I could take my fishing gear and a hand line and drop the lure out of the boat and do something useful with my time as we followed the flotilla around Plymouth Sound. Max didn’t approve of the fishing from the school safety boat so that curtailed my activities on occasions.

Widey Techn annual sailing day, 1974

Then came the annual Widey Sailing School Day out. We all congregated at the club on the Barbican at 9am with our packed lunches, warm cloths and looked forward to our freeby day off school. The weather didn’t look good, grey skies and spitting with rain, it seemed a bit windy to me but off we went anyway. Circumnavigating Plymouth Sound took most of the morning, backwards and forwards trying to get to Cawsand Bay, then more backwards and forwards as we tried to get out of it again.

Unfortunately, I was in the larger GP14 again under the watchful eye of Max rather than the Safety Boat, as I’m sure the fishing would have been good but instead, I spent the morning banging my knees and toes on the keel board thingy in the dingy.

Eventually, we pulled into a little cove on Penlee Point and onto the beach. I knew it well as we often pulled in there in my dad’s boat, I used to be allowed to row around in his tender, attached by a rope because I couldn’t be trusted, but at least I was afloat and unsupervised. Even though the beach was sheltered, outside the cove we were a good mile outside the protection of the Plymouth Breakwater, out in the English Channel.

As lads we messed around on the beach, ate our lunch and did most of the things we were told not to. Eventually the teachers couldn’t take anymore and decided it was time to go. As the boat allocations for the trip back were being made, I was amazed to be allocated to one of the little Cadets rather than the Safety Boat.

Dicing with death

That meant I had to concentrate, and as we pulled away from the beach, I got a lecture from the helm, I bloke called Robins who was a couple of years older, about doing what I was told. We could see the sea beyond the cove and the waves were now bigger as the swell had picked up in the channel. As normal I was in a scruffy mess, my lifejacket was untied and the rope was floating around near my feet and getting in the way. So for my own convenience rather than any thoughts of safety, I tied it around my waist and was ready for action. We were the first boat out of the cove, so it was very exciting.

As the little dingy pulled out we needed to tack quickly and run with the swell. In a swift and totally unpractised manoeuvre, we swung into action. As we hit the swell, “Ready about” was the shout and before I knew it there were sails and bodies flying everywhere and we new it we were in the freezing cold sea. Robins gave me daggers as we tumbled over the side, I don’t know why as it was his fault.

I felt myself come to the surface but for some reason couldn’t find any air, after a bit of panicking and fighting for air, I realised I was under the mainsail and swam out from underneath to find fresh air and a deep green/grey sea everywhere.

Initially, being wet and cold, I just wanted the safety of being back in the boat. I started to swim towards the boat, but smart-ass Robins got there first and clambered in. Unbelievably, with his weight changing the balance of the boat, it righted itself and the wind caught the sail and off he went, admittedly largely out of control but putting an alarming gap between me and salvation.

I remember those minutes in the water as if it was yesterday, I guess that is what shock does to your mind. There was no one around, the other boats were still coming out of the cove, so I was totally alone. Off Penlee Point the swell was bigger as it came around the headland, I was looking around at the swell lifting and dropping me back down in what felt like huge valleys of water., with white crests on the top of the waves slapping me in the face.

I remember thinking, “Thank God I did my lifejacket up”, because if I hadn’t, I’d probably have slipped through it and gone down under with the weight of a woolly jumper and other cloths. I then noticed my shoe bobbing along on the next wave and thinking I need to rescue it, or my old man would give me a battering so swam off to save my shoe.

In the distance, our dingy capsized again, which was excellent news for me, and I started to swim for the boat again, it was a couple hundred yards away by now, but I had to do something. Then the GP14 appeared with Max in charge, as it sailed past surfing down one of the waves he shouted, “Are you OK”, probably one of the daftest questions ever, of course I wasn’t OK, I was about to drown. “Yes, I’m fine, sir” I shouted back, so he sailed off and I was left bobbing around on my own again, trying to spot my shoes.

