Product Description

The volcanic islands of Madeira and Porto Santo bask in sunny solitude in the Atlantic Ocean, far removed from the coasts of Europe and Africa. Long popular for relaxing holidays, today they also attract more adventurous travellers keen to discover a great variety of walks. This guidebook contains a wealth of routes, some as yet little known, stretching from sea level to the highest mountain peaks. The routes explore the awesome cliff coastline, the level 'levada' paths and the dense laurisilva 'cloud forest' and follow stone-built traverses from peak to peak in the high mountains.The new edition takes account of sweeping changes around the modern Madeira, including the new network of underground road tunnels that offer rapid access to all parts of the island. It offers a comprehensive introduction to Madeira and Porto Santo. It is lavishly illustrated with photographs of every walking route and full-colour mapping. It features 60 routes, including both old favourites and newly-waymarked walks.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98276 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 315 pages

About the Author
Paddy Dillon is a prolific walker and guidebook writer, with over 40 books to his name, and contributions to 25 other books. He has written extensively for a number of outdoor magazines and other publication, and has appeared on radio and television. The popular Walking in Madeira was his first full-colour book for Cicerone.

Customer Reviews

OK but not great
Has some interesting routes but the descriptions and maps are not up to the standard of others in this series.

Good, but a couple of things to be aware of...
This book is really good. It gives an "idiots guide" to the levada walks, including some limited (but helpful) commentary on the plant life, architecture etc. The grading are helpful and the maps at least provide an overview of the routes.

Two pieces of advice, however:

1) The Madeiran/Portuguese government are currently renovating the levadas (2009-2010). For example, in August 2009, we turned up to the the Levada Nova route in this book only to find a 6km stretch of it is closed until Feb 2010 for repair. Based on this, I would always check with the Madeiran authorities what is open and what is not.

2) The book is good, but it's no substitute for a proper OS map. Inevitably, there are diversions due to maintenance work. The route descriptions in the book only work if you follow them perfectly, and the maps aren't detailed enough to be able to track your diversion and re-join the main route later. The book takes the hard work out of map reading, but I'd always still take a map just in case!

All together, worth having and definitely enhances the experience of our walks, though,

Walking in Madeira
Rates well alongside other Madeira walking guides. I am a regular walker there and this will be of the five guides I will be using. Each guide has it's own strengths. The Dillon guide is good for more challenging walks. I had an old edition. The new edition has improved maps.