Madeira: So you want to do the levada? Move your feet this way

Madeira's mountain water channels offer great walking opportunities. Mark Stratton took full advantage

Self-doubts were surfacing over our ability to walk in a straight line as we edged along the walls of the Levada dos Tornos. Cut from a basalt ledge in the cliffs high above the River Joao Gomes, the levada was part of Madeira's spidery network of stone conduits which criss-cross the island. Generally, they make excellent paths, and the solid walls on this levada were rarely less than 2 feet wide, but in places we were being drawn with nerve-racking closeness to the vertiginous precipice.

Our route-notes had offered an alternative lower footpath, though it would have been disappointing to have missed out on the stunning Joao Gomes gorge. And anyway, there was Plan B if vertigo truly set in. A leaflet I'd collected from the tourist office advised that, at the slightest hint of panic, "walkers could plunge knee-deep into the levada's cool mountain flow and start wading". Fortunately, this proved unnecessary. For the most part we were able to admire the levada's ingenious persistence as it swept over aqueducts, under waterfalls, and through rock-cut tunnels.

In truth, there were few hair-raising moments on the levadas, and the countryside of this genteel Atlantic island was proving a revelation. For many, Madeira evokes images of flowers, time-shares, and fortified wine. It's for ever the place Winston Churchill loved to paint, and where George Bernard Shaw learned how to dance. The height of pulse-raising exertion usually constitutes a stroll from the villa pool to Reid's Hotel for tea or a snifter of the eponymous tipple.

However, once away from Funchal, the focus of Madeira's sober package-holiday industry, a spine of volcanic peaks rises to more than 6,000ft, before falling away into deeply incised ravines swathed in laurel forests and emerald-green terraces. The coastline is equally dramatic: Cabo Girao's sea-cliffs plummet 900ft into the Atlantic.

We were hiking between the villages of north and eastern Madeira using the levadas to guide us. These slender channels are Madeira's life-support system. Some 1,350 miles of them funnel the fast-flowing mountain ribeiros, from the moist uplands to the drier and more populated southern plains around Funchal. They were the bright idea of the early Portuguese settlers, who in the 1450s needed water to power Funchal's sugar-cane mills, and later to irrigate the island's fledgling vineyards. As the levada network expanded, construction became more daring. In places, they have been painstakingly chiselled from uncompromising cliff-faces by the levandeiros who sometimes worked dangling from perilous overhangs in wicker baskets. Though the modern levadas are unromantically moulded from concrete, we still saw gangs of bobble-hatted levandeiros clearing (and sometimes dozing in) the channels infilled by landslides or neglect.

Madeira's most attractive levada walk is probably the Levada do Furado. Constructed in the 1870s, the course twists and turns high above the precipitous Frio Valley. Where it is unable to pass around the cliffs, it simply ploughs straight through them via numerous tunnels. There are breathtaking views towards Porta da Cruz, a coastal village dwarfed by the Penha de Aguia massif, and luxuriant evergreen forests of stink-laurel, mahogany, and mossy oaks.

Indeed, much of our day on the Levada do Furado was spent tramping through Madeira Natural Park, a sanctuary to the island's rare laurel forests. These Laurisilva forests largely disappeared from Southern Europe during the last ice age, and now Madeira shares the remaining fragments with her Macaronesian neighbours – the Canaries, the Azores, and the Cape Verde Islands. They would have covered Madeira when the Portuguese navigators Joao Goncalves Zarco and Tristao Vaz Teixeira first arrived in 1420. Inspired by the forests, they named the island – rather unimaginatively – after the Portuguese word for "wood".

Eventually, the levadas led us to quiet towns where our nightly pre-booked accommodation awaited. Overlooking the ocean, the somnolent Santana was typical. Clustered around a disproportionately huge whitewashed church, the town centre melted into the surrounding countryside of pocket-vineyards, fig trees, chocolate-brown terraces, and drying bundles of osier-willow (for wicker-weaving). The pointed thatched roofs of Santana's traditional palheiros (like miniature Swiss chalets) caught the eye, but we were eager to try the hotel's spa.

Evenings were times to soak walk-weary limbs, and over dinner, catch up with the progress of the two other couples following the same self-guided trails. After an aperitif of Madeira, or perhaps the more explosive poncha – a fiery blend of aguardente (cane-rum), lemon-juice, and honey – dinner was unsurprisingly centred around fresh seafood. Scabbard-fish, or espada, was omnipresent. We'd seen it in the market, and it looked rather grisly: a jet-black eel-like creature with bulging eyes and razor-teeth. But when cooked, it is transformed into a succulent white fish and is often served with plantain, or banana.

Today, Zarco and Teixeira would be perplexed by the island's exotic flora. The native trees have largely disappeared from the lowlands, and Madeira's "anything grows" climate has fostered a hotchpotch of species brought in from all over the world. In Funchal, the jacarandas, bougainvilleas and camellias were flowering, and the fruit stalls in the market were piled high with custard-apples, passion-fruit, bananas, paw-paws, and mangoes - all homegrown. Who knows, if these fruits had been around when Zarco and Teixeira arrived, we'd probably be spending a week on the isle of Frutas Salada.

The Facts

Getting there

Mark Stratton was a guest of Sherpa (020 8577 2717; www.sherpa-walking-holidays.co.uk), which features a seven-night unaccompanied walking holiday on Madeira from £699, based on two sharing, including return flights, three nights' b&b, four nights' half-board accommodation, plus detailed map and route notes.

Further information

Madeira tourist board (00 45 291 211 900; www.madeiratourism.org).