My saviour

Finally my saviour appeared over the crests of the waves and surfed past me in the form of the Safety Boat with Paddy at the helm. As with the GP14 he did a first pass, surfing down the face of one of the waves, he shouted “What are you doing in there”, the sort of question a teacher asks a pupil I guess, so I responded “Fishing, what do you think”.

He then went around and skilfully came alongside me, using the boat to protect me from the waves and was about to dragged me onboard when I spotted my shoe, so I wriggled clear and swam to get the shoe as I couldn’t leave it behind. I swam back and was then heaved out of the sea by the crew of the safety boat. I was dripping wet hugely relieved that I wasn’t dead, but a lot less enthusiastic about sailing than I had been.

We then went over and rescued Robins and secured his dingy to the rescue boat before hatching the plan to get us home. Annoyingly, that plan involved me getting back in the Cadet with Robins and sailing it back to the Barbican. I think it was on the basis of kill or cure, and it would help us get over it any fears that might have developed.

It is fair to say that the atmosphere between Robins and me was a bit frosty, and we didn’t talk much on the way back, so some reason he seemed to blame me for his incompetence, but someone has to be blamed, I guess.

When we got ashore, I dried off and was on the bus home to tell my mum as soon as I could. I honestly don’t remember going dingy sailing again until I joined the BBC Sailing Club on the Thames 15 years later, but that was more to do with a bar and BBQs than a desire to be a sailor.

That night, and for many nights later I relived that experience in the water. I still do now, which is why I’m writing this blog as the memory is so vivid. I still have nightmare moments that focus in on “what would have happened if I hadn’t done up that lifejacket to get rid of the strap”.

I’ll be forever grateful to Paddy, the teacher for rescuing me and the sight of the Safety Boat surfing along the tops of the waves actually gave me hope, as I thought I was done for.

The process of writing this blog has left me with two thoughts.
1. What a brilliant education idea Technical Grammar schools were. They were totally designed to create employable young people ready to go into engineering, we have absolutely nothing like that anymore.
2. Shock, if this incident could be so embedded in my head, what must it be like for people who have much more severe experiences, whether it’s the traumatic things we see on the TV or the experiences of the armed forces and rescue services that are happening all the time. Maybe if there are lots of them, they overwrite each other or maybe it was because I was young.
This wasn’t to be my last close encounter with disaster, but it was my first and I’ve never forgotten it.
06/07/2025
Mountain Biking Gone Awry: Tales from Grisdale Forest

Grisdale, Gremlins and Northern Kindness

The plan was to tour the northern England and Scottish mountain bike trails, my mat n his Jeep and me in my VW Camper. Life never seems to work out the way we plan it, so we ended up going in June instead, and the week we planned was crimped to a few days due to my wedding anniversary and with a trip to France on the agenda for June, all the same it’s always great to spend time with my mate wherever it is and so a great time was guaranteed.

My mate is retired too and loves his Jeep so he turned it into a camper for the week , it is amazing what you can do with chipboard and some planks. He has created a 6 foot bed, made curtains out of cardboard and used some old pond lining as a front curtain, he can even fit his mountain bike inside if he has to, though it’s a bit tricky having a night time wee, so he locks it to the tow bar. His ingenuity to create this mobile bedroom is genuinely something to behold.

We planned to rendezvous in the Lake District at the campsite new Grisdale Forest, our first riding destination. My trip from Bristol was about 250 miles and I did it in my old van without a break and I pulled off the M6 at Kendall 4.5 hours later and pulled into a petrol station to fill up before camping. At this point the implications of hours at the wheel hit me, as I stood beside the van filling with fuel still in crouched in a sitting position as my body was kind of locked into a semi sat position.

Gremlin Strike and the lost keys

I went and paid for the fuel and hopped back into the van (it only took 5 mins to regain my posture!), went to put the ignition key and it wasn’t on the key ring. WTF, how can the key not be on the key ring, all the other keys are on it. Where the hell can it be.

