Running round Madeira

Not sure what I had on my head here!

And so, back to the Funchal Half Marathon after a two year break. This time I came away with an interesting looking trophy for coming in second V65. It's a well run event, the course was altered slightly which was a benefit as it meant less running on cobbles in the old part of town. We met up with Julian and Jo from Macclesfield who also found themselves on the podium. Vicky didn't quite make the prize list but was happy to get through another half marathon in one piece. We thought we'd introduce Julian and Jo to the Fugicidade bar for a few local craft ales to  avoid the ubiquitous Madeiran Coral lager. On tired legs we walked into town to find the bar was shut on Sunday evenings - we had to settle for The Hole in One, not a golfer's pub but a bit of a tourist bar - not very busy at this time of year but still on the noisy side.

What do you think Betty?

Of course we had to go back to Fugicidade the following day and met up with the very pleasant and knowledgeable owner Duarte and his wife. Their business plan involves bringing over craft beers from Lisbon and one of their favourite breweries is Musa who supply fine ales with a musical theme. Regulars on tap at Fugicidade include Red Zeppelin and Born in the IPA which are a couple of American style IPA's. We were quite happy to drink the Frank APA (which was on tap rather than in bottle) - Frank, we were informed by Duarte, is named after Frank Zappa!

 I can see our house from here!

Here's the famous botanical gardens, photos of which feature in just about every travel brochure for Madeira. Even out of season the patchwork terrace garden looked good but the rest of the gardens were pretty interesting. We'd decided to walk up from town and it was certainly steep, glad we'd brought a backpack with our lunch in it! It's a little bit cooler up here than down in the port area so on a hot summer's day it must be a welcome relief from the heat. We took a minibus tour of the North of the island seeing as we got some cut price tickets - this was thanks to us sitting through a two hour presentation from a persistent Portugueser who was trying to sell us rooms at the Savoy Hotel for the rest of our lives! The tour was excellent though enabling us to see a different side of the country including banana trees planted on every available plot of land!