HILL SEEKERS

Madeira has shed its blue-rinse rep to become a hiking, running and mountain-biking honeypot. But for road and gravel? We hit the 40% inclines and levadas to find out...

- Matt Baird

Impossible, too steep, no chance. Martim Noronha, of the local bikehire shop, isn't impressed with our route planning skills. And that's before he clocks that we've added a 40% incline to our final day's ride out of Funchal, the capital of Madeira. But, as with seemingly everyone we've met on our long weekend of riding on the island, a wide smile soon returns to his face. "You do know that you can take your bikes on the cable car, right?"

The past three days have seen us watch local football team Maritimo score a rare win, get drunk with Turkish diplomats on 'poncha' cocktails, experience Portuguese folk singing (Fado) while eating black scabbardfish, and consume enough garlic bread to banish the threat of vampire attack. The sub-tropical climate has been a joyous escape from battling vitamin-D deficiencies in the soggy south west winter. It's a mid-haul destination with a short-haul price tag - we paid £75 for a return flight - and we've quickly understood why the woman next to us on the flight was on her 15th visit to Madeira. This autonomous region of Portugal, some 1,000km from Portugal, will get under your skin.

But what of the cycling? It's been short, sharp, steep and sweaty. We've ridden to the Cabo Girão Skywalk, Europe's highest platform that hovers over the Atlantic Ocean some 580m below, on the (still rolling) coastal road and back, while a 38km excursion (1,860m elevation!) to Ribeiro Frio saw us encounter empty mountain passes, forested valleys and not a single stretch of flat tarmac. The fact that Madeira's famous airport is built on a platform supported by pillars that juts out into the sea tells you everything about the topography.