Then I noticed that the ring itself was stretched and realised that the most important key in my life, the ignition key, must have found a way to rotate itself and escape from the ring, Then the hunt began, on the floor around the petrol filler cap, inside the cab, around the bin where I’d dumped the packets and then a walk about the shop.

No sign of the key anywhere, I organised the bin beside the van to be opened so I could check inside, nope, not in there either. The cashier then joined the hunt and roped in other customers to our task.

Northern people are renowned for their helpfulness and within 5 minutes there were at least 10 people, who had come in to buy petrol or snacks, walking around the shops staring at the floor, under shelves and into crevices without any success. Eventually a bloke walked in and asked, “Is anyone looking for this”, and held up the missing ignition key he found outside on the steps ……. Phew.

Lots of thanks and hugs followed and I got back in the van, still disbelieving that a key could escape from the key ring in that way and headed off to the campsite for a lovely warm evening watching the sun set and drinking cold beer. Life was good again and we had a lot to look forward to.

My mate arrives along with the rain

Eventually my mate turned up and at that exact moment it started to rain, literally at the moment he pulled into the campsite. I duly admired his Camperjeep and we did our best to celebrate the start of our adventures but the rain was determined and 12 hours later, the drought of the north was over as we endured the worst thunder and lightning storm ever, it wasn’t just the drought that was over, some of weekenders plans were over as well after tents had been flooded or been blown away.

Gremlin Strike 2 – power failure

We decided to keep breakfast simple, just toast in my little van, then off to the trail centre. The bread was a bit big for the toaster, and I had to force it down into the slots. I hadn’t really considered that bread is an electricity conductor and suddenly everything in the van was dead.

The lethal loaf

We quickly identified the problem, the trip on the campsite supply so we reset it and tried again. Not surprisingly, another pop and the power was gone again, but this time the campsite supply was OK. So it was in the van, something that had never happened before. So, we did various checks of different sockets, the internal fuses were OK. What on each has happened, we concluded we had blown a site master fuse, but nope. It was all good, so it had to be the van.

I started to strip out cupboards thinking a cable must have come loose but luckily, My mate was a qualified electrical engineer (as well asmany other things) and said there must be another switch. He is smaller than me, he got his head into a cupboard and with the aid of an iPhone torch spotted a master switch that, even after 20 years of owning the van, I didn’t know existed. Excellent, we had power back but yet another freaky inexplicable incident, so we packed up to get on our way.

Gremlin Strike 3 – my book has gone

When I packed up, I couldn’t find my book anywhere. How on earth can I have lost a book FFS, it was nowhere to be found. This was getting ridiculous.

It was then that I realised I might be the victim of some devilish spirit trying to ruin my weekend. Then Jeepy remembered the film Gremlins, not the little fluffy ones, but the evil critters that appear after they got wet, my van was clearly inhabited by an evil Gremlin who had got wet overnight.

Off we went to Grisdale Forest where the full extent of the nights rain became apparent. Roads were flooded hills had torrents of water pouring down them, the scenes were almost biblical, but we were not going to be put off. Bikes out, on with the gear and off we went into the floods on our bikes.

Gremlin Strike 4 – lost Go Pro camera

As we set off, I noticed that my Go Pro camera didn’t seem to lock properly, but I thought it must be my imagination and not to worry. 10 mins into the first climb I noticed the camera was gone. That goddam Gremlin has been at it again, now we will have no films of our rides let alone the cost of the camera. My hatred for that Gremlin just got more serious.

There was a camera in there 10 mins ago

The rides around Grisdale were disappointing, largely due to the resemblance of trails to rivers, so we didn’t miss much without the camera. I have never seen so much water in all my life. Paths and trails were completely flooded, I was more like a paddle boat than a bike, but few made it around.

We paddled on through the water and made it to the top of the trail with an amazing look out over Windemere. At that point we had a very interesting conversation about the feasibility of the Loch Ness Monster having migrated to Windemere because is was sick of all the hunters, it’s fair to say we didn’t reach agreement on the feasibility but it was an interesting discussion all the same and my mate tried to get a photo of it, just in case.

When we returned to the trail centre there was more evidence of the wonderful kindness of the Northern folks, despite them being descendants from Vikings. I had left my mate in the café so I could just have a check on the first trail to see if the camera was on the ground but no such luck.

Northern kindness

As I walked through the car park looking dejected, a very tall stranger came the other way, he then said,

“Hey mate, have you lost a Go Pro”, he had spotted my empty case on the handle bars and suddenly the camera was back in my hand. No words could express my thanks, so we did knuckles and he cycled off.

It was time to head off to our next destination and despite the efforts of the evil Gremlin, Northern Kindness had saved my day again. Northern folks had found the key, My mate found the trip switch and the tall stranger had returned my camera.

Still no sign of the book and now my Adidas trainer had disappeared in the van, but things could have been one hell of a lot worse without the Northern folks.

Time to set off for Kielder Forest and our next adventure.

30/06/2025
Christmas Day Surprises: Extreme presents

Zip wires, axe throwing and mountain adventures

At the annual “what do you want for Christmas” discussion, it was pointed out by my family, that I have everything I want because I just buy it when I need things.

I suggested maybe we could do something unusual for the present rather than buy things. I was thinking maybe a meal, boat trip, maybe even a weekend away. My family seemed to take this idea more to heart than I had anticipated.

On Christmas Day I opened my cards as normal. In the first card there I was a bit surprised to find a voucher from my youngest son for an Axe and Knife Throwing experience, which I had to admit did reflect what I had asked for.

The second card just said Happy Christmas Dad in the normal way and when I came to the third card there was another surprise. A voucher for the longest and fastest Zip Wire ride in the world, from my wife.

Wooksie was clearly trying to get her own back, because she knows I am scared of heights, and she loves things like jumping out of planes with parachutes. In normal circumstances she is a woman who does detail, but on this occasion she was so keen to buy the biggest, scariest and fastest Zip Wire ride she hadn’t checked the location, which happened to be Snowdonia, over 6 hours away by car.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed that the present was for two people, and Wooksie clearly assumed she would be coming as well.

Axe Throwing

Youngest son is no mug, and realised that I was unlikely to go on the Axe Throwing at Bristol Activity Centre on my own so ended up getting a free day out as I ended up paying for him.

What he didn’t expect was a master class in Axe and Knife throwing from his old man, after a slow start The Dad Lad ended up winning the throw off at the end – hoorah for Dad and note the medal.

Flushed with success, I put on episodes of Vikings of Valhalla to imagine how I would have fared if faced by screaming Norseman, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Axe Throwing was only 20 minutes from home so wasn’t a challenge. Getting to Snowdonia was a far more epic journey and after months of procrastination we picked a day and headed for Snowdonia and Zip World.

Zip Wire Snowdonia and Gremlins

As it was a special treat, I hunted down a really nice hotel based on the design of a 5* French Chateau on Anglessey. I kept this a secret so it would be a nice surprise when we got there, and it was only for 1 night.

The nice surprise turned out to have teeth, because on the way up Booking.com sent me a reminder that I was staying at the Chateau the next day. I pondered this scheduling error from my calendar, and on checking I had booked to arrive on Thursday, not leave. This meant we didn’t have a hotel for the tonight.

Desperately, I tried to ring them from a service station without Wooksie noticing that I was in panic mode. When I got through, they were very helpful and understanding, but full.

We changed drivers so I could deal with the problem in the passenger seat, because at this point, we were sleeping in the back of the car rather than a Chateau. I was discreetly tapping away on the phone trying to find a hotel without Wooksie noticing, but got dirty looks for fiddling with my phone and not chatting.

Eventually, I found a hotel in Bangor. I have to admit the feedback was only 6, but it was the only one with a double room and a view of the Menai Straights that night. I broke the news to Wooksie who took it with her normal good humour, as she said, I’d expect nothing less, “nearly a 5* hotel sums up my life”.

The hotel was truly awful, how it achieved a rating of 6 I will never know. The door on the bedroom didn’t fit, the lock didn’t work, the bar down was huge and full of students celebrating the start of term, or end of term or something that involved lots of noise, and as for the view of the Menai Strait – only if you leaned out the window and tree had been cut down.

A night in Bangor wasn’t much better, we tried a pub that seemed to have an integrated fish and chip shop. This was going OK until the bingo started.

So we left, went into a cosey looking wine bar called Voltaire and unfortunately had our first ever vegan meal, which was kind of tasty and I’ve got a tick in that “Ever had a vegan meal” box now.

After a 6 hour drive, this was all very unwelcome but the views of the Menai Straights were pleasant enough before we went to bed full of excitement about the 30 second Zip Wire ride that awaited us.

The Zip Wire location was on the slopes of Mt Snowdon and located in a disused quarry. It turns out that there are a number of these in Wales that utilise natural features to help tourism, which seems a very good idea. It also turns out there is one in South Wales, less than an hour from our house – hmmm.

First impressions were really good, with a very professional set up and safety preparation. We had booked a time slot and pretty much everything went to plan.

The package contained TWO rides, which was a bit of a surprise. First ride was a practice and we had to walk a few hundred metres up the mountain to the launch pad. The process was reassuringly regimented as we were loaded on to beds.

Then our body bags were connected to the rails. There was lots of shouting of check this and check that which was also reassuring as we prepared to launch. Then the bump, as the beds dropped and we were suspended in space, the heart jumps, misses a beat and then we were off. Flying headfirst towards the wall of the quarry but in the way was a big bumper pad and some nice young people grabbing us as we arrived and a gentle landing, before loading into our transport to the top.

Next big surprise was the transport to get to the real deal at the top. No chair lift or gondolas here in Wales, we were driven up in a monster truck. It was about 4km of winding roads climbing up at some crazy angles, the trucks seemed to defy gravity at times and roared those big wheels up the trail.

When we arrived at the top it was a totally different perspective to the practice run. The ride is about 2.5km in total the bottom looked a long, long way away.

There must have been a least 20 people in the truck so being a gentleman of a certain age, I let the young people go first, then the elderly and infirm, women until eventually Wooksie pointed out I was going to have to get on sooner or later.

Now the adverts say that you can reach speeds of 100mph on the run down, which I was a bit dubious of, so I set my Garmin to time the run using the Snowboard widget.

It was the same procedure for loading on. Lying on beds followed by lots of shouting. Strangely this ride wasn’t as intimidating at the start as the practice run.

This was mainly because when you are loaded the ground is quite close so you don’t get the feeling of height. Things soon change when you get going but by then you are literally flying through the air.

The ride was a strange experience. We started off slowly and Wooksie moved ahead because she is lighter. It’s not like I’m competitive or anything, but I wasn’t going to come second to her!

So I put my head down to accelerate and next thing I am flying past Wooksie. It’s as if I’m rocket propelled when my extra weight to take effect. I opened my mouth to shout encouragement only for my mouth to fill full of air at 90mph, instead of noise coming out, my cheeks just flapped uncontrollably until we started to slow down at the bottom and being rescued by a young person with a very long stick with a hook on the end.

As you can see from the Garmin record above, I hit a maximum speed of 145kph, which is roughly 90mph, if I’d just kept my mouth shut I would probably made it to 100mph, might be the story of my life.

It was a really good day out and lots of fun, and almost justified the 12 hours in car getting to Snowdonia and back. It will be interesting to see what my next Christmas card contains.

16/06/2025
Exploring Norway’s Fjords on a Cruise Adventure

When anyone mentioned cruise holidays I used to think “not in a million years mate”.

The thought of being locked up in a tin can and taken to places that I had no choice about filled me with dread. But life moves on and I did become inquisitive about what wonders existed inside those towering pleasure palaces that trundled into places we were staying.

They are Behemoths of the sea, 20 stories high and with roller coasters hanging out the side of the ship was honestly beyond my imagination. I’d been to enough theme parks but really, on a ship!

Watching them head into ports and spew out thousands of people into one small area of a town, which was normally inhibited by hawkers of dodgy goods and trips, or expensive jewellery shops for the well healed cruisers was more convincing that these would not be my kind of people, and certainly not 5000 of them at one time within the giant tin can.

Over the years we’ve moving along from a little from beach side bars playing dance music in a tropical paradise, but not far, we might now include the odd sunset cocktail bar in Tenerife but basically, we are still beach bums at heart.

This, however, presented one problem, I quite fancied seeing the Norwegian fjords. With stunning coastal scenery and high living costs, I was never going to head there in my old camper van, so I explored the other options, and the obvious one was doing it on a cruise.

So, after some soul searching, and recognising that life moves on and that we should try other things, we decided that if we were ever going to do a cruise, Norway would be a good place to test the water.

We could see the format working for a tour of the Caribbean Island as well, so we booked up with P&O to head for the Fjords in Springtime aboard the good ship IONA. A few people had done this trip and waxed lyrical about the wonders of Norway so we went with high hopes that it would be fun, and not feel like 1 of 5000 people locked in a tin can, with huge queues to get around and spending our time being shepherded.

First impressions were great, a huge ship and boarding at Southampton was very efficient. We had an inside cabin (advised by friends as they said we wouldn’t be in it much) which was very comfortable and well designed. We were on very early so had chance to explore.

The first tour of the ship confirmed it was monstrous, rather like a tour of a large glitzy shopping mall. Shops along one deck, restaurants everywhere, a really good gym and spa and plenty of bars and entertainment areas so we were very optimistic about the experience.

03/06/2025
Discover Madeira: A Springtime Adventure

I’d been told years ago that if you want to go to Madeira, do it in the spring because it is colourful. Invariably, I’d notice Madeira at some other time of the year and would make a mental note that I needed to remember to go there in the spring, and then forget.

This year I remembered and last week we finally made it to the island. This is a quick summary of what we found that will hopefully be helpful to others.

So in general, there are loads of things to do when you get away from Funchal, hotels are cheap, beer and food is very reasonable and if you are lucky, you too will bump into an old mate from Plymouth on the plane and get the chance to investigate the bars together.

The weather. I was watching the forecast in the week leading up to the flight and noticed that it seemed to be a bit chilly, and indeed it was. I’ve been to Portugal a few times and the weather has never lived up to the hype and the same applies to Madeira. When the sun was out it was lovely, as soon as the clouds appeared I might has well been in the UK. I’m hardy soul when it comes to cold but I was glad to have a jumper, so if you go in spring expect to take a coat.

Funchal is a concrete jungle, as bad or worse than the Canaries or the mainland. It stretches along the coast to the west away from the centre for 2 or 3 miles and then it suddenly stops and starts to become rural, but they are still building so it will only get bigger. The hotels are more upmarket than say, the Canaries, they are nearly all 4* and a lot more individual in design, they are also cheaper, you should be able to find a 4* with breakfast for about £100 per night.

Once you get out of Funchal the scenery is stunning and it feels like a totally different world.

Steep and colourful – the whole island is steep as it pops out of the sea and is well over 1000m high, so wherever you go expect to be walking up or down a hill, many of which are not for the faint hearted. People who just stay around their hotels in Funchal will never see or experience the things this island has to offer.

There is a really vibrant tourism industry specialising in a whole range of activities from hiking to canyoning that take advantage of the islands natural beauty and gradients, we explored the west of the island on the 4×4 truck tour and it was fantastic. We regretted that we did not have more time to try some of the more adrenaline filled events, but that’s life.

Ugly sea food, they have the best sea food selection of any place I had stayed. The restaurants are full of locally caught fish and it is very cheap. They also have the ugliest fish I have ever eaten, but fortunately it also happens to be the best tasting fish I have had the pleasure to eat – the local name is Scabbardfish and they live in a 1000m of water off the coast, absolutely lush.

06/05/2025